Charlie

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.

I don't own a smart phone, and I turn on my old flip phone only when I am expecting to get or make an important call, which means it is sometimes turned off for days. I don't listen to anything when I am in the car. I love to just sit in a park, on a beach, etc., and watch the world go by. I don't watch anything on the ubiquitous screens while traveling on a plane. I hate it when there is a TV on in the waiting room at the doctor's office or the auto service area. At an auto wash, I like to just watch the car being washed and polished. I am happy to sit outdoors and watch the changes in the sky. My favorite activity of the day is a long walk with the dog, as he stops to investigate all the interesting smells. At the gym, I never watch the TV screens or listen to an iPod. At the pool, I float or swim in the water, and lie peacefully in the sun afterwards, listening to the sounds of the birds in the trees. On a train, I spend most of the time looking out the window at the scenery. The one thing that is beginning to concern me is my compulsion, when I am at home, to check my computer or iPad every couple of hours for new emails, even though I delete 80% of them without reading. And then there is this site....

Didn't your doctor tell you that is what happens if you masturbate too much?

King David and his boyfriend Jonathan. Zeus [king of the gods] and his boytoy Ganymede. Achilles [son of the king of the Myrmidons] and his beloved Patroclus. (It helps to have had both a Biblical and a Classical education.)

Poor Charles, like his ancestor Edward VII, has been training all his life to be king, while waiting for his mother to die, so he ought to at least get a couple of years to enjoy the job.

Before I was old enough to actually cum, the conclusion to my sexual arousal was usually a sudden relaxation of all tension in my abdomen. On a few occasions in the 60-some years since then, I have experienced the same resolution without ejaculation.

FreshFluff, why did you change your avatar to a Pomeranian? I also noticed that you are now an Earl, but you should properly be a Countess.

Let's not forget King Edward II of England, a notorious sodomite, who reputedly was murdered by shoving a hot poker up his ass.

Buddy Rogers was married to Mary Pickford. The Mary Pickford Theater in downtown Cathedral City, CA, is on Buddy Rogers Avenue. I drive past it often.

But I see that you have stopped posting it, which I think is wise.

I realize you are fairly new here, so you may not be aware that there is no way for the posters here to know who the others on the site are, or to take for granted that everyone who reads it is friendly and trustworthy, or will remain so. Most members are exactly as you describe them, but there have been participants here who were not so trustworthy, and at least one (who may be reading this post) who has become a hostile stalker of other members outside the site. Even the founder and the administrators of the site have never posted their photos or names online, showing sensible discretion.

I don't think that not posting one's own photo and other identifying information is "hiding" when one is posting on an anonymous website. It is not the same as providing that information to an individual with whom one wishes to make personal contact. (For the record, the person in my profile portrait is not me; I never wear a wig.)

Damn! That 20th century seems like yesterday to me.

Wait a minute--what year is this?! [Agassi retired from the pro tour in 2006.]

I don't know. I remember reading it in a sports commentary somewhere when Andre Agassi (a pretty hairy guy) shaved his arms, and the commentator noted that he wasn't the only athlete to have done that, because young women preferred men who looked like boys, because they found them less threatening, and some other people piped up to agree with that, referencing the teeny-bopper boy band idols. It made a kind of pop-psych sense to me.

After our first two weeks together, my partner and I were never sexually monogamous, but most of the time we were committed to an emotionally monogamous relationship. My best friend could never understand that, and couldn't believe that was a "real" marriage; he was serially monogamous with a half dozen men, and a complete slut the rest of the time.