Charlie

And you call yourself gay?!! Even an old fogey like me picked that up instantly.

A 20 year old Russian-speaking gayboy traveling around the US on his own? I smell something (cat)fishy here.

But some people--particularly when young--like the role of rebel outsider and want to be recognized as such. I think calling oneself "queer" is part of that.

Some of us think of the 60s and 70s as an era of rebellion against the status quo. Many want recognition for being different as well as acceptance.

Well, some people are proud of "not fitting in." That's another topic altogether.

"F-g" unfortunately cannot escape its historic British usage as a label for an inferior male whose purpose is to serve a superior male. It's not an ID I would embrace.

I also remember hearing myself referred to as "one of the English" when I was dating a girl from Lebanon County whose family were Church of the Brethren.

In other words, it is not specific enough about what it is that you object to in the sexual realm. I believe that the A in the acronym that Lucky mentioned stands for "asexual," someone who doesn't identify as interested in sexual activity. NOTE: Technically, LGBTQIAP" is not an acronym but an abbreviation, because a true acronym should be pronounceable as a word.

To me that sounds so overarching that it doesn't tell me much about an individual. (Maybe that's the point.)

The word "gay" when I was young was an adjective that described a person or event that was light-hearted and jovial. "Our Hearts Were Young and Gay" was the title of a popular film in the 1940s, based on a memoir by two famous women writers who described their youthful social adventures in Paris before the war. I didn't learn a new use of the word until I became sexually active in 1960, and discovered that "gay" was a code word used among male homosexuals to describe their secretive social community. I had to laugh when I lived in a "Pennsylvania Dutch" area in the early 1960s, and found out that "gay" was the code word that the Amish residents used to describe any non-Amish neighbor, so if they said, "Oh, you're gay," it didn't mean they knew I slept with other men. (I don't imagine they use that term any longer.) Post-Stonewall, although "homosexual" was still the formal descriptor, it seemed that everyone learned that "gay" meant anyone who had same-gender sex partners. I remember a lot of debate over the use of the term in the 1970s (lesbians thought it was restricted to men, bi-sexuals thought it was too limiting to refer to them, etc.), but it seems to have become the default word used in most public discourse, if one doesn't simply use the LGBTQ monogram. More often, however, I am seeing "queer," which used to have a very negative connotation, being used by younger males who are not strictly heterosexual, to describe themselves. I've been "gay" for so long that it is my automatic response, if asked. But what about you?

The price of gas here in Riverside County fell by about 3 cents this week, but that was attributed mostly to the state of CA switching to winter blend gas, which is a bit cheaper to produce.

I came out to myself when I was about 15. I realized that I was more attracted to guys than to girls. Had my first sex with a young man who picked me up in the men's room of the Port Authority Bus Terminal in NYC when I was 17. When I told him he was the first, he was very informative about the "gay" world (I had never heard the term before--it was only used within the gay community in those days). I came out to my best friend the next day by telling him about the experience, and he admitted that he had been having sex with older guys since he was 12! However, we were never sexually interested in one another. (Like me, he was attracted to more physically mature males.) Came out to my parents when I was 19. I had had a minor nervous breakdown at college, so they sent me to see a psychologist, who told me that hiding it from the people I loved was causing my emotional turmoil. I broke the news to my parents, whose first question was, "How do you know?" At which I burst out laughing. When I then told my steady girlfriend that I was sexually attracted to men, she said, "Is that all it is?!" But she agreed that we should probably not consider marriage, and I never had another steady girlfriend. After college, I went to graduate school in a big city and lived in a gay neighborhood rather than on campus, so most new acquaintances probably assumed I was gay. I came out to all my new friends. When I started teaching, I came out to most of my colleagues if they asked. I came out officially at work in the mid-1970s, when I proposed to teach a class on gay literature, and the dean didn't question my competence to do so. I came out legally at 70, when I married another man.

My housecleaner describes his symptoms rather vaguely as "sniffles," and says his partner tests negative for COVID. This is usually allergy season for me, and as usual I have been suffering from itchy eyes, sneezing fits and sinus congestion. Since we have also had constant "air quality alerts" and "dust advisories," with high winds for the past month, I have been assuming that allergies are the problem. I don't have any other symptoms. I haven't seen the housecleaner in two weeks, but when he texted me this morning that he had self-tested positive, I decided to test myself again, just in case. I have never tested positive, including the RT-PCR, in the past three years, have had all the boosters up until the latest one, and I am rarely in situations where I might be exposed, so I think It is unlikely that my current symptoms are due to COVID.

