forrestreid

He took to Mykonos well, lol

Where, on the Telegram group?

Just for the information of the perplexed, Micheál Martin is the Irish Taoiseach (Prime Minister)

The above quote from Jeff Tiedrich is a reminder of one of the more depressing aspects of the Kabul fiasco. It has shown that public discourse in America seem so degraded after Trump that many Democrats are incapable of admitting that Biden does deserve some criticism for the disastrous way the evacuation is gone, and lash out in response with basically say nothing more than “Who cares, he is better than Trump at least”. Now, it goes without saying, any Republican politicians who were were backing Trump’s policy last year (as they all were) to abruptly cut and run from Afghanistan have absolutely no standing to criticise Biden in any way. However, from I’ve seen of America, there is a lot of criticism coming from mainstream journalists and retired veterans regarding the way the evacuation has been handled, and a lot of Democrats seem to be responding by treating those people as if they were Mitch McConnell. I think that ten years ago of the Democratic partisans would have been better able to handle criticism of a Democratic president. In fact I would actually blame Trump for a lot of degradation in public life that has happened and has ended up in with Democrats telling nonpartisan experts to “kindly sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up” when independent voices point out problems (now, in fairness Mr. Tiedrich may have been responding to a Republican yuck instead of a credible critic in the above, I have not followed the thread - however, the above tweet reflects a lot of the sort of thing that Democratic hacks are coming out with). And I speak as someone who thinks America should have been out of Afghanistan a decade ago. I must say I don’t think I’ve ever been happier to be Irish rather than British over the last few weeks, witnessing how little the American defence establishment seems to care what the British or any other of their Allies think of the withdrawal. Here in Ireland we are very aware that the American establishment hardly knows the name of Micheál Martin, and we are happy with that.

That difference between those examples and Afghanistan is, that, unlike in South Korea, Japan, or Germany, the few thousand troops left in Afghanistan were obviously vital for the government staying afloat. If the USA pulled out all its troops from Germany tomorrow, obviously Germany would be more vulnerable to foreign enemies, particularly Russia, but I don’t think the government would automatically collapse and the country sink into anarchy. When you have such a situation in place regarding US troops, as was obviously the case in Afghanistan, well, it basically means that the US was in a de-facto colonial position. So it was all the more necessary that America would have a cold and clear look as to whether it was worthwhile maintaining its troops in Afghanistan. Although casualties were very low since the numbers were reduced, there were still a few, and the American air support was regularly bombing Taliban positions far the Afghan government. This situation could not have remained Indefinitely. You could argue that the cost to the US of maintaining the force it did it for the last few years was quite small, compared to the benefit of not having the Taliban in power. However, having the situation carry on indefinitely was obviously not acceptable Biden, with the speech about how he was very aware of the fact that he was the fifth president to be sending American troops to Afghanistan, and he would not be leaving it for his successor deal with. All that does not negate the fact that the way the US let things collapse is shameful. At the very least, America should give refuge to all the Afghanis that were put in danger by the roles they took up in Afghanistan over the last twenty years, from cooks in US military bases to women who became news presenters and are now cowering for fear of a kick at the door. Obviously the US government were taken very much by surprise. I read that the CIA told Biden that the Taliban would take six to twelve months to overthrow the Afghani army, and he believed it. Another success for their analysis!

It looks like the US is finally getting the finger out. According to a CNN report today: "The Biden administration is working to finalize an agreement with Qatar to temporarily house thousands of Afghans who worked with the United States and their families and are fleeing their country as the security situation deteriorates, according to a source familiar with the ongoing discussions. The source said it could be as many as 8,000 Afghans but cautioned the deal is not final. https://edition.cnn.com/2021/08/13/politics/afghanistan-us-qatar-siv-translator-housing/index.html Let us hope they finalise the deal very quickly the way the Afghanistan army seems to be collapsing. As the US has an airbase in Qatar, two and a half hours flying time from Kabul, they could presumably airlift out the 8,000 pretty quickly once they get going

I don't think the UK necessarily gets the gold star here. According to a report on the BBC "Newsnight" programme a few nights ago, there are a lot of Afghans who have a claims for asylum in the UK due to their work in helping the British forces who are being denied that. It stated that Britain was only allowing direct employees to claim asylum on the basis of having helped British forces, but not allowing Afghans who worked for contractors who supplied services to UK forces to do so. Also, it was claimed that the Home Office is insisting that any Afghans who have a blemish on their work record be left to the tender mercies of the Taliban. Newsnight interviewed a worker who had worked for the British Army as a translator, but is being denied a place on the evacuation flights because he was sacked from his job for using marijuana (an allegation which he strenuously denied). Because of this, it is claimed, the Home Office is refusing to let the British Embassy offer him refuge.

