Charlie

No one I knew was described as "dying of AIDS" after the mid-1990s; they all were longterm HIV+ survivors who died of something else, usually cancer, though their immune-compromised status may have contributed to their cause of death. Younger gay men today probably don't know anyone who "died of AIDS."

The serious ones do.

I saw Gruberova's debut as Queen of the Night at the Met in 1977, and later as Zerbinetta. She was very impressive.

And one of the first things Riley did was steal a top recruit who had committed to Notre Dame but will change now to USC. The whole process stinks, and just shows that college football is basically a business in which coaches are paid much more than the students' academic mentors, and the 'student athletes' are interns hoping to get hired for full-time jobs.

I taught an introductory college course on academic research long before Wikipedia existed, and when it came along near the end of my teaching career, I was skeptical and would not allow students to use it as a primary source. However, it became more sophisticated over time, and as long as it is used as a starting point for finding primary sources, it makes sense to use it. For the purposes of a site like this one, it is a natural reference because anyone who is reading this thread can easily access information on the topic under discussion, without having to do in-depth research, and if they want to do more, they can use the links to the primary sources. That said, one needs to remember that the links on Wikipedia are not necessarily the only primary sources worth checking.

Well, it would definitely include Shiva's lingam.

I remember when Matthew Rush was mentioned often on this site.

I subscribed to it for my spouse, because he was an architect. Neither of us cares as much about interior decor.

FWIW: The poster above just joined this site yesterday to make this recommendation, in his only post.

Our first house was an empty Victorian brickyard worker's row house in an urban neighborhood that was just beginning to gentrify when we bought it, exactly 50 years ago. It was 1000 sq ft, two stories, without a working bathroom (the outhouse was still standing in the back yard) or heating system. We renovated it ourselves and created a working 3 piece bathroom out of part of a bedroom. We paid $13,200 for the house, and lived in it comfortably for twelve years, before selling it for what we thought was the fantastic price of $82,000. The house is still the same size as we left it, with only cosmetic changes to the interior. I just discovered that it was sold again two months ago, for $625,000.

I dropped my subscription to AD because there was hardly any architecture in it any longer--it was all interior design.

I am generally happier with a partner, but not in an old-fashioned monogamous relationship. I was an only child, so I am used to the freedom of doing things alone and making decisions for myself, but I still am happier as part of a couple. My partner and I have been together for 53 years, legally married for eight years, and there are advantages and disadvantages to both situations. Everything depends on the personalities of the two people in the relationship. I lived with my first partner for four years (I call it my "trial marriage"), and I broke it off because we had very different ideas about the nature of our partnership. That helped me to understand what I really wanted in a relationship, and I was lucky enough to get it the second time.

Other old opera houses in Europe also have partial view or no view seats. My mother was almost blind when I took her to La Fenice in Venice years ago, so she was perfectly happy to just listen to the performance in a no view seat.

I remember the first time I went to a showing of the quilt at an armory in NYC in the late 1980s. They had thoughtfully put boxes of Kleenex throughout the exhibit, and I needed them when I encountered the names of men I had known but didn't know that they had died. The quilt is much larger now. Thanks for posting this.

Was Rent.men actually in existence in 2007?

"I speak fluently English, As I lived in London past 8 years." Probably understandable conversational English, but neither one is really fluent in written English.

Probably a 70s model, because Jeff Stryker looks pretty young.

Ad is gone already.

One of the best hiring experiences I ever had was with an Israeli couple, who worked together wonderfully as a team. One of the least successful experiences I had was with a couple who worked together only because one of them wanted it that way, and the other one really didn't. Unfortunately, you can't tell which model you are going to get until you are already in the scene.

I always found that the more frequent the hits, the less the effect.

Yum...a threesome in a '48 Studebaker.

My spouse hated sports as a child and still does, but I don't think it was because he was gay; I think it was because he was shorter than his peers (5'5" as an adult) and very near-sighted, so he couldn't compete with them in most sports, and he turned his competitive instincts to academics. His father also was not interested in sports, didn't play anything himself and never encouraged his sons to play. His straight younger brothers, however, both played football in high school, but it was because they were quite large (6 ft and 200 lbs as adults) and had normal eyesight, so they were recruited by their coaches and peers. I was not particularly athletic, partly because I was really skinny as a teen (5'9" and 120 lbs), but I still enjoyed playing street baseball, though I wasn't recruited by anyone for most sports. However, my father was always involved in some kind of sport--bowling, ice-skating, golf--and he regularly took me to pro baseball games, so I enjoyed many sports as a spectator, and discovered the joy of playing tennis myself as an older adult.

My spouse was one of four brothers, the elder two gay and the younger two straight. Their father was a domineering lawyer who expected all of his children to go away to college and get professional degrees--preferably at his own alma mater. The oldest (gay) did go to his father's school and did get a professional degree, and later got another one at an Ivy League university. The second son (gay) went to his father's school for one year, dropped out and went to work, eventually enrolled at a local commuter college, where he majored in his favorite subject, math, got a degree, and in his 30s got a law degree. The third son (straight) was a rebel who went to a different college, left after one year and became a construction worker for the rest of his life. The youngest son (straight) went to a different school, got an engineering degree, later an MBA, and ended up as a V-P at General Motors. They were all smart enough to get into good schools, but followed different paths from that point. Each of the gay brothers ended up with two degrees and successful professional careers, but so did one of the straight brothers. It is hard to see how much difference their sexual orientation made. BTW, all four of them had long, happy marriages, and remained close to one another.

I suspect that one of the reasons gay men are more likely to finish degrees than straight men is simply the fact that they do not start families and have to support them, as straight men often do when they are young and sexually active. Gay men are therefore also freer to pursue careers that require academic degrees. I was always in the top five per cent of my high school class academically, so there was social pressure from family, teachers and peers to go to college. I completed two degrees before I even started working, and two more later, but I don't think my sexuality per se had anything to do with that; the more important factors were my freedom and financial ability to do so.

The Alamo is one of the most over-rated tourist attractions. The building that most people think of when they "Remember the Alamo!" is not the real site of the battle, which was a nearby barracks. That iconic facade that always appears in every movie or advertisement is actually a nearby church that the organizers who turned the Alamo into a memorial to the battle chose, because they didn't think the barracks--which had been turned into a grocery store in the years following the battle--was photogenic enough to attract visitors. The battle itself wasn't even particularly important, until Texas myth-makers got hold of it in the later 19th century, and the entertainment media latched on to it in the 20th century. Legends need heroes, so the most prominent men who were killed were turned into the leading characters in the battle of those who "fought to the death" for "independence." However, William Travis was actually a self-serving lawyer who was killed at the very start of the battle, Jim Bowie was an illegal slave-trader who was ill with malaria and was killed in his sick-bed, and Davy Crockett actually surrendered to save his life, only to be executed anyway. Sorry to disappoint those of you who still have your Davy Crockett coon-skin caps.