A brief self-description to set the stage.

I'm a U.S. citizen, caucasian, city-born and city-bred. I'll turn 60 in April 2005, which technically means that — as of the date I first drafted this introduction, January 1, 2004 — for the next 27 months I'd still be in my fifties. But psychologically it's another story, especially the psychology of others.

I remain the same randy and obstreperous teenager I was in 1960, albeit vastly more experienced, infinitely less anxious, and largely without insecurities on a moment-to-moment basis. But people make assumptions — unfavorable ones — about anyone "pushing 60," especially in relation to sexuality.

So I've been particularly interested in seeing how this development affects my sex life as I near and then pass "the Big 6-0." When I started writing and publishing this journal, I suspected it would not be for the better, given the age biases of our culture. Of course, that was before I met Darling, who has since become my partner in all things and the light of my life.

Plunce began on the first day of 2004. At that juncture I was unattached, my last relationship — of some three years' duration — having broken up in September of 2003. Right then I was looking around, while also flirting online with several women I'd "met" through internet matchmaking services, though not yet in person. Darling wasn't one of those, but that is indeed how we came across each other six months later. So Plunce is a firsthand account of an internet-dating success story.

Back to self-description . . . Physically, I stand at medium height, slender, average appearance. Dark hair and eyes, a complexion that sometimes gets me mistaken for someone with mediterranean roots. Reasonably fit, clean-shaven, still have all my hair, just a few flecks of gray. Generally dressed casually, though occasionally I suit up. Unprepossessing is the word. You probably wouldn't look twice at me on the street.

I have lived all my life in cities in the U.S. To protect both the innocent and the complicitous, I'll say only that I now reside in a midwestern metropolis, and prefer to remain both pseudonymous and geographically unidentified in order to protect the privacy of all concerned.

College-educated, with a graduate degree in a financially unremunerative discipline, I earn a middle-class income that enables me to live modestly but well. I work in what they broadly call the "creative professions." The specifics of my occupation don't concern us here, except perhaps to say that because I find my work exciting it hasn't dulled me. This may contribute to my ongoing hunger for life in general, and therefore to the constancy of my sexual appetite, which is the underlying subject of this journal.

Never once having found myself lusting after a man, I conclude that I'm indelibly heterosexual. However, since (like most men) I have the occasional homosexual fantasy, it's always possible that Mr. Right just hasn't crossed my path, and I try to keep an open mind. There isn't much I haven't tried over the years with the women in my life, and there have been more than a few. Most of what I know about women's sexuality (and much of what I know about my own) they've taught me. Often to my considerable astonishment, always to my delight.

Between the quirks that emerged from my own imagination and those that resulted from the desires of my lovers, I've developed a fairly wide repertoire of kinks -- enough so that while I still delight in the basic variations of oral and genital sex, I find it hard to imagine finding myself fully satisfied in a relationship whose erotic component restricted itself to what some call "vanilla" sex. I've never engaged in the public aspect of the bdsm scene, but alternative sexual practices make up a considerable part of the menu around these parts.

So the yearning for a companion who shares my enjoyment of these activities refined the search process I describe in this journal. Perhaps it also lends some added spice to that search, to my discovery of such a soulmate, and to our intimate adventures thereafter.

Enter at your own risk.

-- Don Riemer
New Year's Day 2004/New Year's Day 2005