Some very arty shots there!

Hi Latbear4blk. Glad you took my criticism in good spirit anyway. There is a lot of food for thought in your opening post, though I think in general my own critique of what you say is that you are thinking about people’s lived experiences a bit too politically, (a bit like religious conservatives who criticise what they see as the “gay lifestyle” from their worldview, except from the opposite perspective) rather than as a criticism of any of your particular points. Enjoy your trip back to Buenos Aires.

Firstly let me say that I enjoyed the drawings by Marcelo Pombo, Latbear4blk And I agree to considerable extent with many points made. I too hate to see any misogyny or racism in the gay community, and I feel a bit uneasy when I see the likes of Amazon sponsoring their gay staff to walk in the Pride parade. Whilst not wanting to deprived the staff of their “day out” I cannot help feeling it implicates the gay community in unconditionally supporting the likes of Amazon. And I also hate the current trend of some who want to make a Pride parade more respectable by excluding those who parade in leather gear and as part of kinky groups and so on. However I think some of your statements are be a bit overblown. For example what you said about gay people being offended at being addressed playfully as women. In my experience no gay was ever really offended by that, unless there was a straight person addressing him and the gay man was concerned felt he was perhaps being undermined or insulted. And I’m sure a man who identified as queer would not appreciate being referred to by feminine nicknames by a straight guy who he (the queer identified guy) felt was trying to subtly undermine him in some way, despite his abjuration of the fake masculinity of the “gay”. I think the reaction of people in such cases depends more on the situation than their ideology. Also, your example of gay men in the gay bar being jokingly disparaging about women struck me as rather weak as a critique of gay identity. You may think it crass or not funny, but how do you know when the gay man is expressing his privileged position in the misogynistic patriarchy, or just being crass? I think there is an innate repulsion towards the sexual organs of the gender you’re not sexually interested in. I imagine there something similar regarding lesbians and men’s sexual organs. Of course in that case one can make the point that the lesbian joke isn’t from a (relative) “position of power”, But perhaps also you can read too much sociological meaning into peoples jokes. And general terms regarding terminology, I sometimes wonder if this is just a natural progression in the generations . I think there is a general tendency for one generation of a particular group to see the terminology last generation as being insufficient. In the early 70s, “gay” was seen as something of a radical word. The gays rioting at Stonewall were rejecting the compromises of the earlier generation who had referred to the movement as the “homophile” movement. You had a somewhat similar situation in the black community, with the move from Coloured to Negro it to African-American etc. How much of this is a genuine insight into the deficiencies of the terms in question, and how much is just each generation thinking it knows better, I don’t know. To be honest, your article felt to me a bit like somebody who is dissatisfied with a lot of the conservatism of a general gay culture (as I said I sympathise to a considerable degree) and attaching that critique to an ideology (being “gay identified”) that you ascribe to homosexual men of many different views and politics. Some of your arguments are in danger of disappearing down a bit of a rabbit hole, I fear. For instance I understand your point about the celebration of “coming out” putting pressure on men who might feel they can’t, or are not confident enough in their identity to do so. But that doesn’t negate the point that in general, that it’s better for sexual minorities that homosexual men come out rather than not. So the argument would be, is the pressure on gay men to come out a “progressive” pressure (the more gay men out the better), or is it better embrace a queer identity and it says “I don’t have to come out because I wasn’t already in”. That idea might seem logical from the perspective of a post-graduate seminar discussing a Judith Butler article, but I think it’s hard to argue that in the real world downgrading coming out would not have a conservative or regressive effect for sexual minorities. And to turn the tables on you a bit, your handle would seem to indicate that you are a Latino who is into black men. Could this not be seen as fetishising a different race, which could be seen as rather dehumanising of them? If I were the sort of university seminar lesbian who is in to that type of thing, I am sure i could work up 1000 words tearing into you as the worst sort of Latino racist who sees black men as dildoes (pingas) for his pleasure rather than men in their own right, who writes articles criticising the dreadful cis-heteropatriarchy of the term "gay" to cover up his own guilt at his own cis-heteropatriarchal racist fantasies of.....(you get the idea). To be honest this is something that one could spend a whole evening and several glasses of wine discussing, if we met up in real life, but those are some of the issues (or could I be as grandiloquent as to say “internal contradictions”) that struck me from your essay anyway.

