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 this writing, January 1, 2004 -- for the next 27 months I'm still in my fifties, given a base-10 mathematics. 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 about anyone "pushing 60," especially in relation to sexuality. So I'm particularly interested in seeing how this development affects my sex life, though I suspect it will not be for the better, given the age biases of our culture.
Physically, I stand just under 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.
With a brief childhood interlude in a small foreign town and a large foreign city, 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.
Presently I'm unattached, my last relationship -- of some three years' duration -- having broken up this past September. At the moment I'm looking around, while also flirting online with two women I've "met" through internet matchmaking services: a 35-year-old divorcee and a 50-something divorcee, both of whom live in the same city I do.
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 refines the search process I'll describe in this journal, and perhaps lends it some added spice.
Enter at your own risk.
-- Don Riemer
New Year's Day 2004
