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Tender moment:

This is a cute guy I met from the net. He is sweet and handsome and a very nice smooth body. He said he was 22 but I think he was about 28 or so and he is a bit larger than the pic looks. And, he was a bit more effeminate than I expected. LOL But, a super sweet young man.

I had many first loves when I was growing up and before I came out. My first gay love after I was out was this adorable Brazilian guy and we were together for 5 years. I learned a great deal about life, love, sex and misery from him. It was an up and down relationship with him that I should have known after a few months it was not meant to last. He was in a bad situation and I tried my best to help him. I guess I didn't realize how deep I was getting. But, when it was good, it was magical. When it was bad, it was knock down drag out fighting. I look back and would never do this again but what I thought was my "true love" was not what I had hoped but he did teach me a great deal and I will forever be thankful for him.

I am toying with the idea of taking the President's lead and visiting Yangon. It's a convenient 90- minute flight from Bangkok, and, as a tall white guy, I would be the focus of fascination by those who see few of us. (This happened to me once in a small Chinese town. People rode their bikes up and down the street just to have another look at the strange foreigner.) It makes me wonder which of you has gone where in Asia. I started with Bangkok, Pattaya, Singapore and Tokyo in 1987. My repeated trips to Thailand allowed me to see much of the north, Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, and the border town Mae Sa, where I did walk across the border into Myanmar on one of the rare days the border was open to foreign tourists. All we could do then was walk around, but the people were very friendly and happy to see us. In Chiang Rai, I went with my all-time favorite bar boy.We stopped at his home, where he no longer lived, but kept a bedroom. It was filled with gifts from other farangs like me, mostly clothing. But, unlike those other farangs, I got to go to the temple with his mother, where she had me dancing with her in some kind of festival. You should see the picture! All of this after spending the night in bed with her son. Since I have gone to Phuket, taking the boat tour of the exceptionally beautiful Pang Na Bay,where the James Bond island is. No doubt the Muslim fishing village we visited was washed away in the tsunami. (It was built on stilts over the water.) Another tour I took from Bangkok was to the ruins of Ayuthya, and another trip to the river Kwai. In Singapore it is not that hard to see much of the country. But I was so bored. Gay life then was suppressed. But I did make a day trip into Malaysia, so, technically I have been there too. In Japan I visited Tokyo, Kyoto, and Hiroshima, riding the famed bullet train there, and getting to see Mount Fuji on a day when it chose to appear. The Peace Park in Hiroshima is very impressive, with a ruined building remaining and a room-sized scale model of the city after the bomb showed the widespread destruction. I didn't like the way those little Japanese kids looked at me afterward! Kyoto looks beautiful in the pictures, but in reality is a cramped and crowded megalopolis- or so it seemed. Hong Kong is fascinating, although I was there pre-1997. But it's a neat place still, no doubt. From there I took a hydrofoil over to Shenzen, then a bus tour to Guangzhou, stopping in the village where I was such a celebrity, albeit briefly. The bus had stopped at a restaurant enclosed from the village, but I didn't like the food, so took my walk. What's left? Oh, Vietnam, but not as a soldier. We went to Ho Chi Minh City,then flew to Co Mau and took the boat ride I described in another thread. And then there is Siem Reap, in Cambodia, which fascinated me. It's the home of Ankgor Wat. Another place with friendly people, unless they were killing each other. The village is quite interesting too. My last night there I finally cracked the secretive gay life. They do have a gay-friendly bar, but it was always rather empty and showed no signs of being gay other than that familiar rainbow. But return trips always involve Bangkok for some reason. I think I have been all over that city. And you? Where in Asia have you been?

Still waiting. Sometimes wonder if I'm broken...

So one would think. Yesterday, cbnick shared an experience with a pole dancer in Phoenix. Not only did I like the post but I thought, like Lucky, it might give a little encouragement to a new poster if I were to sign in and actually 'like' the post. So that's what I did. I remember how much I enjoyed my first 'like' and wanted to pass the experience on. Imagine my surprise when the 'like' count for the new poster didn't budge. I could see the 'like' in his 'received' list, and I could see it in my 'given' list, but still the 'like' counter didn't move one iota. Just to make sure, I opened the post again this morning, logged in, 'unliked' it, and then 'liked' it again. Same thing. It shows up in his 'received' list, and it shows up in my 'given' list, but it doesn't show up in the poster's total number of 'likes'. As I mentioned, this is a new poster with only a couple of posts, so it's not like the numbers have become too large to keep track of. Is it possible that there is a glitch in the 'likes' software? Or maybe the programmers have decided that some posts, or some posters, or some likers, are just unlikeable? Very odd, whatever the reason, and I'd like to think that it will be fixed. It was also interesting to note that, after a good night's sleep, I was able to open a post and 'unlike' it the next day. Even though this was just an experiment, and I immediately 're-liked' it again, it was nevertheless noteworthy that I was able to 'unlike' a 'like' even after several hours and, presumably, after several days, weeks, or months. That seems to open the door not only for undoing any inadvertent 'likes' one may have given oneself, but also to 'unlike' the posts of others should either the post or the poster not withstand the test of time. While we may start looking forward to seeing our 'like' totals go up as the years roll by, is it likely there will come a time when we notice them starting to go down, just as if some strange presence sits noodling at the keyboard of our self-esteem?

And don't think you've gone unnoticed, my pretty little cupcake! . . .