Oprah has seemingly announced that it is not the Queen or Philip. I would bet on Charles - he is a bit cerebral well as a bit insensitive so he might have mused about it out loud without realising it would cause such offence. I would think William and Kate would have the sense to realise that any discussion those lines would be very poorly taken. I just heard some clips so don't quite understand it all. I wasn't sure what their issue was about the Royal security protection being taken away. Before they left their role as "working Royals" their security worldwide would have been provided by the Metropolitan Police, and paid for by the taxpayer (once Beatrice and Eugenie reached eighteen their Royal security was removed, so I have heard, as they decided not to be working Royals). So when Harry and Meghan left for a private life they would have to have had some kind of private security arrangement anyway. The taxpayer wouldn’t be paying any more. So what they are arguing about really, is how much Charles would pay for their security rather than make Harry dip into his mothers nest egg. So for that reason the whole "I just wanted my son to be safe" line went down a bit poorly with me. I am sure Charles wanted Archie to have good security too - the only question is who was going to pay for it.

Could I request that "ForrestReid1614502761" (which is what posts made by my old Boytoy account come up being written by), is merged into my current profile. Thanks

Last time I was in Athens I stayed quite close to Omonia Square. It was three years ago, and although I talked to a few Syrian guys around the square, like my previous trip to Istanbul, I was too nervous to take any of them back. I realise now I was looking in the wrong side of the square. I approached the square from the south west, from the Pireos Street end, and the evening I went there I didnt head to it until about 11.00 pm. I remember getting more and more nervous watching the guys hanging around as I got to the closer to the square and in particular I was a bit spooked by coming across a covered walkway very close to the square to my right (linking Pireos and Athinas Street). It was obviously a shopping arcade by day, but at that time of night it there was about thirty guys lined up on the ground with blankets, evidently homeless and bunked down for the night. I was not used to seeing so many homeless people and any sign of slowing down or dawdling meant that guys, mainly Middle Eastern looking, approached you and offered drugs and girls. I sat down on a bench when i got to the square and a guy quickly sat down beside me. “You like boys or girls?” he asked. When I told him I liked guys, he offered to go with me for 50 Euros. I asked where he was from and he said he was a Syrian refugee. He looked about twenty and handsome in a rangy sort of way. But I was too nervous. I got up and headed back down Pireos, on the far side this time. Another guy sidled up to me. He informed me he would go with me to my hotel. “What, why?”, I said in mock innocence. He informed me that he had seem me chatting to the guy on the bench and that I had been right to reject him as he was “not good”. He himself was an Iraqi refugee and just wanted a little money. He pointed to the arcade and said “I sleep there, no money for food, Greece very hard for refugees”. He looked at me pleadingly. However, he had unwitting spooked me even more by making it clear to me that my movements around the square were being monitored by the hustlers, and the smell of desperation off him was a massive boner-killer. I pressed a five Euro note in his hand and almost ran back down Pireos St. In the end I hired a guy off Hunqz. I saw a guy offering massages for €40. I decided to go for him as I thought that not much would have been spent if it doesnt work out well. It turns out it was a “straight” married guy who was trying to earn a bit of money on the side. He told me he was unemployed and he made some money by teaching himself how to do massages and he mainly did massages for an amateur football team! I thought this sounded suspiciously like a set-up for a porn film, but decided to go with the flow. His English wasn’t that great but I gathered that while he had gotten clients from other sites before, I first client from Hunqz. I started to wonder (a bit crazily) that maybe he was a straight masseur who had set up a profile on Hunqz without realising quite what sort of site it was... Either way, by then I didn’t think much is going to happen so I said nothing about sex, and let him get down to business. After massaging me for a while he got aroused and started to poke my side with his erect dick and to play with my ass. He then started to attempt to fuck me. It happened quite suddenly actually and without him saying anything - I actually had to stop him to get him to put on condom. I ended up having a very good time and I gave him €80 at the end of it. It was probably one of my best ever experiences with hiring guys. But the next time I am in Athens I want to try out that cinema, although I wont have the energy for the schedule of Santiaodc!

