Charlie

I'll leave that up to you.

A seeming cascade of deaths in recent months of people I was close to--including my spouse and one of my old college roommates--caused me to reflect on the past, and I realized that every human being with whom I have ever lived under the same roof during my life--family members, partners, friends, college roommates--is now gone. It gets harder and harder to move forward as I feel dragged back to the past. I must be growing old at last. (Hmmm, perhaps I should consider finding an attractive young man as a live-in companion🤔.)

My landline phone identifies a caller, and earlier this week it identified the caller as my bank, so I answered it. A male voice--that quickly sounded AI-generated to me-- said that he was calling because he was from "American Solar" and was working with my bank to arrange free installation of solar panels on people's homes. He then asked if I were the owner of a private home. Well, if he got my number from my bank, then he would already know the answer to that question. So I suspected that the next questions would be about my bank accounts, and I immediately hung up. I googled the phone number of the caller, and though I couldn't find an exact match, every number that came up with that area code and exchange was attached to a strange foreign-sounding name (my background includes study of several languages, and I didn't recognize the origin of any of the names--they sounded made up). I found the bank's email address for reporting phishing attempts, wrote to them with all this information, and in 10 minutes I had a response from the bank thanking me for the report, which they said they would investigate.

I do wonder what this is going to do to Mahomes' career in advertising.

Yay!! Iggles win!!! And the score was so lopsided from the start that I could actually step away to do other things at times during the game, like walk the dog. I played tennis in the morning with a guy from Missouri who was a Chiefs' fan, and he beat me, so I got some vicarious revenge. Because of the timing of the game for those of us on the West Coast, I skipped the half-time show and took advantage of the opportunity to make and eat my dinner then, so I can't comment on the entertainment. I thought the ads were less interesting than usual.

I grew up in the 1950s, so I didn't know what the term "gay" meant until I discovered that it described me. To me, "coming out of the closet" was what one did when one found the piece of clothing one was looking for. My first sexual experience occurred when I was a senior in high school, with an attractive guy in his early 20s who picked me up in a public men's room where I was simply expecting to use the toilet. When he asked me after the experience, "Are you gay?" I thought it was an odd way of asking whether I was happy about what we had done together, so of course I said, "Yes!" The next day I described the whole thing to my best friend, who had never heard the term "gay" either, and I was surprised to learn that he had been having sex with an older teen on his newspaper delivery route since he was 13. From then on I thought "gay" was a secret term known only to sexually experienced older males; by the time I graduated from college, I realized that most of the experienced males with whom I had sex recognized the term. I wasn't openly "gay": I still dated girls and had a steady girlfriend in college. However, in my junior year of college, I had what was described as a "nervous breakdown" at college, so my parents sent me to see a psychologist. When he asked about my romantic relationships, I was open to him about my double life, and he said that the best thing I could do to resolve the stress caused by my double identity would be to be honest with my parents and my girl friend, so I went home and "came out" to my parents. They were surprised, but not as shocked as I had feared. My father revealed to me that his cousin Fred and the "friend" whom he had lived with for years were actually domestic partners, and were accepted as such by the family, although they never spoke openly about it except among other adult family members. When I explained to my girlfriend that my breakdown was because I was sexually attracted to males, her response was, "Is that all?!" I think she was rather naive, and we did break up. By the time I graduated from college, I understood that there was a "gay world" out there, and I could be a part of it if I wanted to. Within a year I was living in the center of a new city with a gay friend, and had an openly gay social life. I began a career in which I could be honest about who I was without flaunting it, because my employers and co-workers were sophisticated and accepting. Before long I was active in organizations that actually had the word "gay" in their titles. I never had any problem accepting that I was "gay," because it was simply a label that explained who I really was, though I was glad that when marriage between two men became legally possible, it was described as "same sex marriage" rather than "gay marriage."

You have pretty good eyesight if you can read those!

Youngsters today are much more sophisticated about the world outside their home than my generation was. For instance, I was a senior in high school before I realized that everyone in the world wasn't automatically born heterosexual. I don't imagine that any kid today isn't aware that there is a GLBTQ world out there from the time they learn their alphabet. Adults fight over whether kids should be taught anything about that reality in school, but in fact any kid who is curious about those letters can just google on his computer or phone to find out about it.

Definitely vintage! I was in the newborns ward of the hospital when it was taken.

Classic manspreading!

