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Not terribly long after he left, a movie came out about a sweet, naive, good-looking young man who moves to the big city and befriends a con man who had swindled him. The actor even looked a lot like my friend. The movie would have been intense anyway, but I found it especially painful to watch. No, I wouldn't consider looking him up. I continue to respect his decision long ago. I trust that by now he has pretty well forgotten all about me, and has had a great life with all the love he deserves, from person(s) of whatever gender he prefers. And maybe I'm just vain enough to prefer that if he ever does remember me, he thinks of the young guy he thought was good looking. I did look up his name in Yahoo and found someone of that not-so-common name listed in a little town north of San Francisco. That's possible. He at least explored having sex with a co-ed. He warned me that he might need not to be interrupted in the room some time. I don't think he ever mentioned much of anything about it to me afterward. In our "father figure" discussion, he said that he had cast other guys in that role before, but of course he never said if this ever had lead to any kind of physical relationship. By the end of the school year, when he hopped on his motorcycle and headed for San Francisco, I suspect that he had it all pretty well figured out, even if I hadn't.

I roomed with a guy for a semester who I never could quite figure out. He was a really sweet guy, nice looking, intelligent, and there was something really refreshing about his outlook on life and everything. But there was something about him that made me uncomfortable, which was weird since he was such a great guy otherwise. It was like he had adopted me as some sort of father figure. (He had a really tense relationship with his father, and I didn't understand that, either.) You guys know me well enough to know that I will pontificate at the drop of a hat, so it wasn't hard for him to sucker me into that sort of role. Eventually I caught on and was uncomfortable, and we had a pleasant enough chat about it. I could make some kind of offhand remark, and he would blow it up all out of context and importance. For example, he came back after a visit home one weekend and told me that he had broken up with his girlfriend because he got to thinking about some stray remark of mine. That was weird. On a couple of occasions, he told me that he thought I was good looking. I just muttered a confused "Thanks," and thought, "What an odd thing to say." At the end of the semester a single room opened up, and I moved into it. I explained to him that it had nothing to do with him, and I expected us to remain good friends. I just wanted a single room. He was profoundly hurt in ways I couldn't understand. He left school at the end of the second semester and seemed to go out of his way to plan his departure for when I'd be out of state, so we wouldn't ever have to say goodbye. I did see his brother occasionally and would find out a little about him, mainly that he was OK. He never contacted me or gave me info to contact him. It has bothered me all these years that I hurt such a beautiful, innocent person, quite unwittingly and in ways I didn't understand. I told this some years later to a younger friend who is gay. About 20 years after the fact, it dawned upon me that the guy must have been in love with me. I mentioned this to my gay friend, and he said that it was obvious to him from what I told him, but he didn't tell me at the time, maybe because he wasn't out to me then. I no longer feel just sad when I think of that guy from long ago: I feel sad and really stupid. So maybe my gaydar is not as bad as yours, but it will give yours a run, I think.

Oh. That explains why you didn't catch my drift. Out of the frying pan, on to the skillet.

A book you might enjoy: Seriously Funny: The Rebel Comedians of the 1950s and 1960s by Gerald Nachman It was summer reading for me two or three years ago. Since each chapter deals with a different person, you can read it in small chunks and in about any order you like, so it is good leisure reading. The book itself is not funny, nor tries to be, but not too stuffy either, though it does give serious looks at our society and culture. The same author's Raised on Radio is a more entertaining book that deals largely with the older generation of comedians, many of whom went on to be the pioneers of television comedy.

I didn't say, or mean to imply that I didn't like Houston, just that I wouldn't want to be there in the summer time. It's already hot enough here, and the thought of going somewhere hotter and even more humid for the summer doesn't fill me with glee. My visits to Houston have been too brief, I admit. Mercifully they were in the winter, as I hope future visits will be. I spent three summers in Dallas without air conditioning. I wouldn't do that again.

Congratulations! It sounds like everything is falling into place. Hope the job lives up to your expectations. You have such a great attitude. If I had a summer in Houston ahead of me, I might not be completely depressed, but I'd sure be looking for an exit strategy. I've been there just in January and February, and would like to keep it that way.

As a supplement to reading Of Mice and Men, you should watch related Looney Tunes cartoons. Hugo, the Abominable Snowman, wants to adopt Daffy Duck as a pet. He keeps hugging Daffy and saying, "I'm gonna hug him and pet him and call him George!" He's obviously modeled on Lennie. Then there are the two sheepdogs named George and Lennie. And I seem to recall some character that calls everybody George, including Bugs. Maybe that's a sheepdog, too. I can't remember. I think that recurred in several cartoons. Maybe when I get more senile, I'll remember things from my childhood in more detail and can sort this out.

