Charlie

Sanker, 65, died of cancer in Los Angeles. He was the founder of the annual White Party in Palm Springs in 1990, which has become the biggest circuit party in the US, attracting up to 30,000 participants (that's even bigger than the Palm Springs Weekend!). The party has had to be cancelled the past two years because of the pandemic. The City of Palm Springs awarded him a celebrity star on Palm Canyon Drive downtown, in honor of of the renown he brought to Palm Springs as a gay destination.

We went to the same school, not at the same time!

For what it is worth (i.e., nada), his father Ozzie Nelson's childhood home was around the corner from mine, and he and I went to the same small public high school.

I'm pretty sure that photo was taken in Palm Springs.

I participated in both the staid Annual Reminder picketing with Frank Kameny in the 1960s and the first exuberant Gay Pride March in 1970, so none of this surprises me. It just emphasizes the fact that being gay is only one part of any individual's make-up and history, and not necessarily the most important part.

Then: Reading the sports pages in the newspapers and realizing that photos of basketball players shooting the ball and exposing their armpit hair excited me. Now: Playing Bridge for three hours as the only male in a group of straight women.

He's into bondage, so you're gonna need a bigger rope.

Would you do a bondage scene with someone who describes himself as "fresh out of San Quentin"?

No, someone else was driving.

I had sex once in a 1955 Chrysler.

Interesting: the socks he is wearing are the ones that Bomba donates to people living in shelters.

I miss that, too.

I don't remember any of these posters!

I probably was summoned for jury duty about a dozen times in PA and CA, but only was chosen for a trial about half the time. I generally felt good about the experience. However, one of the hardest tasks I ever had was serving as foreman on an assault trial that lasted for several days. It was obvious to all of us that the defendant was guilty of stabbing the victim; however, one woman felt sorry for the young man who committed the crime, a small and somewhat pathetic creature who claimed he felt threatened by the victim, and she was reluctant to find him guilty of the charges, because she felt it would be her fault if he were sent to prison and was bullied there. It took all my group management skills to keep the other jurors from attacking her for prolonging the deliberations, and my counseling skills to persuade her that her obligation to the victim and to society was more important than her sympathy for the defendant. When I explained in writing to the judge what was taking us so long in arriving at a verdict, he was patient and willing to wait until I had her ready to agree to a unanimous verdict when the jury was polled. I was exhausted by the time it was all over. Several years later, in a different jurisdiction, I was part of the jury pool for a murder case. When the judge announced that the trial was expected to take up to six months, because of the complexities of the case--two defendants and multiple victims--and asked us if anyone had problems with that, almost everyone in the room, including me, quickly raised our hands. We were questioned individually about our reasons for not wanting to be chosen, and luckily mine was a good one that day. The most frustrating experience was a civil trial in which we sat through two days of complicated testimony, only to return on the third morning and be told that the parties had settled overnight, and we were dismissed. That was the last time I was summoned for jury duty. In CA, if one is over 70, one can ask to be excused without having to supply evidence for a claimed hardship, such as a medical condition. I wouldn't mind serving again, except that my situation is too difficult now.

Should the guys on rentmen.com be called iScorts?

This sounds less convenient than being called to come in for a specified time period; in that situation, at least you can plan ahead to be there.

I rarely read any book more than once, but when I don't have anything new at hand, I will pick up an old familiar novel, one by Jane Austen or E.F. Benson or Anthony Trollope, or one of James Boswell's journals, because it is like chatting with an old friend.

Mask-wearing regulations are still up to local or national authorities, regardless of CDC recommendations. The federal government still requires masks on public transportation and planes. Our city has numerous mask regulations, including a rule that masks must be worn on downtown commercial streets, and city council still hasn't changed that. Businesses like grocery stores can probably still set their own rules regarding masks if there is no directive from local or state officials. Yesterday afternoon, a group of us neighbors, all fully vaccinated and unmasked, were playing a board game in the game room of the Lodge in our gated residential community, and were informed by the staff that we had to put on our masks, because the HOA board of directors had not yet met to change their mask directive for all indoor activities in communal facilities. In the immediate future, I think there will be a lot of confusion and controversy about what is allowed where.

The fact that someone hasn't been hospitalized doesn't necessarily mean that becoming infected is "not serious." A number of people who have technically "recovered" from COVID still report a variety of medical problems. We don't yet have enough experience to know what the longterm effects may be of having been infected with the virus. Although I have been vaccinated, I am in no hurry to put myself in situations where there is a strong likelihood of being exposed to the virus. Nothing we do is risk-free, but that doesn't mean I ignore what the probable risks are. I am not yet ready to congregate unmasked in a roomful of unmasked strangers, any more than I will eat deviled eggs that someone has left on a picnic table in the park.

When I was a grad student at Penn, there was a rumor that there were so many good-looking tall blond undergrads there at that time because the dean of admissions favored that type.

I put premium (91) in my car at my local Phillips station in Palm Springs two hours ago: $4.55/gal.

And then hand them to the Pony Express?

I have had sciatic nerve pain from time to time, but never as extreme as some of the cases here, and it has always resolved itself, so I have nothing to offer other than sympathy.

Tattoos are a bitch if the marriage doesn't last--you can't take them off easily, and you can't pawn them.

I have worn some kind of ring on my left hand for all of my adult life, so when I got married, I simply replaced the signet ring with a gold wedding band. My spouse did the same. We were never formally "engaged" (we just lived together to 45 years before we got married), so I have never thought about engagement rings for men. My parents were never formally engaged, so my mother didn't have an engagement ring. They had been married about 20 years when something happened that made my mother wish she had an engagement ring like one of her friends did, so my father told her to go out and buy one. She bought a simple diamond ring, and wore it all the time with her wedding ring for the rest of her life.