I went out and bought a new test this afternoon. It gave exactly the same negative result as my seven month old test did earlier in the day. So although I have the same symptoms as my housecleaner, it appears that he has COVID and I do not.

I asked because I tested negative a couple of days ago, but my housecleaner tested positive today (with newer tests).

Are the older self-tests still reliable? I got my last ones six months ago.

But Fetterman's health status has been questionable since the day he was elected.

In case it matters to you, he is actually in New Jersey (check the "map me" function). He is near the Lindenwold station on the PATCO line.

Isn't that Jack Dixon on top?

If I had $1K for every person with whom I had some sort of friendly relationship, whose death I only learned of later from an obituary, I would have a lot more money in the bank. For example, I had two roommates in college, each one for a year and a half; we were good friends at the time, but I didn't keep in touch for long after graduation, and I learned of the death of each one only after I became curious about re-uniting with them, only to discover that they were deceased. In fact, of the eight people I have lived with since leaving my parents' home, the only one still living is my spouse, and only one of the other seven was someone whose death I anticipated in advance, and visited a few days before the end. If I had known, of course I would have contacted the others before they died, if only to let them know that I had cared about them and would mourn their passing. I felt particularly upset about the old friend who committed suicide, wondering if there were something I could have done to prevent that, although that was probably unlikely. But the others all died of natural causes, and at the end I doubt that they thought sadly, "I wonder why I didn't hear from Charlie?" It sounds like you had a much more casual relationship with Harry than I had with friends I lived with, sometimes for several years. (My roommate Cal was actually the person who gave me the nickname "Charlie"!) There is no reason for you to feel guilty for not reaching out to Harry; you weren't responsible for his life, or for his death. What you are feeling is nostalgia for the loss of a relationship that might have become more important--or might not. Of course, I feel sorry about not making the effort to re-connect with Cal and the others sooner, but I don't blame myself for not having made what might have seemed to them like a quixotic gesture at the time. For all you know, you might have made Harry feel worse by reminding him that he wouldn't be anyone's fbud any longer. As I remember from long ago, G-man, you are a sensitive soul. Give yourself a break.

The oldest (b&w) picture on the RM site was uploaded in 2016, and it looks like a man at least in his 40s, whereas the most recent (color) uploads look like a much younger man. The vascular patterns on his arms also look different in that older photo than they do in the others. 😒

One of my favorite places to relax in Paris, too.

Depending on the time of year (I don't like to get up in the dark), I get up between 5 and 6:30, go to the bathroom to empty my body of waste, throw on some clothes, and take the dog outside to perform his routine business--often I will have a bit of morning chat on the street with neighbors doing the same thing with their dogs. Then I feed the dog, and have some breakfast (juice, fruit, and pastry or cereal). Two mornings per week I then leave for the tennis club at 7:10 to play a doubles match for a couple of hours, and do some food shopping on the way home. On other mornings after breakfast I take the dog for a long walk, or drive my partner and the dog to a trailhead from which they walk home. Then I settle down at the computer to read my mail and this site.

My parents didn't marry until they were in their 30s, because during the Depression they both were working to help support their parents; they were close to middle age when I was born, and I was their only child. My father's family background was German, my mother's was English, and I don't remember either one of them (or my grandparents) being very physically or verbally affectionate with me or with one another, yet I never felt any doubt that they loved one another and me, so perhaps the signals were more subtle. I think the only time my father actually told me he loved me was when he knew he was dying, and he asked me to take care of my mother. I had always thought of them as sort of asexual, so I was surprised that when I was cleaning out his things, I found a couple of old photos of naked women (NOT my mother). My mother told me that they had always supposed that she would die first, because she was older than he was and she had been considered rather fragile since childhood, so she had urged him to marry again after she was gone (women often seemed obviously attracted to my father, who was tall and athletic, and capable at everything he did). In fact, she survived him for almost three decades, yet she never showed any interest in a relationship with any other man. I was 19 when I came out to them, and they didn't seem surprised, though I'm sure they were disappointed that they wouldn't have any grandchildren. I think they were relieved when I settled down with my partner, whom they approved of and liked. In old age, my mother came to live with us for five years and seemed perfectly comfortable in our household. My partner's parents came from the same ethnic background as mine; I knew my mother-in-law for almost thirty years, and I observed that she was never verbally or physically affectionate with her sons either. Although we weren't verbally or physically affectionate in front of her or my parents, my partner/spouse and I always have been so when we are alone together; maybe our parents were the same way.

I now see it was me that got a gift.] Oh, no! "THEY who oppose." It was I WHO got a gift." (I dare you to rip the red pen from my grip.)