Charlie

Fire Island and P-town were both a part of my life when I was much younger, so I don't know how much they may have changed in the past half century. However, my sense of the two was that FI (i.e., Cherry Grove) was strictly a resort, whereas P-town was an actual community, where a large percentage of the residents and visitors happened to be gay. I went to Cherry Grove to have sex; I went to P-town to socialize.

It's nice to hear that the gated community has a dog park; we have heard a lot of talk about making one here, but the problem is finding an appropriate space within the gated area. Dogs are allowed on the walking trail, but they must be on a leash.

I don't know what kind of facilities/amenities that gated community has, but $140/month is an incredibly low HOA fee. Our gated retirement community HOA fee in PS is $430/month, but it includes a meeting place (the "Lodge") with a gym, library, game room, and "ballroom," as well as two outdoor swimming pools, tennis and pickleball courts, a walking trail, and Frontier Internet service for every home. People have told me that ours is pretty cheap compared to other HOA fees in the area.

Someone should ask Stormy Daniels about the other guy.

One phone number is probably a land line, the other his mobile; both are in Houston..

(Sh)it happens!

How do you get a credit card without a home address?

How does one get a phone without an address for the bill? Does he pay his advertising bill with cash? Something sounds fishy here.

Despite the "Master" in his title, he didn't seem to be a BDSM type when I met him 20 years ago. It was more of a signal that he was a top rather than a bottom. His apartment didn't have any of the accoutrements that he advertises now.

Why take a shower with your watch on?

I have a 2000 sq. ft. house in Palm Springs. I keep my thermostat set at 80F. all year round. Last Feb. my gas bill (heat) was $175, while my electric bill was $103; in July my gas bill was $10, while my electric bill (a/c) was $579.

This thread made me reflect about my gay friendships. My best friend (not just best gay friend) from high school till his death from AIDS in his 50s, came from different social backgrounds, but we had the same teachers, were good at the same subjects, went to the same kind of college, lived in the same kinds of cities, and passionately enjoyed the same kind of music. My best gay friend from college was a year behind me, of a different race and economic background, but we majored in the same subject and pursued the same type of career (unfortunately, he died only a week after the previous friend). My best gay friend from work, and for many years afterwards, was several years older than I was and had a very different background, but we were interested in the same things outside work and enjoyed traveling together to the same places. Common backgrounds, interests and experiences--and being gay was certainly an important part of those experiences--were always the keys to establishing a friendship, but I think something else about being gay was also important: we were not interested in a sexual relationship with one another, nor did we sexually compete with one another for other gay men. We also had good social relationships with one another's friends. Both persons being gay is a reasonable starting point for a friendship, but it is not enough. My gay neighbors in the house on one side of me are charming; my gay neighbor in the house on the other side of me is younger and better looking, but he's an asshole.

Leaving out the "gay," do you have any real friends? Where did you find them? How do you keep them? What is it about them that makes you consider them "friends"? It's hard to believe you can't find more people like them who also happen to be gay. My friends are usually people with whom I share common interests and values, and I have usually met them as a result of having similar backgrounds and experiences, regardless of their sexual orientation.

Much of the land in Palm Springs is owned by the Cahuilla Tribe of Native Americans. We bought our first house there on tribal land, so although we owned the house itself (and could have moved it elsewhere if we had wanted to), we had to lease the land from the tribe and pay a monthly fee for it. Sometimes the tribe agrees to sell the land to the homeowner, but that is usually only when it is a large property with many residences, such as a retirement community or a new development where a deal is struck between the tribe and the developer before anything is built. Many home buyers are uncomfortable with a situation in which they own the house but not the land it sits on, and realtors often try to steer buyers away from homes on tribal land, so those houses are often cheaper to buy than houses on non-leased land. We lived in that situation for 13 years and had no problem with living there or eventually selling the house. [Of course, my spouse's family had owned a house-moving company in Ohio, so he was not daunted by the thought of moving one's house to another property.]

Sigh! I guess it's time for me to put my Phillies cap back in the closet for another year.😕

For Lucky and me, it would definitely be Yankees vs. Phillies.

I didn't make a habit of discussing other escorts with an escort, but I remember one fun afternoon, after having a good time in bed with an escort in New York, he pulled out the pink pages of The Advocate (yeah, this was before the invention of the Internet), and we started discussing which escorts each of us had had experience with. It hadn't occurred to me until then that some escorts had sex with other escorts, for fun as well as professional research. We compared notes about escorts that both of us had seen, or that one of us had seen but the other hadn't but was curious about. I think we spent more time discussing our experiences than we had spent having sex with one another.

Carlos Alcaraz

The fact that he would contact you at all about the subject after all these years means that he is reflecting on the past and wants to put things right in his relationship with you, which obviously still means something to him. I think you have handled the situation well. I have a straight female friend whom I have known since we were in high school; her gay brother was my best friend for many years. We have been alienated and out of contact for several years because of serious political differences, yet when she learned that my spouse has entered hospice care, she called me out of the blue, to offer love and support. Old friendships may change, but they never really die.

As someone whose mother and three other family members lived past 100, and whose spouse has just entered hospice care at 89, this article gave me plenty to think about.

Oops! I had forgotten that.

If you could hear the Cardinals' radio station in Philly, then it certainly should have been easy enough to hear in Little Rock, which is less than half the distance from St. Louis. The Cards had pretty much a monopoly in the South for pro baseball listeners, since there were no teams on the East Coast south of the Washington Senators, who were perpetual losers. Southerners who didn't root for the St. Louis teams probably rooted for the Baltimore Orioles.

Auto-correct isn't always correct: it was Stan MUSIAL.

I remember meeting you at Blue Coyote that night in 2005. Afterwards, I said to Lucky, "Who was that guy? Do you think he will come back?" I think he replied, "Maybe..."

As we grow older, it helps to lose a year now and then.