Charlie

This reminds me of my late best friend, a New York opera queen who owned four fur coats which he often wore to the Met. One summer he took a vacation trip to South Dakota and came back raving about the beauty of the Black Hills and his desire to retire there. When I told his sister that, she rolled her eyes and said, "Where is he going to wear the coats?"

I wonder how many 22 yr olds can afford to live in an expensive gay urban neighborhood and hire escorts. When I was that age I had to nurse one beer through an evening at a bar.

I was born and raised in a small northern suburb that was 100% white. I was an only child of older lower middle class parents who were fairly conservative Republicans (they thought Eisenhower was too liberal) and their lives revolved around the Episcopal church. I really had no idea what racism was, because my parents and neighbors never expressed any openly racist ideas. My first personal exposure to any black person came when I was sent one summer to stay with my maternal grandmother, who lived in a a small town on the Hudson River in upstate New York. Her only neighbor was Edna McGinnis, a middle-aged black woman, who I discovered was also her best friend there. Then I discovered that the house in which my grandmother lived had been a station on the "underground railroad" before the Civil War, and escaped slaves had been hidden in a secret room in the house. Edna was a great story-teller, she often invited me over for lunch, and it was the first time that black people became real for me. When I returned home, I talked a lot about Nana's friend Edna, but my parents just listened and made no comment. I never had any interaction with a black person my own age until I went away to college. It was a small liberal arts school with only a handful of middle-class black students who tended to stick together, but one of them was in a couple of the same classes with me; we had the same interests and tastes, and he soon became my closest friend at school. I also suspected that he was gay, which he was, although he didn't realize it yet. Through David I got to know the other black students at school, and sometimes we all did things together where I realized I was the only white person in the group. He lived in a town near mine, and when we traveled home together for holidays, I introduced him to my parents, and they never commented about his race (or about the fact that his parents were more educated than they were and lived in a better suburb). My parents' best friends were a couple from our church, whom I knew and liked. I was a senior in college when the man was transferred to a job in Newport News, Virginia, and we went to visit and stay with them. At dinner that night, the man started to talk about their new town, and he said the best thing about the neighborhood was that, "The police make sure the niggers stay in their own neighborhood at night and don't come over here." I was stunned. My parents looked uncomfortable but didn't say anything. These were people I had always looked up to, and we were guests in their home, so I didn't know what to do, and I followed my parents' lead and stayed silent. But the next day I told my parents that I wanted to leave, and they understood why I was upset, but my father said, "That's just the way Ernest is. He says things like that because he grew up in Bermuda where it was normal to talk about black people that way." Maybe, but my grandmother also grew up in Bermuda, and I never heard her say anything like that. My father said he'd make an excuse for us to leave later that day, which we did. My parents' relationship with the couple withered naturally because of the geographical separation, and I managed to avoid ever seeing them again, but I learned from the experience that my parents were not openly racist themselves, but they could accept people who were. I certainly did not accept the lesson to just ignore what people said, but I did learn that bigotry is not the only defining aspect of a person, so I have had friends with whom I disagree about race, religion and politics, and will tell them so, but I don't necessarily expect them to change, and it doesn't mean the end of the friendship unless the person becomes so attached to his or her bias that it does become their only defining aspect. Four years ago I was shocked to discover that one of my oldest and dearest friends was an active Trump supporter, although nothing in her background would have suggested that to me. We still communicate weekly, tiptoeing around politics, because we both know that we won't change one another's mind. Another of my longtime friends eventually became one of my mother's good friends in her old age, because he was also a Republican and an active Episcopalian; he was also gay and black. On the other hand, my friend David, with whom I remained friends for about ten years after college--he even moved in with me for awhile--eventually became a "race man" and pretty much cut me out of his life because I was "too white." So it goes.

Another book you might enjoy is My Father and Myself by J.D. Ackerley, a gay English writer in the first half of the 20th century, who discovered that his father had been the Edwardian equivalent of a male escort in his younger days. The original American edition was published by Coward-McCann in 1969, and was later reprinted in paperback by Harcourt Brace.

Does the virus behave differently in warmer months, or do people behave differently? In places where winter months are cold, people are likely to spend more time indoors, i.e. in enclosed spaces with other people, where they are more likely to come in contact with whatever virus is being spread through the air.

