Charlie

The simple fact is that whether you are gay or straight, male or female, after a certain age, most younger people are not normally sexually attracted to you. Whether the cause is psychological, physiological or cultural, that is just the way it is. When you hit that certain age differs from one individual to another, based on weight, physical fitness, skin tone, hair (color or lack of hair), grooming, and your personality, which can project "old" at 50 as well as 90. So you might as well make yourself "comfortable in your [wrinkled. mottled] skin." God created escorts for older people with money.

Also to state the obvious, Roger is Swiss, but he won the same number of U. S. Opens as Serena did. If he was going to retire and play only a single important tournament at the end of the year, the U. S. Open was as logical a place to make his farewell appearance as it was for her. It was originally expected that he would make his return from his long injury time-out there, but after she made her retirement announcement, he wisely did not do so. Venus probably could have retired then, too, but I expect that she will stagger on and make her farewell next year at Wimbledon, the only place she won as many titles as Serena.

I expect that Federer made his announcement that he will play his last time at the Laver Cup and then retire is mostly to promote the Laver Cup tournament, which he was instrumental in creating, but it has never really been considered important without his influence, and I wonder how long it will continue without him. If he had decided to play his final time at the US Open, along with Serena, it would have been even more of a celebrity circus than it was, but it would have divided the spotlight too much. It will be interesting to see what kind of competitive condition he is actually in.

When I was very young (teens and early 20s), I was usually attracted to older men (up to about 50). I started hiring when I was in my mid-30s, and generally preferred escorts around my own age. By the time I was 60, escorts my own age were pretty hard to find, and I haven't noticed anyone near my age now (and I probably wouldn't want them if they were available--I'm gay, not a gerontophile). If I were still hiring, I would probably be most comfortable with a mature escort or masseur, i.e., someone in the 45-60 range. Young guys are attractive to look at and even talk to, but I wouldn't be interested in having sex with them, and I suspect they would feel the same about me, although I hope they would be nice about it.

My heart was with Jabeur and Ruud, but my gut told me it would be Swiatek and Alcaraz. Pretty unusual that each of the finals determined who would be ranked #1 and #2 in the world starting this week.

Albert's grandson, King Baudouin (reigned 1951-1993) was rumored to be gay. Many years ago, I hired an older escort who claimed to have once had a threesome with Baudouin and his boyfriend.

Polly Esther Sheetz

The times they are a-changing. Only one of the eight semi-finalists has ever won a major, and only one of the men has even been in a major final. It is nice to see some new faces there. My predictions, for what they are worth, are Swiatek and Garcia in the women's final, and Alcaraz and Ruud in the men's final. But I'm not willing to bet any money on them.

We are dragging our asses through the longest and most extreme heat wave that I can remember here in Palm Springs. The heat index at my backyard was 120 yesterday afternoon, and it doesn't get down below the low 90s at night. I keep my a/c set at 80 degrees, and only leave my house to do necessary chores. Even the dog stops when he gets out the door, and has to be coaxed to go any further. Now we're told that this weekend it will be hot and stormy instead of hot and dry.

The shortest commercial flight I ever took was Boston to Provincetown, which is 116 miles by car, but only 45 miles by air.

Berretini vs. Ruud: what a Sophie's choice!

I hate to tell you, but Rhett Butler wasn't a real person.😉

I don't think that an escort would be likely to use some of the names that have appeared here as posters, like WSC, Oliver Saks, or Adam Smith, since they don't connote sexual arousal (well, perhaps "Marquis de Sade" would work).

The first two sets were certainly a spanking, but the above is not the final score: Gasquet improved in each set, and managed to win five games in the third set. Nadal's career record against Gasquet is now 18-0. They are almost exactly the same age (36), and have been been playing one another for a long time. Perhaps Gasquet enjoys being spanked.

I don't believe that WSC has identified himself as an escort. I suppose we could ask about members of this site who use the names of famous people as handles, but that is really not germane to my question.

A discussion in the Deli about an escort who calls himself "Lord Byron" led me to wonder if you have met or are aware of other escorts who use the names of famous people. Hispanic escorts who use the name "Jesus" don't count.