Personal computers weren't invented until I was middle-aged, which is why most schoolkids today can operate them better than I can. In fact, I was in the third grade the first time I saw a (black-and-white) television. I didn't have much exposure to the world outside my own small town. The only learning aids I saw were books. I learned how to type on a manual typewriter, and I didn't have one till I was in college. Schooling at all levels was very different for Gen Z than it was for me. After school activity was also different. I played games with other kids rather than games interacting with machines of any kind. There were no mobile phones to distract me. The only things I watched on TV, other than Howdy Doody, were the same programs my parents watched, and until I was a teenager, the music I listened to was the music my parents listened to. Kids lived much more in their parents' world rather than in a separate one of their own, as many of them do now. If kids worked after school, it was in menial jobs that served adults, like cutting grass or delivering newspapers. In many places, those jobs are now done by other adults who need the money. Pumping gas is done by the driver himself, if he doesn't have an electric vehicle, and many people read their newspapers online. The world in which Gen Z w grew up is different from the world in which I grew up, so it is not surprising that they see it differently than older generations do.

I have received several calls from her phone, but no messages. This afternoon I got another one, and as I suspected, it was her husband, who had her phone but couldn't figure out how it worked until now. The email from my spouse, of course, was from a not very intelligent spammer. But it does make me think that one could record his own eulogy, and use existing tech to make it available for his own funeral.

Today I received an email from my late spouse--I almost missed it because it went to my spam folder🙄!

Maybe it already is. A friend of mine died a couple of weeks ago, and yesterday I received a phone call from her mobile phone.

I don't know what your experience is with "folks in Youngstown," but the gay men I have known from Youngstown didn't have their first sexual experiences until after they had left in their 20s.

The idea of getting fucked always seemed exciting. The actuality usually felt like work.

One of the things one has to remember when one sees all the photos in this thread of men in the military is that they were usually taken by their comrades or in a studio. Before the 1960s, it was rare for gay romantic relationships to be publicly acknowledged. The couples in the photos are usually mugging for the camera, in photos that were intended to be sent to the folks back home, especially their wives and girlfriends, to reassure their families that they are so happily involved with their "mates" that they are not engaging in relationships with strange women. Military mail was often censored, and if the censors thought these were photos of actual homosexual relationships, the men would have been in serious trouble.

Given their probable ages, it could also be an older and younger brother.

Funny thing: I remember my parents' generation making the same kind of complaints ("They think they can learn everything important just by watching television!") about my generation--sixty years ago.

Unfortunately. our society pushes the message that romantic love automatically produces satisfying sex. Our sexual interests, however, usually long precede our romantic entanglements, and are hardwired in ways that don't necessarily coincide with those of our romantic partners. It's great when one falls in love with someone whose sexual desires complement his own, but I wonder how often that really happens. I suspect that most successful marriages include sexual compromises, spoken or unspoken. However, you can't force even someone who loves you to react the way you would like him to when it comes to sexual turn-ons or turn-offs. The best you can do is try to explain what turns each of you on or off (explaining the why is more difficult, perhaps even impossible to explain understandably). Perhaps a trained counselor could help you. As I have mentioned here before, my partner and I were sexually attracted to one another (we decided to become partners after only one night together), but we were also incompatible in some ways, and we both were already fairly sexually experienced when we met. Sex was never the sole or even primary bond between us, so we consciously worked out the compromises early on, and luckily they satisfied both of us. No. 1 in liubit's compromise above was the most critical agreement for both of us. Over the years, each of us had plenty of enjoyable sex with other people, and less and less with one another, until we both reached an age when we weren't really interested in having sex with anyone. We never felt that an exciting sex life with one another was critical for our relationship--we felt that sex should be fun, not something that we had to work at, like our different attitudes toward money.

Looks like a very young Marlon Brando.

My first sex in a car was in a Pontiac of that vintage.

I went to several of these museums when I lived in NYC, but the one I liked most was the one that actually showed me my own history: the Tenement Museum. My great-grandparents lived in a tenement in the same neighborhood on the Lower East Side.

I regularly go to the bank and get a supply of $5 and $10 bills, because it is the most reasonable way to pay my dog-walker (the daughter of one of my neighbors), who walks my dog while I am playing tennis. She charges $10 per walk, but I often don't know what my schedule will be until the day before the match, so I leave the bill for her in an envelope on my hall table (she has a key to my house, so she can pick up and return the dog). There are also many times when I give a small tip to someone for providing some kind of service, and I can't imagine handing the person (for example, a worker at the car wash) a credit card or a check. I have entered the 21st century enough to pay a lot of my regular bills directly from my bank account online, but I can't imagine never having cash on hand when I need it. I don't go as far as my late partner, who never left the house without a bunch of coins in his pants or jacket pocket.

I skimmed the list too quickly--of course, I knew Nikola Tesla (not personally, however). I guess I was focused on looking for my grandfather, whose birthday was on Jan. 7.