Rudynate

You don't need to switch it off instantly. Trying to switch it off is its own kind of craziness. If the feeling is too uncomfortable, don't feed and it will fade within a few days. You can handle anything for a few days.

Outstanding advice.

Who is this guy who rocked your world?

It's infatuation for a tall hot hung stud who took you places that you had never been. Totally understandable. Allow yourself to feel it, but also see it for what it is. If you don't think you can experience the infatuation without becoming obsessive, don't see him again and allow the infatuation to fade. But if you think you can handle it, go back for more.

Those acronyms suddenly become very useful when you are composing SMS texts.

I didn't used to like it. All my bodybuilding buds use it and they all, believe it or not, call me "Bro." I've actually come to like it. I don't use it myself, though.

Toast Hawaii. This recipe didn't actually sound disgusting and I just fixed it and it was pretty tasty. We've been watching that German sci-fi series "Dark" on Netflix. One of the characters fixed "Toast Hawaii" as a treat for her child. It is actually a popular German recipe: a slice of toast, a slice of ham, a pineapple slice, and a slice of cheese - in that order. You put it under the broiler to melt the cheese thoroughly and then put a maraschino cherry in the depression where the cheese melted into the hole in the center of the pineapple slice and serve. Very much like Hawaiian pizza. If you don't like pizza with pineapple, you might not like this. I used sharp cheddar and it reminded me of apple pie with cheddar cheese. I want to try it with muenster cheese or havarti because that is the sort of cheese you encounter in Germany on a day-to-day basis.

I used to have sex with hot guys who were assholes, but I felt dirty afterwards. Now, liking somebody is at least as important as his looks.

Or a compulsive need to be heard - kind of like Ivanca Trump trying to talk policy with Angela Merkel and Christine LaGarde.

Right, I agree. I doubt whether there is a single gene or gene sequence that determines sexual orientation. I think it is a much more complex question than that. But the genome can certainly determine behavioral tendencies and predispositions.

Once, a friend was trying to think of a thesis topic for his master program in psych. Understandably, as a gay man, he wanted to do something around the cause(s) of homosexuality. To me, studying the "cause" of homosexuality is premised on a homophobic view that homosexuality is "deviant" or "abnormal" and a gay man doing it is a clear-cut case of internalized homophobia. I pointed out to him that nobody is studying the "cause" of heterosexuality. He decided to keep looking for a topic.

Why doesn't it work for you that you were "born this way?" Your sexual orientation, or lack thereof, seems as hard-wired as being exclusively gay or straight does. One of the dictates of your trait is that you can form erotic attachments with either sex. Of course, it is very constructive to experience it as a freedom, but it's not the only way of seeing it. Someone might look at you and say "That poor guy, he will never know the joy of a deep sexual/emotional connection with someone of his own sex. Or, "that poor guy, he is constantly torn between his deep love for his wife and family and that vexatious same-sex attraction that he can't seem to shake."

But you're not a testing psychologist or someone of similar stature who is qualified to express an opinion on the accuracy/validity of IQ tests found on the internet?

And you are certain of this how?

I have an old friend who just turned 90 - I don't know that I would want his life. He is in a real fix because he is seriously mobility-impaired and he lives by himself in the top-floor flat of a San Francisco Victorian that is several steep flights of stairs up from the street. He has reached a point where he needs professional caregivers and refuses to have them around him. He is extremely reliant on his tenants and thinks that this is an acceptable situation that can go on indefinitely without his having to pay them or compensate them in any way. I keep telling him "You're going to wear them out and drive them away because at some point they will burn out." Whenever he needs to see the doctor, which is frequent, he has to hire a patient transport that costs him $500.00 for a round trip. They have some device that I haven't seen yet that allows one person to get him up and down all those stairs easily.

Retirement planners say just the opposite - that you need a bigger cash flow early in retirement because you're more active. As you become less active, you don't need that much money. The pandemic has shown us already what our later years might be like - you don't get out much, you don't travel much, you don't buy that much stuff so you spend less.

"any valid and reliable assessment" Is anyone here looking for one of those? Doubt it. When I took internet test after internet test until I scored 140 on one, I had no illusions about the reliability of the number. I was just looking for a number, that validated what I already knew about myself - that Im an intelligent guy. I would certainly never put it on an employment application.

Linguistics and languages are two different things. Many years ago, I knew a guy who had an advanced degree in linguistics. He also happened to be good at languages, being fluent in both Polish and Russian.

I like speedo trunks. I used to wear speedo racers but they are a little to "racy" at my stage of life.

And everyone knows that the way to deal with a troll is not to engage with them.

Ah ha - that's your problem!! You're a troll.

Don't confuse lifestyle and sexual orientation.

"The world is not to be divided into sheep and goats. It is a fundamental of taxonomy that nature rarely deals with discrete categories... The living world is a continuum in each and every one of its aspects. While emphasizing the continuity of the gradations between exclusively heterosexual and exclusively homosexual histories, it has seemed desirable to develop some sort of classification which could be based on the relative amounts of heterosexual and homosexual experience or response in each history [...] An individual may be assigned a position on this scale, for each period in his life. [...] A seven-point scale comes nearer to showing the many gradations that actually exist." Alfred Kinsey

The gay lifestyle is not nearly as emblematic as it was because the gay community has become so diverse, but there definitely still is a "gay lifestyle" pursued by urban gays. There have always been people who opted out of the gay lifestyle. I remember on one of my early trips to San Francisco, I met a guy who had gotten fed up with drugs, sex and rock & roll and bought a general store in a small town in the Sierras. There used to be a magazine called "RFD" for rural gays who were homesteading.

You're the one who mentioned evidence.