Charlie

Wimbledon supposedly banned the Russian and Belorussian players so Putin couldn't gloat about a Russian winning at the tournament. But now they have a Russian woman, Elena Rybakina--born and raised in Moscow--in the final, who only got into the tournament because technically she represents Kazakstan, which essentially bought her to boost their own tennis program. I wonder how Putin will play that fact if she wins the title.

Hmm. Why am I shopping at Von's when Trader Joe's is only a couple of minutes further away? Oh, maybe those 15 items are not the ones I want.

I didn't miss it when I encountered Lynde in the Meatrack on Fire Island one night in the late 1960s.

At the gas station: Driving in, cranking down the window, and saying "Fill 'er up!" (with leaded gas, of course) to the attendant. Watching the attendant automatically wash the windshield and check the oil stick (and possibly saying, "It's down; do you want me to add some?"). Paying for the full tank with dollar bills and coins.

😈

I remember the first time in London that someone asked me how many stone I weighed. 🤔??

My a/c is set so high it has hardly run today.

Today is the coldest July 4th in Palm Springs in a decade. At my house right now I am shivering, because it is only 97 F.

I used to go to Fire Island a couple of times every summer in the 1960s and 70s, but like @LIguy I stayed in the Grove, and if a friend was staying in the Pines, I would walk over to visit. My last visit to Fire Island was in 1981; after that, the guys I knew at the Pines started getting sick, and by the end of the decade, every single person I knew who had frequented the Pines was dead of AIDS. I was no longer living in NYC or spending much time there, so there didn't seem to be any reason for me to return to a vacation spot that would only evoke sad memories.

An occasional excerpt, with sections blacked out.

I have already written an unexpurgated memoir of my first thirty years. Unfortunately, my lawyer recommends that it not be available until I am safely in the grave, along with everyone named in it.

I know it is mid-1960s, but I am not sure of the model. I think it is a Cadillac.

I guess I qualify as a gay elder, since I came out when Dwight Eisenhower was President. In my 20s, I was active in the small, pre-Stonewall gay rights organizations, and I took part in the first gay picketing of Independence Hall in 1965. I was living with my second partner a few blocks from the Stonewall the night of the riot. In my 30s, I was active in the new post-Stonewall national gay rights organizations, and carried the flag at the head of a Gay Pride parade during the Bi-Centennial in 1976. I also taught the first gay literature course ever offered at my college. In my 40s, I was active as a volunteer in AIDS organizations, and ran an AIDS information hotline. By my 50s, my energies were starting to flag, and I turned to professional and family responsibilities. In my 60's and 70s, my contributions to gay life were mostly financial. This topic made me realize that I have almost no contact with "young gays" any longer. When the head of the LGBTQ student organization at my alma mater recently asked alumni for information about "gay life" at the school for a historical retrospective video she was preparing, she told me I was the oldest alumnus who responded. I told her there was no "gay life" at the school when I was there, because homosexual activity was illegal then. She asked to interview me to use as a prologue for the video, and I agreed, the closest I have come to any kind of mentoring of young gays in recent years. Like many old men, I live in the bubble of retirees in the age-segregated divisions that characterize modern American society. The "younger" men who have posted here are probably my only audience. However, if the Supreme Court tries to take away any of my hard-won rights, I'll probably be back at the public demonstrations again.

Four decades ago, I knew a gorgeous gay escort in his mid-20s, who persuaded his straight younger brother to join the business. For a while, they worked as a pair, and they looked so much alike that they could pass as fraternal twins for someone who had a twins fetish. However, after about a year, they started working separately, and I hired each one that way. To my pleasant surprise, the straight one turned out to be a more enjoyable experience for me than his gay brother was. When I asked the straight one whether they still worked together, he said no, because his brother saw escorting as his career, while he saw it as a gig to make extra money when he need it. From his response, I suspected that there was more to it than that. I don't know how the brothers interacted with one another during a session when they worked together, but I concluded from my experiences with them separately that the difference was that, like a successful businessman, the straight one saw his job as satisfying his customer, and he was attuned to that goal, while the gay one saw a client as a potential personal relationship, and he was too emotionally engaged in his own reaction to the sexual interchange to objectively consider what the client was looking for.