George Gordon Byron inherited his title from a great-uncle when he was a child, so his official title was Baron Byron, and he was familiarly called Lord Byron. "Byron" became a relatively popular first name in the English-speaking world in the 19th century, in his honor, since that was the single name that most people used to refer to the famous poet.

Perhaps his name is Byron Smith. I have known several men with the first name of Byron.

Lord Byron was also bi-sexual, according to most reports.

Now that the Serenamania wave has crested and retreated back to sea, the game left on the women's beach doesn't look very exciting. Not only are there no former US Open champions left, the only current or former winners of any slam are Muguruza and Kvitova, who have to play one another next, Azarenka, and Swiatek. The sentimental favorite for the final is Kvitova, who is beloved by her colleagues, but she hasn't won a slam in 8 years, and Azarenka has lost every time she made the final. The smart money is on Swiatek, the #1 seed and current French open champion, as it has been since the tournament started. Of course, there will be some interest in whether Tomljanovic can keep up her momentum, but most of the remaining players are young unknowns, and the media doesn't favor Chinese and Russians (or Belarussians, which Azarenka is) . So media attention will finally turn to the men. Can one of the young Americans (Brooksby, Nakashima, Tiafoe) go any farther? Will Rafa add to his already record number of slam titles? Will the adorable teenage sensation Carlos Alcaraz snatch the torch from his aging countryman? Will the equally adorable Casper Ruud become the first Norwegian ever to win a slam? (If he does, he will also become the first Norwegian to be ranked #1.) Will Medvedev manage to defend his title and his #1 ranking? Will the strange and unpredictable Nick Kyrgios finally win an important title, or at least do something sensational? Stay tuned.

Another former women's champion eliminated with Stephens' loss to Swiatek, leaving only Serena and Andreescu, and they can't meet in the final again, because they are on the same side of the draw. Serena and Venus couldn't revive the old doubles magic last night, and it was pretty obvious that they hadn't played together in a few years. I doubt that we will ever see them together again in anything but an exhibition match for charity. Hradecka's new young partner Noskova was impressive, and Lucie was impressive herself, considering that she hasn't won a major title in nine years and is almost as old as Serena.

I don't know whether I was more surprised by Borna's loss or Brooksby's win, especially with that score.

I have noticed those brain symptoms even though I have not had COVID (to my knowledge). Stress has a lot to do with them, and getting COVID after you have done everything to protect yourself is a stressor in itself.

Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas, is by Jennifer Raff, a Professor of Anthropology and Genetics. It's an attempt to analyze the evidence--genetic, anthropological and archaeological--for and against various theories about where the variety of peoples in the Americas that the first European explorers encountered, when they began arriving on the Atlantic shores in the 15th century, had come from. As soon as they realized that this wasn't Asia and these people weren't "Indians," they had to try to find some explanation for their existence. The Europeans arrived with the belief that everything worth knowing about history was in the Bible, yet it said nothing about these continents or people and their societies. The early beliefs, such as that these were the "Lost Tribes of Israel," didn't pan out, and as modern sciences developed, what knowledge they provided led to many new theories that were advanced and discarded. The scientific discoveries in geological sciences led most of us who were educated in the first two-thirds of the 20th century to be taught that the inhabitants of the Americans had crossed a land-bridge between Siberia and Alaska, and had traveled south once the glaciers that covered much of North America receded, However, the developments in genetic science during the last decades have led to questioning of many of the details that were originally proposed by anthropologists and archaeologists. Raff is a highly trained geneticist, who takes the reader through the process of extracting information from human remains, as well as the evidence from archaeology and anthropology that are coordinated with the genetic evidence, but many of the chapters may make your mind reel while trying to keep everything straight. The short story is that, yes, the basic theory of the crossing from Siberia is correct, but the timelines and the distribution of the peoples who came are much more complicated than we were taught in high school. I can't pretend to remember all of it, or even understand some of the conclusions, but I found the journey fascinating.

Neither one. It's a 1952.