LivingnLA

It's really hard to maintain that kind of hard-on while sitting naked on a cold metal open step over the ocean.

I hear blue diamonds help with that.

Probably in China & Iran, but you never know given the regimes in the two nations.

I wouldn't trust the Daily Squib, the link under China. It's a satire site. As they themselves admit, there is some truth in what they write, but they intentionally use satire to make their points. Satire can be non-fiction but is usually fiction. It's interesting to read, but not wise to trust as a source of factual information. To make matters worse, that article is based on articles from the Daily Mail and they have a terrible track record. They regularly make things up.

We knew about Iran back in March because of satellites and journalism. The regime matters in the USA too, which is why the majority of Americans do not know of the many mass graves our society has created over the centuries, including the one in NYC for unclaimed poor dying right now from COVID-19. That's why we have journalism and why dictators and dictator wannabes around the world attack journalists. This is as close to politics as we should get, otherwise this helpful thread will be relegated to the politics forum.

Morgue trucks in NYC. It's serious.

That's how it works in a nation with a healthcare system rationed based on money and a society full of poor people with chronic health issues because of pollution, bad nutrition, inadequate housing, unsafe water and more.

An interesting side effect has come to light here today. Along with the welcome news that the number of new infections is falling in Australia, the Deputy Chief Medical Officer reported today the the number of seasonal influenza cases has plummeted (his word).

Makes sense and been seen elsewhere. That's why I imagine many life lessons will stick from this pandemic. The handshake for example may need modification.

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2020-03-08/coronavirus-handshake-contagion

On the news they just announced that the Cook County (Chicago) morgue normally receives an average of 20 bodies a week. Now, they are getting 40 bodies a day. They have rented refrigerated warehouses.

Yes. There are many poor people dying at home. Many aren't being counted in the coronavirus numbers because testing is very restricted. Tests won't be used on the dead. In a year or two, we will look back at overall death rates and see far more dead than the current official counts. Only then will we know the real cost of the pandemic.

New York has decided to finally start counting deaths that are at least strongly suspected COVID-19 related:

https://gothamist.com/news/death-count-expected-soar-nyc-says-it-will-begin-reporting-suspected-covid-deaths-addition-confirmed-ones

We've potentially turned a corner. It appears most Americans have taken the public health orders seriously over the last couple weeks, at least on a national basis. The range of probably deaths has declined to 30,000-130,000, with the expected around 60,000. That's significant improvement that shows how effective distancing and staying home can work when people take it seriously. If these orders stay in place until late May, we should be in that range.

https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-states-of-america

ALL YOU GUYS CAN KISS MY ASS !!!!!!!

 

Every time I post about my Reg Guy in my area... YOU GUYS ATTACK ME !!!!

I am fucking TIRED OF IT....

 

Today happen again... Title Reads:

Will Corona curtail your hiring?

 

I post my note... then BAM!! 3 Attacks..... ANNOYING !!!!

 

I notice when I post about my reg massage guy HE IS BLACK..... YOU guys attack me !!!!

 

When Other(s) about WHITE GUYS / BODY / LOOKS etc... YOU DON'T SAY ANY THINGS expect how hung etc.. REALLY

 

GAY PRIDE !!!!!!! MY ASS - IT ONLY WORKS WHEN PEOPLE ARE WHITE !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

ALL YOU CAN GET A TALL GLASS OF KISS MY ASS !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My intent was not for you to feel attacked, though I can see how it could be read that way. I apologize. My point remains that all adults are responsible for making mature informed choices. I would expect someone who does bodywork to have at least decent surface sanitization practices. But, coronaviruses also spread by respiratory droplets and aerosol. How was the room handled between clients? What precautions were taken to minimize the risk of transmission and create a safer session? If he was not attired as the CDC currently recommends, then he was not being professional. Both of you are adults and are welcome to take whatever risks you want with your own lives. My point was to urge you not to delude yourself and believe either of you were completely safe. You were slightly less risky because of the mask you mentioned, but without knowing all the probabilities, it was still a risky choice for each of you and whoever else you're around for the next up to 14 days that you may be infected and shedding before symptoms appear.

