Rudynate

My autoimmune problem destroyed my libido - I've had nearly zero interest in sex for a couple years - I've been going without for months at a time and not missing it. I think it's changing though - I've been waking up with morning boners again and I've been able to get off twice in a day from time to time.

I paid $300x2hours once. It wasn't worth it. He was physically perfect but not great to spend time with.

Right - It starts to get chilly and windy after August. Many years ago, I spent several weeks on Mykonos at this time of year - it was one of the nicest times of my life.

Thanks for pointing that out. We're really trying to cut way back on the single-use plastic. AVEDA used to have a wonderful bar soap but they stopped manufacturing it.

I have never understood how anybody can feel clean without a washcloth. I take showers, but I squirt body wash into the washcloth to lather up. If I don't use a washcloth, I start to get acne.

I took a prescription drug for awhile that made my skin extremely dry - so dry that I cut back to showering once a week. I washed my face and shaved, did a PTA bath and rubbed Neutrogena oil into my skin with a damp washcloth every day. I sort of looked forward to the ritual every morning, but I was glad when I was able to stop.

My aunt learned how to make cabbage rolls (galumpki) from a Polish neighbor and we clamored for them. Hers were a filling of ground beef, rice, onion and green pepper wrapped in par-boiled cabbage leaves and cooked in a tomato sauce. An old friend who spoke Polish told me that, in Poland, they are called galuptsi.

I'm like that - just about every eye cream I've ever tried irritates my lower lids so that they swell at the lower orbital ridge. It's a weird look.

I read recently that you should look for a dual-certified provider: ophthalmology/plastic surgery for blepharoplasty.

I agree - I forgot for a moment that we were talking about pros. I was just thinking that college towns would be good places meet guys in that age group.

Any college town - Berkeley, Boulder, Ann Arbor, Madison, Cambridge, Ithaca, etc.

The quintessential rat face.

Perfect expression for that sort of guy - undeniably attractive in an unconventional way. I don't think Adam Driver fits - He's just plain handsome.

Very much so - they're totally hot. I've always called that face type a "rat face."

What people call "being in love," to me, is infatuation. For me, infatuation lasts for a few weeks to a couple months. With my husband, things were different. We didn't become infatuated. Anyone would agree that he's drop-dead handsome, but the thing that really got me about him was the dignified way he conducts himself. From the very start of our relationship, I was pretty sure I wanted to spend my life with him.

My first foreign language was Latin. It's such a clunky, complicated language that, after that, modern languages are a piece of cake. I soaked up French like a sponge. German was more challenging but taking an intensive course in Germany gave me a real boost.

Coffee, maybe. She thought daytime drinkers were lushes.

When I was a young boy, my mother bought our school clothes in a nice men's store. It was a small town where everybody knew everybody. The salesmen were all old guys in suits and ties with measuring tapes around their necks. The whole thing took awhile because my mother sat there chatting with the salesmen and smoking while we tried the clothes on. She would write a check for everything and a couple of days later a delivery truck would pull up with our clothes wrapped in a big package,

I lived in Germany for 3 years in the 70s. I was in the military, so it wasn't the same thing as a civilian living on the economy, but I still got a taste of what it was like to live in a foreign country for a long period of time - I had an apartment on the economy and hung with Germans quite a bit, shopped in German stores, hung out in German clubs. It was just great - loved it. At that time, I was struck at how different the middle-class standard of living was from ours in the US. That has all changed now. One of the things I most remember was when I went into a men's clothing store in Mannheim to buy a new winter coat. A salesman measured me, and then had an assistant go into the racks to find things that I would like and brought them back for me to try on. If I didn't like something, they would take it back. The salesman would help me into each coat, button it for me and turn the collar up and step back while I checked it out in the mirror. Eventually, I bought one that I liked. Quite an adventure for a 19-year old boy.

20 years or so ago, I gave retiring abroad a lot of thought, spent a lot of time looking at expat websites, etc. My husband nixed it - said he couldn't see us picking up and moving away from our friends and family and starting over when we were in our 60's or 70s. A lot of times, he's more grounded in reality than I am, so I give a lot of weight to what he says on topics like this. I have also gotten more clarity on what I want - I realized that I don't even want to live abroad permanently. But I would like to try being a part-time digital nomad - 3-4 months living and working somewhere else - I think about Thailand, Viet Nam, the Baltic countries, Spain, Panama, Costa Rica, Mexico. The window is closing though - I need to do it in the next couple of years, if at all.

When I lived in the suburbs, I tried to make the yard nice. I like the idea of gardening but mostly, I just made plans and didn't follow through. When I listed the house for sale, the agent told me to go to Home Depot, buy as many flowers as I could afford and plant them - the place looked really beautiful. My hardscaping was pretty good though. The backyard tended to stay soggy for days after a hard rain so my husband and I put in a french drain that diverted the standing water to a catch basin at the side of the house and, from there, to a drain that went down to the street. I put in raised beds that would have looked beautiful with flowers spilling over the edges, but I never got that far. Then I did a nice cozy brick patio that you walked down into from the deck I had built. In the front, I put in a dry creek bed that I was very proud of- it took about two tons of rock, and I built a little bridge over it.

It never interested me. But there is a guy in San Francisco who advertises on RM as a handyman. It's really clever, I think - I know I have fantasies about plumbers, repair men, delivery guys, etc.

We're talking deep, rural south. I used to visit there often because my mother used to live in Starkville MS. But even in a place like that, interesting things can happen. One morning I was out and around there, and I happened on a nice men's clothing store. I went in and they had a nice inventory and the guy who served me was a young blond hunk with blue eyes and very charming in a southern-man kind of way. He started showing me clothes and I started trying them on and it was so much fun that I dropped $500.00. Then later in the same trip, I was out walking and I happened to meet the guy who owned the clothing store. He was an eccentric middle-aged guy peculiarly-dressed in a cloak and a deerstalker hat, smoking a pipe, and probably gay. He had grown up in Starkville, gone to college in Boulder, lived in California and decided to go back to Starkville. We had a long chat and I thoroughly liked him.

Tell me about it. A few years ago my husband and I stopped in a convenience store along the freeway in central Mississippi. For a brief moment we forgot we weren't in California and were standing fairly close - but no PDA's - I have never seen such hostile glares.

To me, they are all gay for pay. I don't like the class connotations of "trade." I really enjoy books and films that have gigolo characters and gay-for-pay guys occupy a similar category.