Charlie

R.I.P. Ben.

Ah, if only we could send you Reece Rothmeier as a birthday gift.

I was surprisingly innocent when I started. (Gay pornography was available to only a few well-informed purchasers in those days.) I didn't even realize anal sex was a possibility until the first person I was with introduced me to it.

Happy birthday, sweetie!

It's nice to hear that it is still an acceptable place. I stayed there with my mother 30 years ago.

The guy carrying the "Gay Is Good" sign in 338 is the late Frank Kameny, one of the only times I ever saw him not wearing a suit and tie. The photographer, Kay Lahusen, was the partner of the late activist Barbara Gittings, and one of the founders of The Ladder, the first lesbian news publication. I worked with both Frank and Barbara in gay rights organizations in the 1960s.

You can't predict how a poster will respond to receiving a PM from you, but it doesn't hurt to try. Explain what post of his made you interested in a more private interaction than simply responding within a thread. You will probably learn more about the person from his reply, or lack thereof. Two posters here PMed me out of the blue years ago, when I posted that I was planning to move to PS, because each of them was contemplating the same move but had said nothing about it on the site. We arranged to meet in person as soon as we moved, and each of them became close personal friends of mine as a result.

Well, if he were gay, I assume that I would have crossed paths with him or at least heard about him during the 38 years I lived in Philadelphia and moved in "arty" gay circles, but neither his name nor any of the information about him included in the Wikipedia bio rings a bell with me.

The first time I got a notice that said "X is following you," it creeped me out.

March is a good time to come to Palm Springs. This year it is already sunny and in the 80s, and it's only early February. However, I live here, so I want to go somewhere else. This year I am going to Austin in late March, because that is usually a good time for Texas weatherwise.

Finally! I'll bet a lot of folks will show up at work tomorrow a little bedraggled.

See the recent thread about Bob Patrick, who I believe is about 67.

I recognize several of the men in that crowd outside the Coleherne, where I could be found frequently in the 1970s.

21 to 35 for me.

OMFG! indeed. I am shaken to the core.

"Kink" is neither a sexual orientation nor a gender identity. It is simply a subjective label for an enormous range of activities which anyone can engage in occasionally, even unwillingly. Leave it out, or else the group identity becomes so amorphous it is not worth a label.

And I admire your bank account.

YourHunk was the best sex I ever had in California. However, I would caution that most of the photos in his ad are the same ones he was using when I hired him ten years ago, so I would ask him for more recent ones.

Me, too.

Do a search of the posts, because there was another thread on this same topic not long ago.

Contact Daddy.

I occasionally joined a friend at Lutece for special occasions, because he loved it, but I never thought it was worth the price.

How could I have forgotten that recording of Die Tote Stadt, which I used to listen to often? I also saw her live in the role at NYCO in 1975, with John Alexander, another good singer who could sometimes rise to greatness.

Somehow I missed the news of Neblett's death back in November, and only realized it when I saw a tiny "in memoriam" in the LA Times today, which would have been her 72nd birthday. She was a beautiful woman who could be electrifying at her best. I saw her many times at the NYCO, and later at the Met and Covent Garden, in a wide variety of roles: in Mefistofele, Prince Igor, Louise, Fliegende Hollaender, Tosca, etc. The most memorable was as Minnie in Fanciula del West in a gorgeous production at Covent Garden in the 1970s. Unfortunately, she could also be staggeringly bad on occasion; I remember one performance where there were murmurs in the audience that she must be drunk, and she certainly looked and sounded that way. It was an uneven career, but I am surprised that she passed with so little notice.

I don't know if @WilliamM did, but I was there many years ago, when it was still Yugoslavia. I actually liked Split better than Dubrovnik, because it seemed more like a real city than a museum piece.