Charlie

Kyrgios is a fantastically talented player, but I have difficulty watching him, because his constant chatter drives me crazy, especially his criticism of his team--what on earth does he expect them to do?! He reminds me of John MacEnroe at his worst. (I couldn't stand watching him either in his playing days.) Novak is looking more and more like a dignified spokeman for the sport, regardless of his anti-vax nonsense. With the sound turned off, however, it was great fun to watch the match, which I did from beginning to end.

The Russian Tennis Federation has proudly claimed that Rybakina is "our product," and to a large extent, that is true--she was in the Russian program until she was 18; what Kazakhstan has provided is really the proper packaging and marketing of the product. I feel sorry for her, because she has to tiptoe carefully around the minefield that her international success has caused, as she tries to thank everyone appropriately without stepping on any political mines. So far her natural shyness and reticence have served her well, and I hope Putin continues to stay off the subject.

If you had come by the house at 3:30, you would have found it was 115 here, too.

Mack appears to have developed a beer gut.

I normally play tennis on Sunday morning from 7:30 to 9:30, but the four of unanimously agreed to stop playing our match at 9:05 this morning, when the temperature hit 100F.

One might note that Goolagong was also a mother when she won.

Well, a Russian has won Wimbledon in spite of the AELTC. Although Rybakina officially represents Kazakstan, she still lives in Moscow, but she was diplomatic enough in her acceptance speech not to say anything about being Russian, though she did mention that her parents couldn't be there to watch the match.

And Goolagong was Ash Barty's model.

"Of course"? (Careful: we're veering into Politics here.)

The Russian federation didn't want to invest in developing her, so she found another former Soviet Republic which did. She is certainly not alone in that regard (see Kukushkin, Putinseva, etc.).

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.