I decided to start another thread about proving as I mentioned it in another post and thought it is an interesting phenomena. It is becoming standard practice to place Covid patients with significant respiratory distress in the prone position. This started with patients on ventilators after a small series showed that it improved outcome and eased the work o oxygenation. The reasons for this benefit were not immediately clear but it seems to have to do with recruitment o previously underused airways and movement of fluids within the lungs. On a practical level, some people can lie prone quite comfortably and others cannot. I am one of the ones who cannot. So today, when I decided to take a nap, I decided to try and remain prone. I initially became uncomfortable and wanted to move. I became restless and began moving pillows and making minimal adjustments with a slightly different wrist position, a different angle of the shoulder. I was able to find a position which was comfortable but felt the urge to resort back to my more usual and readily comfortable positions. This exercise was not just a game, who knows maybe being able to stay prone may save my life so I persisted. I needed a distraction and so while the prone position is not usually comfortable for me, I began to envision situations in which being prone might be fun. As most of you can imagine, my mind went almost immediately to sex. Past encounters, imagined encounters, film encounters, fantasy encounters they all came to mind and they all helped. Accept for a surprisingly rigid erection, the prone position became more and more comfortable. I feel asleep shortly thereafter and awoke six hours later still more or less in the same position. It may have been wishful thinking, but I did feel my breathing was easier and deeper. So I would like to thank Eric, Tristan, Vin, Steven, Victor, Stephen, Rick, and many others for their assistance in getting me to feel comfortable in the prone position and for helping reaffirm that I can get quite hard given the right thoughts, the right time and the right position.

I suggest you try lying prone, if that is not usually a position that is comfortable for you. You can use my helpful tip about staying in that position, hell you may even use some of the same fantasy men and real man memories. It may get you a good night's sleep, a substantial hard on and it could save your life.

Makes sense when thinking about gravity, anatomy, physiology, and pleural pressure.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4173887/

Here's a more recent good study validating prone positioning for improving oxygenation and reducing ventilator induced injuries.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6997307/

I just got a much needed massage from my reg guy today...

 

During this time with this crap going on... He made sure everything was wiped down even had wipes for me when I got there.. plus he used extra face mask on the head rest on his massage table.... REALLY A PRO !!!!

 

http://massagemale4male.com/

Life is full of risk. Don't delude yourself especially when making risky choices. There's nothing professional about working illegally in contravention of public health orders. If either of you have the novel coronavirus, or a client up to 3 hours before you had it, all of you have been exposed, possibly with a large enough dose to be infected, especially if there was deep breathing involved. Here's what the US CDC is currently recommending for healthcare personnel who are in close contact. This is the minimum PPE that an actual professional wears to work in close proximity to another human right now. Is this how he was dressed?

You're quite right. Even though there isn't an approved antibody test yet, that may happen and may be a requirement. Back to the days of yellow vaccination books. I'm certainly not confident that travel from Australia will be possible this year, or that other countries or sub-national jurisdictions won't have severe restrictions. I would hope that they end up being more like the current yellow fever rules than complete travel bans, but we will see. Just now, I'm not confident in booking anything in Palm Springs before next April.

Yes. There's a very promising antibody test that should be approved soon. If it is, getting it scaled will become a priority.

California is one of the few states that already has border control checkpoints on all major highways entering the state from other states, but positioning a checkpoint on every road along its enormously long border on the north and east would be difficult.

I never said it would be easy, but it will be a matter of public health and ways will probably be found.

I wish there was an emoticon that says "I agree with the truth of what you wrote, and I don't the fact of it at all". Maybe some kind of sour face?

Agreed. We waited too long. If we'd acted decisively in January or perhaps early February, it could've been kept to low thousands. Reality now is to do our best to keep it near 100,000 deaths.

Easygoingpal's profile says he lives in the Bay Area. I have no reason to disbelieve what he wrote about himself.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Especially since he was so kind as to come hear me play a concert, and we went out and had a very agreeable meal after that).

I don't check people's profiles usually, so now I know to do so. Thank you.

I moved the reservation as far into the future as possible hoping that most health issues will be taken care by then... I will keep my eyes open to the whole pandemic situation and will reconsider early fall. Thanks for the update @Charlie!

Are you a Californian? If not, keep in mind that you may not be able to travel to California in December without medical proof of antibodies or a mandatory 2-week quarantine. As states continue to diverge in their coronavirus policies over the next few months and the federal government continues to be disorganized and hands off, expect more states to seal their borders. It's legal and will be necessary since California and other early-acting states will not want to allow travelers from less rigorous states. California hasn't done it yet, but I won't be surprised if they do when things really start getting bad in many other states that waited way too long.

Not sure if this is the best place to put this, but does anyone have any additional insights as to when the quarantine will be over esp in NYC. The apex is expected this week (April 6th) in terms of deaths. NJ is also coming up too. So it's quite dire. A few days ago, Cuomo said the apex was supposed to be end of April... how did it move up so quickly? Or, is this upcoming week a prelude to the additional tolls ahead???