I'm trying to think whether there is anyone who doesn't know I'm gay ? No, I don't think so.

I have known a number of gay men who had biological children. Most of them came out as guy after their children were born. I have known some of their children. All were straight. Some had good relationships with their fathers, others did not. In general, the daughters seemed to have better relationships with their fathers than the sons did. None of my gay male friends had a gay father, at least as far as he knew.

Good catch! I couldn't remember exactly when the currency changed. That definitely puts it somewhere between 1971 and 1959, when my last copy of the mag cost 35 cents.

I just pulled out my copy of Body Beautiful from May 1955; the price then was 25 cents. I wonder when the copies in posts #82/83 above were published, at a cost of 75 cents--late 1960s?

One of the old physique magazines in the 1950s used to print the names and contact info for the photographers in the back pages. That was how I learned about a photographer who lived very near me. I got to know him--long story which I won't go into here--and he admitted that most of the guys he photographed were amateurs who posed solely because he usually gave them blowjobs along with a few dollars. (Yes, he did photograph me, but all I got was the blowjob.)

That looks like Montgomery Clift!

I would like to know why "services offered by sex workers" are OK, but "sports competitions involving close physical contact are not." What if I want to wrestle with a sex worker?

By "get over this" I assume you mean "survive." But it is not like getting over the common cold. We are already learning that many COVID "survivors" have serious medical after effects that may be lifelong disabilities. People who survive heart attacks and strokes and lung cancer, etc., may be alive, but they don't usually go back to the same level of health they experienced before their illness. For those sick enough to be hospitalized, COVID-19 is not just a minor inconvenience. Death isn't the only thing worth avoiding.

One only needed to use an area code in those days if one wanted to dial a long distance call, and many of us didn't even have services that allowed dialing long distance--one had to go through a live operator, who would know the right code. As @sniper says above, one didn't use an area code to dial a number from within that code until the 1990s. Also, NYC had only a single area code (which most of us didn't even know) in those days, so he wouldn't have needed to write it down for me anyway.

You have reminded me that I have a similar collection somewhere in this house. Mine were usually from bars, restaurants or hotels, and were basically free souvenirs. They stopped being produced years ago when smoking was prohibited in most of those places. The first guy I ever had sex with wrote his name and phone # on the inside of a matchbook cover. I never called him, but I still have the matchbook. It is so old that it was before numbers had area codes.

I think I still have the original of that magazine photo somewhere.

Probably the same way my partner and I have always paid those kinds of bills: out of a joint bank account, to which we contribute an equal amount. Each of us has his own account for his personal expenses.

OMG. He looks just like my first boyfriend.

I was amazed to go into my local Von's (Safeway) yesterday morning and find the paper products aisle completely stocked!

Could be. I have not been able to find the sweet pickle relish that I usually get for my spouse in most local stores, and where I have found it, it is only in enormous jars that I would expect to usually be bought only by restaurants.

"Normal" is a term that refers to a specific point in time, and what most of us consider normal is already outdated even as we think about it. If we think that "normal" means returning to May 2019, then we are mistaken, because it probably will never happen.

Hmm...I wonder whether that means I am low class or high class??

Salad bars and buffets are currently banned in CA.

I would still look both ways if I were you. Because of the lack of trafffic, many drivers are traveling much faster than the speed limit.

The problem with depending exclusively on "test, trace, treat" is that the first two are extremely expensive and labor-intensive, all for the purpose of gathering information for the third, but what does "treat" mean? If every Californian could be tested today, and everyone who tests positive could provide all contact information for those to be traced, we would be drowning in information, much of it useless except for future statistical analysis, because by the time the contacts could be found, most would be ill, dead, or no longer infectious. It may be done effectively in a small country, or one with an authoritarian government that can ruthlessly control its citizens and outsiders, but not in a democratic state with 39 million people and porous borders. What "treatment" do we have to offer those we find through the tracing? We have no cure, so the only logical option would be isolation for those we find who are infected, especially those with no symptoms. It's a catchy mantra, and it might be effective early in an epidemic, but it is a little too late as an all-purpose solution in places where the virus is already widely established in a large population.