Charlie

My late parents would have considered me wealthy now, but they never lived in 21st century Palm Springs. My father would be flabbergasted at what I paid for a simple haircut at the barber yesterday--he would have budgeted that amount for the family to have a holiday dinner at a good restaurant! He knew about money, because he was a credit investigator for Dun and Bradstreet in New York. But, of course, that was 80 years ago, when they had just bought a three bedroom house in the suburbs for $5500, with a 20 year mortgage (a smaller house across the street from me here just sold for $575,000).

I can identify with some of the people who are discussed in this article. Although I was an only child, I never felt lonely when I was young, although I was rather shy. However, from the time I entered college, I always lived with someone--a friend or a partner--for all but six months from my late teens until my early 80s. Since my spouse's death a year ago, I have had a very hard time adjusting to the reality that there is no one else in the house except my dog. Whenever I hear a sound somewhere around the house, I have to remind myself that there is no one else here. If I buy a piece of furniture or break something or change where I hang a picture, I have to remind myself that I don't have to explain or justify it to anyone. And, yes, I spend a lot of time talking to myself or to my dog. I do have a social life of the kinds that are recommended in the article. I play tennis a couple of days per week, play Bridge with a group once per week, etc., but that doesn't really make up for the casual, unstructured interactions of everyday life with someone. I have been much more upset by good friends among my neighbors selling their homes and moving away than I ever used to be. The article does mention that a demographic that is more likely to experience loneliness is older gay men; I suspect that is because younger gay men are much more likely to react to loneliness by having sex with other men, including providers, while old gay men have difficulty attracting sex partners who really make them feel good about themselves. Older gay men are also less likely to have younger generations of family members to interact with regularly. Thanks for going to the trouble of reprinting the article here.

That looks pretty uncomfortable.

OMG!! That looks like my first partner.

I had my first gay sexual experience when I was 17, and from then on I was pretty active sexually. At 25 I settled down with a partner, but we had an open relationship in which both of us felt free to have sex with other men when we felt so inclined. When I was 35, my father died, and after returning home from his funeral, I was feeling depressed, but my partner was out of the country at the time, and I didn't feel like cruising, so for the first time I tried hiring a professional provider through an agency that advertised in The Advocate. The AIDS crisis in the 1980s slowed down all my sexual activity. By the time I was 55 I wasn't doing much cruising (or having much success at it), so virtually all of my infrequent extramarital sexual activity was with pros. When I was 60, I discovered this site, and I began talking about sex more than actually having it. The last time I hired was in 2011, so there are very few providers discussed here about whom I could comment from personal experience.

I have owned five houses in my lifetime and have never stayed in one long enough to pay off the mortgage. However, I have sold each house for more than I paid for it, so it seemed like a reasonable investment at the time. However, I admit that I am not much good at making long-term economic calculations. I buy my homes not because of economic calculations, but because I don't want to live in a place that is owned by someone else, so I can do what I want with it, and I suspect that most people think that way about mortgages if they don't have enough money to buy their home outright.

When I started hiring I was in my 30s and reasonably attractive (I got plenty of sex for free), so I didn't think about whether the provider would be turned on or off by my appearance. However, by the time I reached my 60s, I began to wonder if the pleasure really was mutual or the provider was only going though with the act for the money, and it bothered me enough to eventually stop hiring. It sounds like you are really self-conscious (and uncomfortable) about your own appearance, so as others here have said, it is important that you find a provider that is not going to react in a way that will ruin the experience for you by confirming your fear of rejection. And as several others here have said, the best way to insure that doesn't happen is to be completely upfront about whatever it is in your appearance you think someone would likely be turned off by, so the provider is prepared for it: weight, scars, other kinds of disfigurements, even handicaps. And as has been said here often, cleanliness is the most important issue for many providers. (BTW: don't forget to brush your teeth and use mouthwash.) What you don't want to do is apologize for something after you meet him. If you have prepared him, and he has accepted the appointment, then relax and enjoy yourself. Note: I don't think that sending him a photo is a good idea. He is the one auditioning for a role, not you.

Having to decide whether to buy a gas engine or an electric engine car.

Wow! That didn't hit me until my 80s.

Every time I try to make the leap, I fall off a cliff. I have just finished a frustrating attempt for the past half hour to open a social invitation that was emailed to me, but I cannot figure out how to open it. For better or worse, I am a product of a pen and paper world, and will probably always remain so.

I was going through my old address book the other day, and I realized that more than half of the names and phone numbers had been crossed out because the individuals had moved or were deceased. I decided I need to buy a new address book and transfer just the current info. (I wouldn't keep that kind of info on a tech device for fear that it would be hacked, or lost when something went wrong with the device.)

The longest World Series ever in terms of number of innings played.

Two cute critters.

Just a notice that the "map me" function points to a default location in downtown Palm Springs, so he could actually be located anywhere in the Coachella Valley.

I will come, as long as I can bring my dog. (he loves parties!)

They are probably the only WS winning team that he would not invite to visit the White House, and I'll bet they would turn down the invitation if he did.

Cam Norrie. (Who has a white lock of hair on his forehead)

I went to bed after 13 innings.

This heading stopped me short, because my father's first name was "Christian," but no one ever called him that. Everyone called him "King" (his middle name was "Kingsley.")

Like most males, I have my own preferences in physical surface features of a sex partner, which I won't elaborate on here. For me, however, the most important aspect in a provider (beside a reasonable fee agreed upon in advance), is that I have to feel that he is actually interested in having sex with me, not just with anyone who opens a wallet. I let the sex acts develop as spontaneously as I would with an unpaid partner (I don't have a pre-set scenario), but if I don't get the sense that he is enjoying whatever it is that we do, I probably won't enjoy it either. I stopped hiring when I could no longer convince myself that this gorgeous hunk was truly turned on by sex with this old man.

I am old enough to have lived through the early AIDS crisis and watched friends die before the disease even had a name. I was active in a gay rights organization in the 1980s, and took over running the AIDS Information Hotline in a major city when the woman who started it couldn't handle it any longer because she found it too upsetting. After the "crisis" was over, I had friends who had survived but were still dealing with the illness; my best friend since high school died in 1996, and the cause of death was listed as cancer, but those who knew him well were aware that he had been diagnosed with AIDS in the 1980s, and when asked, his sister, a medical technician, still says, "He died of AIDS." A close friend's lover died of AIDS in 1987, and for the rest of his long life he was always questioning whenever he developed physical problems: "Is it really from AIDS that's dormant in me?" And, of course, for many of us there is always "survivor's guilt"--"I was as sexually slutty as he was; why didn't I get it?" AIDS has turned into another preventable or controllable disease, but one that unfortunately is still associated in everyone's mind with gay sex, so unlike most diseases, in the minds of many people it still carries overtones of punishment for something one shouldn't have done. I am glad that the focus nowadays is shifting more towards controlling the disease than blaming those who have contracted it.

I scored only 55 out of 90, which makes me wonder exactly how they define "kinky." I expected to be asked more specific questions (like, "Are you turned on by a hairy ass?")

I had the problem this morning, and all it said was there was a "technical error" each time I tried to log on. Lucky just texted me that it had been fixed, and I logged on normally just now.

One of my neighbors goes wild with Halloween decorations for her yard, starting in early October and adding something else every day. Now she has a severed head on the ground that starts talking when you approach it--it freaks out my dog.

If this is true, then shouldn't you also wash your asshole every day as well?