Life is going to be different for a long time. The goal is herd immunity. A widely deployed vaccine is over a year away so the only way to get herd immunity right now is naturally and the only way to do that and not have millions of deaths, is slowly over time so the healthcare system isn't overwhelmed. Here's a public site with a decent model for NY because NY's public data is pretty good.

It's important to understand that these models are fluid because human behavior plays a very large role in the outcomes. The range for NY's apex is anywhere from 3-30 days from now. That range is so wide because of the diversity of choices people are making right now. I hope the apex is in the next week because that will mean deaths due solely to lack of hospital capacity will be maybe 10k. Assuming that we see this, then the next step depends on how long it takes to free up hospital capacity. There must be open capacity if the public health orders are to be relaxed at all. Think of it like a dance: relaxing the rules enough to get the economy more active but only enough so that hospitals are not overwhelmed by new cases. This is a controlled exposure exercise to build natural immunity and minimize deaths. That sort of scenario will run maybe 18 months. The same author wrote an in-depth follow-up piece that I recommend.

Sadly, what you are saying already is starting to play out in Florida. Right now, it's subtle. I hope I'm wrong, but the trend right now is likely to be just the tip of the iceberg.

 

Coronavirus (COVID-19) U.S. Deaths

 

I intentionally excluded Florida in my comments above. So now that you cited them, I will lay down a marker, hoping I am wrong. I think the death rate there is going to explode. And before long they will be in the top 5 states with the highest death rates. More important than ranking, the point to me is that some large number of the deaths that are going to occur were completely avoidable.

 

Until just a few days ago, Florida actually was doing better than California, both on cases per million and deaths per million. My bias in looking at these numbers is basically what I've already been ranting about. Bill Gates is on the side of the angels on this one. Everything he is saying makes sense - both in theory, and in practice. So the sooner we lock down and take the tough medicine, the sooner we'll be able to safely reopen.

 

Florida actually had been an outlier. I made some comment a few weeks ago that may have been naive. I said that it made sense to me that Florida was not scolding teenage kids for wanting to go hang out on the beach with a few of their friends. And I still stand by that, kind of. If going to the beach with two friends and having your towels 6 feet apart keeps you sane, that's not exactly a stupid thing to do.

 

When I wrote that, I wasn't watching the tv screens about the kids packed like sardines on the beach, or in bars. That's of course a very different thing.

 

Florida is now # 21 in the nation in terms of deaths per million, and # 19 in terms of cases per million. So California and Ohio have 345 cases and 319 cases per million, respectively. Florida now has 537 cases per million. So they have jumped ahead of California, just like Michigan and Louisiana did (in cases per million) maybe a week ago. The rate at which they are flying up the charts is what is most troubling. Much more so than in Ohio or California, the increases in infections seems to be exponential. Now that they are under belated lock down, hopefully that will start to change.

 

The reality is that this contagion is not in control IN ANY STATE. The states that are doing best are simply those that are limiting the growth of the virus - or, if you prefer, the amount of damage it is doing.

 

Again, I think Gates is on the side of the angels, and of logic. He keeps saying that - IF WE DO THIS RIGHT - the growth of cases should plateau in April. And we should see a decline in new cases in May. Hopefully, at that point, to a place where testing and contact tracing is a viable strategy in the places we start to reopen.

 

Again, we are not flying completely blind. I don't fully trust whatever records were kept in 1918, relating both to the death toll and the impact on local economies. But the received wisdom is that the cities that took the strongest interventions the earliest were the ones that got back to normal the quickest. I think it is reasonable to think some version of that will likely play out in 2020 - hopefully with far fewer deaths and less fundamental economic damage than in 1918.

Michigan has already passed California in confirmed cases. Louisiana should tomorrow or the day after. Massachusetts and Florida should as well, but they'll be a few days. Georgia and Texas may get scary. Their testing remains limited which is probably why their counts look so low, but their hospitals seem to be reporting more activity than they should be based on the official case counts. They likely have many more cases than their offical numbers suggest.

California continues to be an example of how early and aggressive actions seem to work. They also appear to be ramping testing capacity. If the rapid serology is approved soon, Californians that can prove they have antibodies should allow for even greater economic activity. It will also reveal where the virus has already been, which will help us learn a great deal.

That’s all very interesting, @stevenkesslar . But still no word about Michigan. Any thoughts, anyone? From a sometimes loyal Spartan, who still knows the not-very racy alternative words to the MSU fight song.

