Charlie

It is difficult to make unerring generalizations about how any individual teenage male reacts to this kind of situation. I was technically a minor (17) when I first started to have sex with men, and it was always with adults, mostly in their 20s or 30s, but sometimes a lot older. A few were men who had palpable power, including celebrity. Sometimes I felt coerced or forced into doing things I didn't want to do sexually. But I never perceived it as abuse, merely an education in the ways of the world. Other youths obviously react differently, and some are damaged psychologically by the experience. Many years later, it is hard to tell who was scarred by the encounter with Levine, whose current state really reflects previous or subsequent experiences, and who is just being opportunistic at this point.

The Met has always been willing to overlook unsavory behavior if they thought someone was a great artist, as they did after WWII for those who had had questionable connections with the Nazis. What disgusts me is their cowardice in refusing to acknowledge their principle, instead pretending that they never knew anything about about Levine's behavior nor tried to protect him from the consequences. I suppose they are just following their lawyers" advice.

The hypocrisy of the Met administration, which has known about Levine's sexual escapades and protected him for years, is more appalling than his actions.

On the other hand, when he was 18, my best friend told his 15 year old sister that he was gay, with full details (he even introduced her to people he was sleeping with), and she kept the secret from the family and her friends until he was involuntarily outed by military police several years later.

I had sex with another man for the first time when I was 17, and came out to my best friend a few days later; in return, he informed me that he slept with men, too. I came out to my parents at 19, because I wanted them to understand who I was. I have always lived with a male partner since I was 22, and have been married to one of them since same sex marriage became legal. I was active in gay rights groups from the time I was 21 till I was middle-aged, and carried the rainbow flag at the head of a Gay Pride parade (covered by local news media) when I was 33. My friends at the school where I taught were always aware that I was gay, and I came out completely in 1976 when I designed and taught a Gay Literature course; no one in the administration seemed at all surprised. I worked on an AIDS information hotline for four years in the 1980s, and was elected to the board of the local gay health organization. I lived for 40 years in sophisticated major world cities, and I have lived in Palm Springs since 2004. I have always had the appearance of a somewhat conservative middle-class male, but I have rarely felt any need to announce that I am gay, since anyone who can't figure it out from my history must be pretty dense. Why have I always been out, even when being gay was not so socially acceptable? Because I found it much more psychologically comfortable to live honestly, even if it limited some of my options in life.

Insiders at the Met have gossiped for years about the number of times Levine had to be bailed out of trouble for approaching black teenagers in men's rooms. Since he is pretty much retired at this point in his life, this story is not likely to have much effect on his ultimate reputation.

I thought you were going to make this rhyme by calling him Prince Andy.

Alabama doesn't have a lot of Norwegian bachelor farmers.

The list of interests that the escorts post on the right is rent.men boilerplate that many of them check off without thinking. What he writes in his own ad is more relevant.

Unfortunately, as the piling on grows, I fear that the accusations will be taken less seriously, especially if a few turn out to be obviously fake or exaggerated. It will actually help voters justify their support for Moore, because, "Well, everyone does it, even the liberals, but at least he is against abortion and gay marriage, which are the real dangers."

These are all examples of good civilized behavior, but they are not exactly the same as hiring a professional to perform a specific service. I have received thank you notes from my dentist after a long, expensive elective procedure, and from my lawyer for a similar situation, but I never thought it was necessary for me to send them a thank you note for doing what I had paid them to do, unless they did something extra or unexpectedly well. I generally see escorts as professionals who are doing the same sort of service I receive from my physical therapist, to whom I don't send a thank you note after a session, unless he does something that brings a remarkable improvement in my condition. Only on the handful of occasions that an escort has performed a similar miracle, have I contacted him afterwards to thank him. If he sends me a thank you note, I consider it simply a courteous business practice, like the car salesman who hopes that I will use the dealership for future servicing.

I'm curious: do y'all send thank you notes to your doctors/dentists/lawyers/therapists after an appointment? Do y'all expect to receive them? I realize we don't all have the same understanding of the nature of client/escort relationships, but I tend to think of them as professional visits, so I never automatically send thank you notes or expect to receive them, unless I would like the relationship to develop into a different kind of friendship.

For those who may be confused, the tattoo on his back is an outline of the UP in Michigan. He certainly is--how shall I say it?--a bit different from the usual escort on rent.men.

My partner says he'd rather stay demented.

Most straight guys are willing to be oral passive (especially if they can close their eyes or look at straight porn). "Anal" is the only thing on the list that most of them would find uncomfortable. Most of the things on the list ("socks," "latex," "toys", etc.), don't require any sexual arousal on his part.

I would say that most of the things he says he will do are relatively easy for straight men to do, since most straight men would regard them as "non-sexual" fetishes.

Many professional athletes have relatively short "careers" because their athletic prime doesn't last beyond their 30s, but they stay involved in their sports in other ways, such as in coaching or managing. This thread made me wonder whether great escorts might extend their careers in the same way. A smart neophyte escort might do well by hiring Kevin Slater to coach him to a top ranking in the escort profession.

PSP also has bulk trash pick-up weeks every Spring and Fall.

I once hired a guy who admitted to being 59. I haven't seen an ad for him recently, but he would be about 70 now. In 1985, I hired a guy who claimed to be 35; he was still advertising 25 years later (with some of the same pics).

Recycling is fine, but I dislike composting. I had to do it in a house I rented in Portland, where it may also be the law.

Never.

One of the sexiest young baritones I ever heard. Dead of a brain tumor at 55.

In the early 1970s, my partner and I bought a house in Philadelphia in a neighborhood that was in the early stages of gentrification. The house across the street was still occupied by a family of criminals. One night we looked out our front windows when we heard shots, and saw police sheltering behind our parked car, engaged in a gunfight with occupants of the house. The father was a thief (he stole some things from our house while contractors were working on it); the mother and two daughters were prostitutes working at the house; the younger son was a child when we moved in, but in his teens he burglarized and trashed the house next door to us; the worst was the older son, who tried to mug a new neighbor in the next block, and killed him when the man resisted. We breathed a sigh of relief when all of them were evicted or imprisoned.

Ah, Dubai, the only one of those places that I have actually been to.

I had a very similar Nana, my maternal grandmother. She was the youngest of 13 children. Her father died when she was 3, and her mother had to put her and two of her brothers in an orphanage for a while, but later sent her to live with her step-grandmother and two older sisters in Bermuda. She scandalized them by having an affair with a much older married man in her teens, so they shipped her back to NYC, where she met and immediately married my grandfather when she was 17 (he was 30). She was still quite attractive when she was widowed at 42, and proceeded to have numerous affairs, which scandalized her own six children. She became a housekeeper to an elderly widower, and married him, to the displeasure of his grown children. When she was widowed again, she resumed affairs with younger men, until she was almost 80. Many proper family members considered her a black sheep, but I never thought of her that way. I loved her. I often spent summer vacations with her when I was a child, so I was aware of her relations with various men--my mother would never have allowed me to stay with her if she had known what went on while I was there. She liked racy literature, and it was through reading one of her books when I was 12 that I first realized that I was gay. Interestingly, my spouse also had a very strong, independent widowed grandmother with whom he used to spend summer vacations when he was a child. I wonder if there is any connection between being gay and being exposed to that kind of grandmother figure.