Charlie

Well, if he really is blond, whose photos is he using?

The opening lines of an obituary for H. William Brown of Palm Desert in today's Desert Sun: "For all we know, he did not cross over, he did not go to meet his maker, and he did not pass. What we do know is that he died on July 4th, 2022."

On my landline, I let all calls from unknowns go to my answering machine; most of the time they don't leave anything. On my cell phones, I don't answer, but I check voicemail later, and there is usually nothing there. Only about 10% of spammers/scammers actually leave messages.

But why does he describe his hair as "blonde" on the new RM format? One wonders how good his English is.

You beat me to it!

Al Parker and Casey Donovan are both deceased.

This morning at Von's gas station, with a discount for my Von's [supermarket] account, I got premium [91 grade] for $5.59/gal. Gas prices are starting to fall here in Palm Springs.

I think you have confused Montana with Oregon.

I think it is hard for many people to choose a lifestyle of healthy diet and regular exercise if they weren't raised that way. To me, it just seemed natural, because, as with @Luv2play, that was my parents' lifestyle.

When I lived in London fifty years ago, I didn't know anyone who had air conditioning, but it was considered very desirable to have central heating, so it was always mentioned in rental ads if it was included. I have friends who live there who still don't have central heating or a/c. During the unusually warm summers of 1976 and 77, when temperatures got into the 80s, the parks were full of sunbathers every day, and sunscreen was hard to find in the chemist shops.

That's the one! That handsome face, the penetrating eyes, the long fingers (he was a talented pianist), the insouciant slouch--sigh. You could take him to the opera or a leather bar, and people would notice him. When he came back from a trip out West, people commented on the loss of the baby fat and pallor of his days in the law office.

I think the cover that you posted is of a later paperback edition. The hardcover edition is available on discount websites.

I saw a review yesterday of a book written by a woman who was conceived through a prolific sperm donor. She has so far discovered 35 half-siblings, and has established relationships with a number of them.

That is NOT the photo on the cover of the edition of the book that I have, although it is one of the photos within the book. The photo on the cover of my book is of a tall, athletic-looking, handsome man, probably in his thirties, lounging in a chair with his booted legs crossed, dressed in a rather fancy cowboy outfit, staring boldly at the photographer. The photo above is of Wister as an uneasy young Philadelphia lawyer. Correction: As I looked later at the photo on my book cover, I realized that he is actually dressed as a dude, but in a wide-brimmed hat, in a photo taken in Wyoming in the early 1890s. He has a dark beard and mustache, and looks very conscious of his hot pose.

When I read the title, I thought, "Which king is Alexandre the 21st?"

Darwin Payne, Owen Wister: Chronicler of the West, Gentleman of the East. Southern Methodist University Press, 1985.

I have just finished reading a biography of Owen Wister, a writer most famous as the author of The Virginian, the novel that set the pattern for all the cowboy stories, movies, TV Westerns and musicals of the past century. I took it out of the library, because the stunningly sexy photo of Wister on the cover fascinated me--it was one he could have used on Rent.men, and would have made me interested in hiring him. Although he fathered six children by a strong woman, my gaydar still tells me that he was a closeted homosexual. He had a domineering mother, daughter of a famous English actress, and a weak, withdrawn father, a member of a leading Philadelphia family . He lived from 1860 to 1938, so of course he wasn't "out" in our sense, but he had intense friendships with many men of all sorts, from Henry James and Theodore Roosevelt to young men whom he hired to take him on camping and hunting expeditions in the wilds of Wyoming. In his early 20s, he became obsessed by a pair of Harvard undergrads, whom he described as, "No friends of my youth surpassed, and very few others ever equaled, the wit and humor of that pair of gay seniors." The first time he was approached by a female prostitute, he fled in horror. He didn't seem to have any interest in women younger than his mother until he was 38, when he suddenly decided he needed a wife, and married a much younger cousin. He frequently left her for extended periods to "recover his health" in the company of rough young ranch hands and military men in the West. Although he was a robust athlete, he often suffered and was treated for obviously psychosomatic illnesses, often triggered by long stretches of heterosexual family life, and he recovered by getting away in exclusively male company. He was also a passionate opera lover and composer, who wrote music and script for Broadway musicals. He loved to dress up in fancy costumes and perform on stage. When he was in prep school, he needed a date for the theater, so he took a younger male classmate, dressed convincingly as a woman. The biography, by Darwin Payne of Southern Methodist University, was written almost a half century ago, and Payne never touches the question of sexual orientation or activity, but everything in the picture he paints of Wister screams classic gay man to me.

Is Taylor Swift an escort on rent.men?

One fucked standing up, of course--that's what trees are for!

I remember my first experience trying to deal with pounds, shillings and pence. Oh, and also my first experience with LSD.

I had to laugh when I read this, because I had just received a phone call from someone I haven't seen in years, a German friend whose last name is Kayser. He did not have an arm like Wilhelm.

Sonny was a successful songwriter before he teamed with Cher, and he wrote and produced all of their hits together. He even wrote some of her songs after they were divorced. All four of Sonny's wives survived him (Cher was #2). His last wife, Mary, succeeded him in Congress.

It isn't so surprising that your masseur didn't know "Sonny & Cher": their career together only lasted about ten years, and was over before he was born. Cher's entertainment career has lasted much longer as a solo performer, but Sonny went into local politics instead, and would be remembered primarily by those of us in SoCal, where he became mayor of Palm Springs and then a Congressman; he has been dead for almost a quarter century. There has been controversy recently in Palm Springs about statues honoring former mayors, and some have pointed out that Sonny was a Republican who was opposed to gay marriage.

It's cheaper to buy Arrowhead in bulk.

And because of drought and water use restrictions, people with new pools are having trouble obtaining the water to fill them.