My ancestors came here legally for one reason: There weren't any immigration laws at the time. None of them bothered to learn the language of any of the native people here. Some of them did learn the language of some of the other immigrants, and we've been speaking a fractured version of it ever since. (I don't think my English-speaking ancestors ever quite had the hang of proper English either.) They came here from several European countries mostly for economic reasons. American farm subsidies make corn and other grains cheaper to buy than the cost of production. When other countries send goods here under those circumstances, we call it dumping. The subsidized grain goes into other countries and competes unfairly with the local crops. Consequently the folk who've lived raising food all these generations can no longer compete, and can't sustain even their previous meager by our standards living. Somehow we manage to act surprised when they try to come here to make money to send back home to support their families and then maybe try to get the families here with them. From the US side, illegal immigration is a way to subsidize businesses by supplying a workforce for low wages and no benefits. The medical care and such that some illegals receive are actually a business subsidy, too, in lieu of health benefits that an employer might provide if the taxpayers weren't doing it. People get mad at the immigrants about all this rather than the fat cats who benefit from it. It is another form of blaming the victims. The US has no political will to enforce the immigration laws, because too many rich and powerful people would lose these in-effect government subsidies. But we can't just do away with the laws or legalize those who are here, because fear of deportation is part of how the workers are kept in line. All this is an oversimplification of a very complex issue, but it is a broader perspective than you'll get from the average politician looking to make some hay from this issue by proposing a purely enforcement solution. The more we have stepped up enforcement, built walls, etc., the more people have come here illegally. We've just made it more dangerous to come, by shifting the entry from urban areas to the desert, for example. Proposing that we do more of something that hasn't worked is typical behavior for politicians. The demonstrations, such as they were, just caused more resentment against the illegals and played into the hands of the political demagogues. I wonder who thought that having them would be a good idea?

If the dogs are out howling and barking all night, the owner is not looking after their needs either, I don't think.

Old people in the South used to call them "dopes." I don't know if that goes back to the time when Coca Cola really was a coca cola.

Mosquitos prefer to stay close to the ground. It may be an evolutionary thing in that the mosquitos that flew higher were more likely to get eaten by bats or something.

Around here, there are enough people in Chinese restaurants who speak Chinese. What they need are people who speak Spanish. It seems like at lunch time most of the folks you see in Chinese restaurants in this area are Mexicans. A place near where I used to live had a lot of Mexican working men come for lunch. One of the Chinese women would speak very fluent Spanish to them.

I don't think it was Twain, though he may have quoted it. This page lists a shorter anonymous version. You might be interested in some of the other quotations there. If you don't know Twain's Letters from the Earth and if you're interested in a satirical view of religion, I suggest you might like it.

Depends on how you interpret that. Just don't ask and don't tell.

No, they are different. One chews on human toes, but the other doesn't. Also, lizards are reptiles and salamanders are amphibians.

An epiphany in the middle of Lent, huh. I used to know a counselor whose practice (at least at that time) dealt mostly with eating disorders. It sounded to me like a terrible way to spend his day, but I realize that he made an important difference in most of those folks' lives.

That was one of my favorite poems from high school, too, and that was even before the song. In that fog of time, I had forgotten that it was by Robinson and not from Masters' "Spoon River Anthology." Coincidentally, I just received email from an old friend from whom I rarely hear. He doesn't communicate much with people from his past partly because he considers himself such a great failure. I've always envied him, and his life sounds nearly perfect to me. Also, coincidentally, the message, while needling humor, concerned my potential epitaph.

70% boyish

That's really funny. I've not said anything in this thread before because I don't really have anything much to say on the topic. I realize that I rarely let that stop me in other threads. As I think over the folk whom I know to be gay, I don't see a lot of pattern. Hardly any of them would I call effiminate, and I don't think they are "acting straight," but just being themselves. I've known guys who were sort of swishy who I can easily believe are about as straight as one can get. I even wonder if sometimes effiminate gays are the ones putting on an act. A guy told me about his real estate agent who had been a big college football star (maybe went on the the pros--I dont' recall). He said the agent had now adopted a very stereotypically gay manner. Well, which is the real person, the macho football player or the large swishy real estate agent? Both? Neither?

I was poking around in a genealogical web site, and they were making a distinction between the Pennsyvania Dutch, the Gay Dutch, and the Plain Dutch. The first confusion is that none of these were actually Dutch. They were Germans. The Gay Dutch were the Lutherans and some of the Reformed, it said. I assume they were called that in contrast to the Plain Dutch, like the Amish and the Mennonites.

Just as well. You would have been offended.

Oh, then maybe he really is gay after all.

That was more than anyone else had replied over the 5 or 6 hours since his post.

You must have had more income than you expected, or else you've edged into that pesky alternative minimum tax.

Welcome.