There are multiple factors in Michigan. Age isn't the only demographic factor determining mortality, socioeconomics are substantially influential. Many early cases in any given area were frequently wealthy people who had good nutrition, which improves immune response, and access to good healthcare. Detroit is a major airport where it's a given many asymptomatic or mildly ill travelers passed through and shed virus along the way. Some early research shows clusters in vacation spots, like ski resorts, even back in January and February. Also consider the spring breakers who partied hard, caught the virus, and flew home to shed it. Once it got into the community, it spread and Detroit is a poor city full of poor people with poor health. Here's an article discussing these and other factors. Michigan is going to lose many people over the coming months and so will Louisiana, Florida, and other states that weren't taking it seriously back in March when the data and math were irrefutable. Exponential math is unforgiving even though it looks harmless in early days. We are headed toward hundreds of thousands of dead. I hope enough Americans take it seriously to keep the body count as low as possible.

If people are this desperate now, what happens when unemployment reaches 20-30%? What happens if unemployment stays that high for 6 months or a year or longer?

Exactly so. This is another consequence of our distorted economy. Endless focus on short-term results coupled with excessive efficiency creates a system highly vulnerable to unplanned disruptions. Further, extreme inequality significantly reduces the velocity of money and creates economic fragility and precarity that makes the entire system vulnerable to collapse when shocked. This is part of why the USA, with our economy configured extremely in "crisis capitalistic" and "crony capitalistic" themes, tends toward the kinds of bad and good extremes we've seen over the last forty years.

While stuck at a light, I noticed a billboard saying that Palace Station (a locals casino/hotel just west of the Las Vegas Strip) was hosting a food bank, even though the casino & hotel is currently shut down. Then I noticed the line of cars waiting, which wound all through their rather large parking lot & down the block. I thought that was a lot of cars, but that was just the start! The queue stretched out for 2.5 more miles.

 

Wow, if that many people were queued up for a food bank, then the economic situation has to be awfully bad already. And it will probably get worse.

At least 40% of Americans can't pay a $400 emergency. Consumers drive 70% of economic activity, but 40-60% of them live on a knife's edge and this has pushed them over the edge. All of us in the top 10% or higher have ignored how distorted and dysfunctional our country is and it may get ugly when unemployment hits 20-30%.

A girl in my office is making masks. But are the cloth ones very effective?

What do you mean by effective? N95 masks don't technically protect against dry particle airborne virus transmission or even very small aerosol virus transmission. But, they're a large improvement compared to nothing. They should be reserved for healthcare workers because the environment they're working in has much greater probability of infection-level concentrations of virus particles in respiratory droplets and aerosol because of all the respiratory therapy and support required for patients infected with COVID-19.

Masks in public are about a physical and visible reminder not to touch your face, maintain physical distance, and also provide improved community protection when the infected or suspected infected wear them since they dampen the velocity of the output from every cough, sneeze, and exhale while also providing some physical material to catch some of the infectious particles thereby reducing range and concentration in hotzones like grocery stores. For healthy people, it's much more about the masks being on sick people. The issue is that perhaps one third of infected people may be asymptomatic and they do appear to shed. The only way to get them covered up and reduce their shedding, is to make masks a thing for everyone in public spaces too. This article explains the rationale and provides supporting links for more details:

https://medium.com/@Cancerwarrior/covid-19-why-we-should-all-wear-masks-there-is-new-scientific-rationale-280e08ceee71

This is getting creepy. This person has a life and likely wouldn't want his day job learning about this side hustle. Would you want your coworkers, family, and friends to know about this hobby?

I'm to the point where I demand a shower, fresh sheets, gloves and a mask when I decide to spend some quality alone time with myself now.

Practicing safer sleeping is important.

@m_writer, please take what @MrMattBig wrote to heart. He's dead on in his thinking around breathplay with someone new. His suggested protocol and the importance of being aware of the sub's physical body are critical to a successful session for both of you. This was an initial session, yes? It's critical to start with baby steps and build the session. You have to get the sub physically and psychologically to trust you and since you're doing it as strangers and in one session, following the protocol @MrMattBig spells out is probably your best bet. Good luck!

