Charlie

I have no credit card debt. When I met my future spouse at the age of 25, he was disturbed that I had credit card debt for vacation trips I had taken; from then on, I never charged anything on a card that I couldn't pay off in full when the monthly bill arrived. The only long term debt I have had in the last 50 years was for houses or cars, and I haven't even had much of that.

The rankings of the states by amount of debt almost exactly match the rankings by population, so there is nothing really noteworthy there.

He has taken his "B.A. in English. Focus on poetry..." much too seriously.

I probably should have mentioned in my post that my high school friend and I both came from lower middle class families, and none of our parents had finished high school. They wanted us to go to college mainly because they were told that was how we would improve our financial and social prospects. Our high school guidance counselor was only interested in getting students into good colleges because it made her look better, and she did a good job at that--we both went to good private liberal arts colleges, with financial aid packages, and a few of our classmates went to the Ivies. She was annoyed that one of the brightest guys in the class opted for a technical school. Getting higher education degrees did improve our social and financial status, though in my first college teaching job I made less money than my father, who worked in a cardboard box factory. That didn't bother me, because I had a job I enjoyed and the prospect of rising farther in a stable career. However, I didn't have a family to support, and before long I had married someone who had gone to college to pursue a specific professional career, so together we ended up financially better off than my parents had ever been.

Thank you. I imagine that I would have loved having you in one of the remedial English classes I enjoyed teaching.

If someone has a specific career goal and successfully pursues a college education targeted at that goal, then college is probably worth it. For anyone else, it's a crap shoot. My best friend thought he wanted to enter the diplomatic corps, so the guidance counselor told him that since he was good at languages, he should go to a top tier liberal arts college, and major in Russian, which he did. Unfortunately, he didn't have any idea what kind of person the State Dept wanted for the kind of job he envisioned, and he wasn't it (he came from a rough working class family and had no social graces). However, a major insurance company was looking for young grads to train for their data processing department, and their theory was that anyone who had demonstrated that he could become proficient in a difficult new language would be able to learn programming skills, so they took him into their programmer training program. He turned out to be so good that the NY Stock Exchange recruited him away from the insurance company as a programmer analyst, and he ended up making more money than he ever would have at the State Dept, where he probably wouldn't have risen above the level of a translator. He was just lucky that college turned out to be worthwhile for him. On the other hand, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life, but everyone told me that I should go to college because I was smart and would "find my path" there. After two years, I still had no idea where I was going, and since I had to declare a major, I just made a list of all the courses I had taken, with the grades, and chose English literature because those were my highest grades. My mentors kept pushing me towards becoming a literary scholar, and when a national organization awarded me a fellowship to pursue a Ph.D., I couldn't turn it down, even though I still wasn't convinced I wanted to keep going. After two years of graduate school, I had had enough, and I started to look for a real job. To my surprise, I was hired immediately by a hospital as their data processing coordinator, for the same reason as my friend: the boss assumed that anyone with a degree in a language could teach himself to program a computer. Duh! No. I had always thought I didn't want to be a teacher, but I found that a job teaching English was the only reasonable alternative, and to my amazement, I discovered that I loved it, and did it for 37 years. So although I took a long way around, going to college did help me "find my path" after all.

Although I was longtime Philadelphian (38 years), I have never kept up with Philadelphia politics in the 20 years since I left, so I was totally unaware of this woman. Obviously I need to do some research..

Something is screwy here. The Dorothy Parker referenced here is not the same Dorothy Parker who was a famous American writer.

??Dorothy Parker died back in the 1960s!

I believe these were a special design built for the Broadmoor Hotel and golf course in Colorado Springs.

Does he strip completely when he reaches the top?

From the definitions I have read of findom, it is not a single act that is part of a possibly one-time sexual experience with the escort, but an ongoing commitment to the escort, and one from which it could be difficult to extract oneself. If a client is interested in that experience, I doubt that he would mention it while setting up a first appointment with a provider; therefore, I don't see any reason to include it in an ad as an interest of the provider. Listing it in the ad makes it appear that the provider is thinking about it as a possibility before he has even been approached by the client, which is why it is a red flag for many potential clients who consider it as frightening as being tied up and fucked by a thug who is high on drugs.

I would assume a provider would actually prefer email to texts, since emails are easier to ignore or mull over and consider, especially when one is busy.

With a moniker like that, and a self-description like that, I was not expecting photos of a little boy. If there are 150 lbs on that slender frame, are they hiding under the towel?

Now that's an office party!!

They look a little old to be frat boys. Maybe it's the alumni who come back because they have fond memories of spanking.

To my surprise, I didn't hear any of the usual illegal fireworks in the desert behind my house last night. I went to bed at 9pm. expecting to be awakened by the explosions at midnight, but instead slept soundly through the night. My dog was pleased, too, because he was able to sleep on the bed instead of under it, where he usually goes when the booms start.

I think Mike was replying to Rod Hagen, not to you.

The photos could be real, but the claim that he has seven years experience as a masseur (since he was 16?) and that he is "a former owner of a health management center and fitness studio" (at 23?) is less credible. Age shaving is more likely, especially since he could pass as older even if the photos are really his. One reviewer mentioned that he used a phone translation device and is "working on his English skills," yet his text sounds professionally written. Something is not right here.

He advertises as an eager sub and probably means that he is open to anything the client wants to do to him, though of course one has to take any statement like that with a grain of salt. (If he will let the client do something that would kill him, what's the point of getting paid?)

I rarely drink scotch, but my spouse has a small glass every night "for his health" (he has been doing it as long as I have known him, which is 55 years). He is particularly fond of Shieldaig, which is reasonably priced at our local Total Wine store.

When I was 17, back in the Dark Ages, I was cruised by a young man in the men's room of the Port Authority bus terminal in mid-town Manhattan. Curious, I followed him outside, where he introduced himself with a slight accent as "Michel." He smiled and asked, "Are you gay?" I was familiar with that adjective, meaning "light-spirited and enthusiastic," and since his name suggested he might not normally be an English-speaker, I figured it must be his awkward way of asking if I were interested in accompanying him. When I said, "Yes," he smiled and invited me back to his rented room nearby. When we arrived, he took off his clothes, so I did the same. To my surprise, he then kissed me passionately, threw me on his bed, and started preparing to fuck me. Shocked, I said, "Wait! What are you doing?" Giving me a puzzled look, he said, "But you said you were gay?!" I replied, "I thought you were asking if I were happy to meet you!" That's when he realized that he had picked up a complete neophyte, and he had to stop and calmly explain what "gay" meant to someone cruising in New York. He then proceeded to teach me everything that gay males did together. I was a willing pupil.

BTW, the car on the left is a "58 Buick, not a Cadillac.

Oooh! Do you think they're gay? (Love the capri pants!)

It is always more comfortable to simply be out than to be outed involuntarily, or to have to find an appropriate opportunity to explain one's sexual orientation to someone. One of the advantages of legal same sex marriage is that I don't have to declare to anyone, "Hey! I'm gay!" In casual conversation with someone, I am likely to mention my spouse, and when I use the pronoun "he" to refer to him, the job is done.