Charlie

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.

When one has nothing better to do, it is always fun to wonder what the next British monarchs will call themselves. Edward VII was actually named after his father, Prince Albert, and was called "Bertie" by the family, but he chose to use a traditional name rather than become the first "King Albert". George VI was also named Albert and called "Bertie" by his family, but he too chose a different name as monarch, only in his case it was the name of his father. Edward VIII was called "David" by his family, but he chose to continue his grandfather's name. Considering that Charles I and II were not exactly beloved monarchs, one wonders whether Prince Charles will want to resurrect that 17th century reference or choose something else (George VII?), or follow in the steps of Pope Francis and start a new tradition.

I have two cars, one with the gas cap on the left and other one on the right. Those little triangles are very helpful in reminding me which side of the pump to pull up to.

I just filled my car at my local station: $6.29/gal for regular. The person who used the the pump before me left the receipt at the pump: $170.88! It was obviously a pretty big tank.

I read it as a graduate student at U of P. The most unforgettable thing about it may have been the title.

The hoopla about the Platinum Jubilee this weekend has revived some memories for me. My maternal grandmother was born in 1885, in New York City, which qualified her to claim to be a native-born American. However, a child's nationality is usually determined by its parents, and in the 19th century, a married woman's nationality was determined by her husband's. Her mother was born and raised in Scotland by British parents, and emigrated on her own to New York, where she met and married my great-grandfather. He was born and raised in Bermuda, where his English family had lived for several generations; although he had moved to live in New York as a young man, he had never formally renounced his allegiance to his monarch Victoria, so my grandmother was technically a subject of the Queen-Empress. She was also the 12th of thirteen children born to my great-grandparents, and her two oldest sisters had both returned to Bermuda, where they married local men and raised their own families. My great-grandfather died suddenly when my grandmother was only three years old, and her mother sent her to Bermuda, to be raised by her father's elderly step-mother, helped by her two married sisters. She grew up as a typical child of the colonial Empire, with references to the monarchy everywhere, and she was seventeen before she finally returned to New York, a "British" teenager still mourning the recently deceased Queen Victoria. In New York, she lived with her twenty year old brother, who had lived there all his life, and his Irish-American wife. Her new sister-in-law had an unmarried thirty year old brother, who immediately fell in love with the teenager, and within a few months they were married, making her truly an American, by marriage as well as by birth. But she often felt confused about whether she was more British or more American. I spent a lot of time with my widowed grandmother when I was growing up (I was her oldest grandson), and I'm sure that my fascination with her bifurcated identity had a lot to do with my own personal and professional interest in American and British literature and history. By my adolescence, I had memorized the names and dates of both the American Presidents and the British monarchs. My undergraduate honors project was on Jane Austen (I hear someone murmuring, "That's so gay...." but she was a favorite of my grandmother as well), and I proposed a master's thesis on James Fenimore Cooper's feeble attempt to write an American novel in imitation of Austen to my advisor (he just rolled his eyes). The only cruise I have ever taken was to Bermuda, where I visited the family home in which my grandmother and great-grandfather were raised, and met some of my distant relations. I achieved my ambition to live in both New York and London. As a child, I watched Elizabeth's coronation on TV, and, of course, I went to England for Elizabeth's Silver Jubilee, the first such celebration in my lifetime. My grandmother always followed the news about all Victoria's successors, and if she were still alive, I'm sure she would be glued to the TV for this latest event.

Yes, like the fact that masturbation won't really make hair grow on your palms.

Actually, when I was young, no one knew the term "gay" except men who were gay.

I read the novel of that title sixty years ago, but don't remember anything about the plot anymore. Maybe I should find a copy and read it again.

Dancing on tiptoes.

Some people have wondered why I faithfully attended the high school reunions but didn't go to the college reunions. I grew up in a small town and went to school with pretty much the same kids from kindergarten through high school. But I went away to an out-of-state college and never lived in my hometown, or even my native state, again. The high school reunions were the best way to reconnect with the kids I had grown up with. My best friend in high school followed the same kind of path as I did, but we remained best friends for the rest of his life, and we always attended the reunions together. He even managed to attend the 35th reunion when he was dying of AIDS. As our classmates aged and became more sophisticated, many of them realized that both of us were gay, and often mistakenly assumed that we were a "couple." When I attended the 40th reunion alone, several of them privately offered me condolences on the loss of my "partner." The college experience was very different, because I didn't know anyone when I arrived there. Although I made friends over four years, the only relationship that survived long beyond graduation was with someone from a different class, so I didn't have the same motivation to return for the class reunions.

He actually said, "You can't go home again."

I managed to attend almost all of my high school reunions--usually every five years--through the 50th, but by then I was living thousands of miles away and it became too much of an effort to see fewer and fewer people I still cared about. I went to only one of my college class reunions, the 50th, because one of my favorite professors was going to be there as well, and because I was going to be inducted into a couple of alumni societies. It was worth the trip, because the professor died shortly afterwards, so I had a chance to tell him in person how much he had influenced my life. Surprisingly, another one of my professors was also there--the one who had taken advantage of me sexually. He had become a pathetic old man attached to his oxygen tank, and when I sat down next to him to speak to him, I realized he didn't remember me at all, which was just as well. I doubt that I will attend any more reunions.

I believe her problem was with reimbursement by the insurance company for in-home aides (they were not in an assisted living facility). It was ten years ago, and she did not go into details with me.