I was in Turkey three years ago. I had thought I had left a brief description of what I get up to on this site but I can’t seem to find it now. I was basically so nervous when I visited there that at all I ended up doing was booking a guy for “massage” from the Hunqz website. I picked a guy with a few good reviews, which I hoped meant he would not rob me me and leave me for dead. He was a little bit expensive for Turkey - I think he was charging the equivalent of 130 euro for a “massage”. Hi arranged for him to come to my hotel. I was staying at a small boutique hotel on a side street of Istiqlal Street. It was tall and narrow, with only about two or three rooms per floor and a breakfast room on top. On the day the masseur was to arrive it was staffed with a middle-aged male receptionist. He was very friendly, rather camp but a bit cloying. If it had been Ireland I would have been 100% sure he was gay, but as I was in Turkey I was less confident about my gaydar. As the masseur I booked was good looking and muscular I guessed that the receptionist would clock what was happening straight away, and I was wondering if my visitor would have any difficulties being given access to my room. Therefore before he arrived, I informed the receptionist that I had a gentleman coming to discuss business and said, casually, “you can just send him up when he arrives” as if I was about to show him fabric samples or something. The receptionist said he would. So the masseur arrived and came to my room. We had only just started undressing when there was a knock at the door. Obviously it was the receptionist about something. I was quite mortified, but the massage guy was very relaxed and just lay on the bed. I quickly threw on my clothes, went to the door and opened it it just a crack. The receptionist was outside and said “I have set up some Turkish tea up in the breakfast room for you and your guest”. Obviously I had to tell him that we were okay where we were. He seemed a bit disappointed, but that was that. When my guy left I was wondering if there would be anything said to him when leaving. So I stuck my head down the window as he was going down to reception, to see if you left the building fairly promptly and he did. I was relieved as I assumed that meant he hadn’t had much of a chance to be questioned by the receptionist on the way out. However I noticed the receptionist changed towards me from then on. He had been friendly in a smarmy kind of way beforehand, but now he didn’t meet my eye and barely said a word to me. That was fine with me, but I was rather self-conscious coming and going after that!

Great report Santiaodc. And promises of a Greece report as well - would love to read that. I must admire your presence of mind about the Taksim Square encounter - I would absolutely piss myself!

Hi Michael. Will this include a merging of profiles as well? The reason I ask is because although I have more or less the same name on both sites, the capitalisation (and password) are slightly different on both. So an attempts to do it automatically probably would not work. To honest I don’t really mind, I have only 20 or so posts on Boytoy and so would be happy to “abandon” my Boytoy profile in any event. However I’d like to be able to see my previous posts there. On that point, will the historic posts on Boytoy (a thread from 18 months ago, say) will be viewable as one of historic threads on Gayguides? Forrest

I agree, Riobard, it is rather on the nose. I suppose what I was thinking about it was, why would he not be a bit more discreet? For instance, he could have said something like “Cost of protein supplements is so high. Sponsors welcome” That could have been explained away as an appeal for sponsorship by a manufacturer of protein supplements. But also it would’ve been a signal to a certain audience that he is interested in a mutually beneficial arrangement . I was feeling the guy is not exactly the brightest bulb In the tulip field so the simplest explanation may be just that he didn't think about it a much as I am, LOL...

Not sure what you mean by the audience they court, I presume you mean the photos they choose to put up? I can’t help thinking this might cause a few excruciatingly embarrassing exchanges for all concerned if people get the wrong impression... I have seen a rather surprisingly example of this recently myself. There is a young guy on Instagram I follow. I came across him as he was the son of a friend of a friend. He is studying physiotherapy or PE teaching (or some such) in a US university. I started following him because (much my surprise) I noticed he has quite a few sexy pictures on his Instagram feed. He is a straight guy who is into fitness training and he posted photos of himself and a girlfriend wearing skimpy clothes posing at the gym after their training. I followed him presuming he was just a straight guy who is into body fitness. I got a little kick out of following him for purely pervy reasons, for what he presumably thought of as as innocent fitness photos, as he has a rather straight-laced family and I guessed he was probably something similar - several of his own family and his girlfriends family follow him. I noticed in the last few months he had a few sexier photos up, just wearing underwear. I was thinking, “He is getting sexier – maybe he finds he is getting attention from all the ladies in his class for his feed”” Well, then, last time I went on his Instagram page I saw he had added a single extra line to his profile - it stated: “Rent is due” Well after reading this tread there’s only one thing I thought.....and I was rather taken aback. And I also wondered what his family and his girlfriends family made of it. I wonder how he would explain it if his girlfriend’s father asked him what that was meant to mean? I am half tempted to set up a fake account just to pretend I am some Daddy Warbucks and see what he would be willing to do? I am terrible I know... A question for you American guys who are more familiar with US culture, is there any possible other explanation for him adding that line?