Strange, but it did look like there was something underneath the patches.

How does that work? I need something for my sinuses, too.

I have never had any open criticism from family members, even though I have been openly gay since my early 20s. Although many family members, including my parents, were active church members, they belonged to relatively liberal mainline Protestant churches, and homosexuality wasn't a religious concern for them. I was probably also helped by family history: one of my father's most respected cousins had a male partner whom everyone in his family liked and accepted as part of the family. I don't know what I would have done if I had received open disrespect because of my sexuality from a family member--I probably would have simply cut off all contact with them. My spouse came from a very religious Catholic family (his aunt was Mother Superior of an order of nuns), and he and his gay brother both waited until their father was dead and they were in their 30s to come out--even to one another. Their mother was always friendly with their partners, but never acknowledged the nature of the relationships. One of their straight brothers married an evangelical Protestant, who has always been clearly uncomfortable with her gay brothers-in-law and their partners, but she simply withdraws as much as possible from contact with us. We are very friendly with his other straight brother's children, and his niece told us that when they were teenagers, their parents sat them down and said, "We think you should understand that Uncle Joe and Charlie are not just roommates..." She said that she and her brother just rolled their eyes, and replied, "Oh, come on, Dad, we know they're gay. So what?!"

I just watched that doubles match. Serena arrived on court looking like she was wearing a tent. When she took it off, it revealed an outfit that was supposed to camouflage her increased weight, but it didn't work. She also had three black patches on the side of her face that were never explained; I assume they are bandage patches to cover something. Her play looked pretty rusty at first, but she and Jabeur ended up winning a very exciting long match.

Osaka has withdrawn with injuries, Raducanu keeps retiring from matches with injuries, and Andrescu is just coming back from injuries, so US Open champs from recent years may not be much of a presence on the women's side. Serena hasn't played in a year, and she is 40 years old, so there will be lots of focus on her. Venus was not given a wild card, so she seems effectively retired. Serena's comeback actually starts today, when she will be playing doubles with Ons Jabeur in Eastbourne! Wimbledon is probably increasing prize money to compensate players who would normally be drawn by ranking points.

The Colorado River is drying up while the Yellowstone River is flooding. Something is out of balance here in the West: could climate change be real?😲

I hardly ever see anyone really talking to himself--when I look closer, they are usually hooked up to something. Thanks. I'll stop by Target to see if they something like that here.

The essential difference between the British and American system is that Americans vote for an individual to be the political leader for a specific period of time, while the British vote for a party, whose representatives get to choose the leader for as long as they can maintain a majority in Parliament, and the party can change the leader whenever they wish. The American Founding Fathers thought they could eliminate what they saw as a pernicious power of parties by making the executive independent of a legislative party, and how did that work out?😒

What does one do with old non-smart phones? I just discovered that I have four such phones from the period before I finally gave in and got an iPhone. They are all still in their original packaging (I know: I'm obsessive about saving that kind of thing). Do they have any value or use? How do I get rid of them responsibly?

Periods of British history sometimes get a convenient label from the monarch associated with them, but Victoria's son Edward VII is the last one whose name defined a period, and a fairly short one at that. "Victorian" and "Edwardian" in most people's minds recall a set of contrasting social and moral attitudes that people associate with each of those personalities, often negatively. I tend to agree with @CuriousByNature that the 70 years of E2R's reign is much too complex to be encapsulated as a new "Elizabethan Era," especially by those of us who are still close to it. Perhaps in the distant future, there will be historians who find some commonality within it that cause them to identify the past 70 years as "Elizabethan."

There was actually precedent for this. Henry VIII's older brother Arthur was the original heir to their father's throne. He was betrothed to Catherine of Aragon, daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain from the age of three, and married her shortly before his death. Since Arthur died before his father, Henry became the heir to the throne, and after he became king, he married his brother's widow, mainly to avoid having to repay the substantial dowry her parents had paid on the assumption that she was going to become the Queen of England. The marriage of George and Mary of Teck had less historical fallout.