Research continues. There may be something to the "fraternal order" idea, but it's only one idea and it doesn't seem to fit the majority of homosexual males. Human sexuality is incredibly complex. We're talking about subtle interactions between many different genes driving sexual behavior. It will not be explained by any one idea. Here are two pretty interesting recent papers in this area.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6600923/

Abstract

Several biological mechanisms have been proposed to influence male sexual orientation, but the extent to which these mechanisms occur is unclear. Putative markers of biological processes are often used to evaluate the biological basis of male sexual orientation, including fraternal birth order, handedness, and familiality of same-sex sexual orientation; these biomarkers are proxies for immunological, endocrine, and genetic mechanisms. Here, we used latent profile analysis (LPA) to assess whether these biomarkers cluster within the same individuals or are present in different subgroups of nonheterosexual men. LPA defined four profiles of men based on these biomarkers: 1) A subgroup who did not have these biomarkers, 2) fraternal birth order, 3) handedness, and 4) familiality. While the majority of both heterosexual and nonheterosexual men were grouped in the profile that did not have any biomarker, the three profiles associated with a biomarker were composed primarily of nonheterosexual men. We then evaluated whether these subgroups differed on measures of gender nonconformity and personality that reliably show male sexual orientation differences. The subgroup without biomarkers was the most gender-conforming whereas the fraternal birth order subgroup was the most female-typical and agreeable, compared with the other profiles. Together, these findings suggest there are multiple distinct biodevelopmental pathways influencing same-sex sexual orientation in men.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7031179/

Abstract

The prevalence of women’s and men’s heterosexuality, bisexuality, and homosexuality was assessed in 28 nations using data from 191,088 participants from a 2005 BBC Internet survey. Sexual orientation was measured in terms of both self-reported sexual identity and self-reported degree of same-sex attraction. Multilevel modeling analyses revealed that nations’ degrees of gender equality, economic development, and individualism were not significantly associated with men’s or women’s sexual orientation rates across nations. These models controlled for individual-level covariates including age and education level, and nation-level covariates including religion and national sex ratios. Robustness checks included inspecting the confidence intervals for meaningful associations, and further analyses using complete-cases and summary scores of the national indices. These analyses produced the same non-significant results. The relatively stable rates of heterosexuality, bisexuality, and homosexuality observed across nations for both women and men suggest that non-social factors likely may underlie much variation in human sexual orientation. These results do not support frequently offered hypotheses that sexual orientation differences are related to gendered social norms across societies.

Sometimes you can describe EXACTLY what you want to do, and they may still don't realize it until they get into it.

 

Example: one respected escort I asked if he was willing to be bound, gagged, and light breath play with a pillow. He agreed. I asked him on the day we met again if he had any concerns and explained what I would do. He said he had no issues with it.

 

After tying him up and fondling him, I then got the pillow, but after two times, he gave the signal to quit and started shaking. Even after untying him and dressing, he was still trembling and asked to stop and cut our session short.

 

I told him I understood and that I would just pay for the time allotted. He agreed, and I pointed out to him that I said I was going to hold a pillow over his face and have him struggle with me on top. He admitted that he didn't really think of it and that he didn't read it completely. Plus, in his mind, a pillow wasn't really that dangerous and he felt he could handle it.

 

The way he was trembling afterwards made me realize that from now on, I should be explicit, but the problem is unless I have a video of it, I'm not sure how much more in detail I can be.

 

Sometimes it can't be helped. I met some great escorts who are definitely into being tied up, and some who aren't. But as annoying as it is, I have to respect that if they get into a situation and realize they're in over their head, they are allowed to change their mind midway. And I have to respect that as part of "Consent 101".

That sort of breathplay is intense even for an established connection. Expecting a complete stranger to handle it with another stranger feels like a stretch to me. Something that's much more rare than our porn fantasies suggest. Human psychology doesn't work that way unless we're talking about a real masochist sub, often with fetishes around death, rape, and unconsciousness. Another possibility would be a sub who's an extreme risktaker or thrillseeker. It's important not to underestimate how much anxiety and fear is tied up with meeting a stranger in this "profession." People have been physically assaulted, raped, robbed, and killed.

I think you're smart to be explicit going forward. Hypothetically speaking, if I were to want a breathplay session with someone brand new, I would be very explicit about it to make sure they understood what they were getting into and also make sure they understand if they have any potential triggers. If someone's every been assaulted before, restrained against their will, or felt completely helpless against their will, then this could trigger them. Doing it within the bounds of the legality of this profession could be a discussion about favorite porn. Find some breathplay videos on the Internet that show what you're thinking and share them so they have a clear picture of what you're into.

I've posted many threads about rape, and I've always believed survivors. Other posters have shared their own experience on here and I'm glad you're brave to do it too.

Thanks. It was part of what drove me to join the forum. I believe our species is best and strongest together so I found a community where I could contribute and process and grow forward.