Hi Christian, Although you are a bit of a legend on Thai-focused boards, you were one name that I never expected to see on this board! I thought you were so devoted to Thailand and environs that you would never switch. I have been lurking on it for quite a while as I am thinking of going to Brazil also, in fact I may have gone this year every wasn’t for the virus. So welcome to the board and I look forward to reading a trip report in your inimitable style in due course. ForrestReid (Ronan)

My goodness, you all must have been such artistically and literary inclined children! When I was a child my favourite book was a book called the “3000 Question and Answer book” written by an author with the rather wonderful name of Plantagenet Somerset Fry. Like many boys I was a lot more interested in non-fiction than fiction when I was younger and with Mr Fry I was able to sate my desire (to paraphrase Dickens Gradgrind) with “just the facts”. The Guinness Book of Records was a close second. I don’t want to be critical of any previous posters, but I do wonder if we asked their mothers at the age of 9 or 10 what their favourite book was, I suspect a factual books such as the Guinness book of Records or a picture book of Star Wars spacecraft would feature more prominently then “The Little Prince! But all that’s pretty boring for a thread like this, so I will mention some of the fiction I used to like. I have a very vague memory of what I read before 12, except like nearly everyone else in the UK and Ireland in the 70s and 80s, Enid Blyton and Carolyn Keene (Pseudonym of the Nancy Drew author) featured prominently. I always preferred Nancy Drew to the Hardy Boys when younger..... And like many kids I really liked reading children’s versions of Bible stories (which, like non-fiction, is another form of reading I think many adults tend to forget when they are older how much they loved reading as children). I remember in particular a book of rather dramatically illustrated Bible stories which my brother (two years older) had at first. I only realised he had never read it when I drew his attention to what I thought was a rather fantastic looking illustration in it, where Jesus is facing off against the Devil and where the artist had drawn cloven hoofs in the corner of the picture to represent Lucifer. Presumably the artist thought that to draw the Devil in his entirety would be too shocking for young eyes. However, even that was too much my brother who tore out the page to my amazement. He told me that he wanted no picture of the Devil to be any any of his books! I think I was a bit reluctant to show him illustrations I liked after that... I was quite a precocious reader, and I remember being very proud of myself at about age of 10 for a reading a full length Jeffrey Archer novel (Naturally I look back at that with shame now, LOL). As I got older, historical novels piqued my curiosity the most.The fact that in the 80s, they were some of the few mainstream books where you were likely to get a bit of a gay storyline in them was probably part of it, looking back. For instance, I really adored Rosemary Sutcliffe’s “The Eagle of the Ninth”. In retrospect the relationship between the Roman soldier and his Celtic (male) slave which it portrayed it was part of why I think I liked it although I didn’t quite understand that then as I had not realised yet that I was gay. I also loved Colleen McCullough’s series on the last years of the Roman Republic. I was always rooting for the dictator Sulla in the earlier part of series, even though he was bit of a bad boy, because I was hoping for a “happy ever after” with his lover Metrobius. And as an Irish child, books with an Irish theme such as “The White Seahorse” by Eleanor Fairburn (an historical novel based on the life of Grace O’Malley) and the “Run Wild” series by Tom McCoughren (about a family of foxes) struck a particular chord. Would be interesting to see if any non-Irish member has ever heard of them.

Have you a link to the bluesystem website funic? Google came up a blank even when I translated it to Cyrillic

Bitchy Riobard, but I have to admit I laughed....

Ducky, I wasn’t really suggesting that the escorts were moving mainly for holiday reasons, I was more suggesting that they’re moving to where the market is for the summer. Although if an escort guy from Hamburg moves to Mykonos for July and August, it is probably partly to enjoy the Mykonos summer, and partly to be in a place where there is (temporarily) plenty of clients. Perhaps hard to disentangle the motivations in many cases, I would guess. Regarding your point about Hunqz not being that as popular as other sites in countries outside of Germany, I would not be so sure about that. Just as a quick example I looked at Telechapero for Gran Canaria today. It shows 29 guys there are available on Telechapero now. This compares to Hunqz having 42 guys on the 1st of December. So that would suggest that Hunqz is more popular than Telechapero in the Canaries anyway. Would love to see if you knew any sites that had more than Hunqz in Spanish cities, it’ll be interesting to look at more data.

Hmm, It would appear that the guys you see vary depending on whether you are logged in or not. Rather strange, and not helpful to the guys seeking business, I would have thought.