Charlie

I also have many old black and white photos of blizzards we survived in New Jersey before anyone heard about climate change. My favorite is one of me in huge drifts of snow following a blizzard in 1947. My great-grandfather died of pneumonia caught when his regiment was activated to try to clear the streets of Manhattan following the Blizzard of 1888. An ancestor of one of my friends was found frozen to death in the snow following a blizzard on Christmas in Connecticut.

This place is more than enough social media for me. I wouldn't want to spend any more time online than I do here.

I happen to have always had an excellent memory for dates (I can tell you what date my dog had puppies in 1952), but in the case of escort appts, I maintained a list of everyone I hired and the price paid, in case the activity became tax deductible . Even so, the really special ones stuck in my mind, so I remembered that it was 1987 [i did have to look up the exact date]. I also have kept a daily journal for the past 45 years, in which I can look up more details, like his address, what he looked like, what we did, etc., among the record of everything else that happened that day.

I hired Eric Ryan in NYC on Sept. 25, 1987, for $120, and he was worth every cent. He was still healthy and gorgeous, and I was surprised to learn he was 40 years old, because he looked younger. He was very friendly and open, and we spent several hours just talking after the hot and sweaty stuff (he did sweat profusely). He even phoned me the next morning to invite me over for breakfast. It was one of the most memorable hiring experiences I ever had. Seeing the bad porn he made after he became noticeably ill made me sick to my stomach.

I have always had a thin face (and hair, sad to say), so I have worn various sorts of beards for much of my adult life.

You're supposed to use your tongue, dammit! not your chin!

"Ain't" has a long history in English, and is a class marker in Britain, where it used to be common usage in the upper class.

I have a Tempurpedic pillow that came with the mattress. I keep two pillows on the bed, that one and a much softer one, and move back and forth between them as comfort dictates.

However, he has misspelled the names of the university and the location: it is Fairleigh Dickinson University in Rutherford, NJ.

For me, the main reason for hiring an escort was to experience someone new. I didn't have any regulars, but sometimes there was someone who knocked my socks off, and I would try him again. The second time was usually a disappointment, unless he did something different that was interesting. I could count on my fingers the number of escorts I saw more than twice.

When I had a mild breakdown and dropped out of college, my parents asked me to see a psychologist (slightly ironical, since I had been majoring in psychology). The man they sent me to listened to my story, which included the fact that I was gay, then asked me whether I wanted to change. I said, no, not really, I liked who I was. Then he said that it sounded to him like my main problem was trying to hide who I was from the people I cared about. He suggested that I start by going home and coming out to my parents. So I did. He was right. That was the end of my therapy.

FreshFluff is a she.

It never occurred to me to ask whether they were gay or straight. Their answers wouldn't have made any difference to me anyhow, since I wouldn't have any idea whether they were telling the truth, or whether they even knew themselves well enough to give an accurate answer.

I try to donate only to organizations which I can determine actually use the money to feed people, which usually means small local charities rather than major national or international organizations, which spend a lot of their money on fundraising. In our area there is the FIND Food Bank, which is associated with the LGBTQ Center here in Palm Springs, and the Coachella Valley Rescue Mission, which is located in the [poorer] eastern end of our valley. I have almost stopped buying gifts for anyone, and use the money I would have spent for unnecessary toys or electronic items for donations instead. I also spread the donations evenly through the year, because most small organizations get spikes of donations at Thanksgiving and Christmas, but struggle to maintain their programs at other times of year.

Years ago, I encountered Matt Dillon on a street corner in Manhattan, while waiting for the light to change. He glowered at me when he realized I was staring at him, and quickly walked away.

My mother didn't drink or smoke or use any vulgar words, went to church every Sunday, and never talked about sex; other than cigarettes and beer, my father was the same. After I explained to my parents, when I was 19, that I was homosexual (they wouldn't have understood "gay," which was not a well-known term in those days), my mother's only comment was, "How do you know?" So I told her. We never discussed the subject again, even during the years when she lived as a widow with my partner and me. She was accepting of the situation, but she didn't want to have to talk about it.

One of my friends, a good ole boy from rural Tennessee, had two male partners, each of whom died, before he married a woman and fathered two daughters. He is now a loving 80 year old grandfather, but he and his wife divorced when the girls were teenagers, and he now is married to another 80 year old man (who has a middle-aged son). One of the daughters married a Mormon and has three young children, while the other daughter is single, but recently carried a child as a surrogate mother for a Chinese-American couple. Those old Norman Rockwell magazine cover families are gone for good, I think.

What a year it has been. I have known people displaced by Harvey, Irma, Maria and the Santa Rosa fire. I hope all works out for you.

I am not so sure this is true. The OP's anxiety seems excessive--see his latest post after the appt--and despite all the info and reassurances he has received here, he still can't let it go. It seems to me that there is more here than just the rational fear of exposure to disease. I once ran an AIDS information hotline, and there were a few people who would call again and again, even when what they were doing carried virtually no risk of infection, because their real anxiety was about their sexual activity, and they avoided dealing with that by focusing instead on a tangential issue which seemed like a more rational excuse for worry. I think the OP is right when he says he knows he is overreacting about the HIV risk, but the next step would be to deal with why an apparently enjoyable sexual encounter has caused him so much psychological discomfort.

BTW, I would not tell the boys that you have hired escorts. That adds a layer of complication that I suspect they would have more difficulty accepting than being told that you have slept with a male friend. And be prepared for them to ask if you have slept with your b-i-l.

Don't rush the next step. Telling your boys is going to be harder, for them as well as for yourself. Give yourself enough time to process each step and prepare for the fact that each reaction is likely to be somewhat different, so take the easier steps first.

I suspect the volcano was ready to blow before you called, and you just triggered it. He probably kept up the the rant because it was too uncomfortable for him to admit that the displacement of his anger was inappropriate. However, 9pm does seem late to me for a non-emergency business call.

It is hard to know what the passionate emotional friendships between legendary figures of other cultures really entailed. I think it is enough to say that David and Jonathan's relationship was noteworthy enough to have drawn the special attention of their chroniclers. David was famous for his sensual nature, so it is not unreasonable to assume that he and Jonathan might have engaged in sexual activity as part of their friendship.

What about nose and eyebrow hair?

No need for it yet. I can still pass for 69.