Phaedrus

The bad actors will become known, eventually :) If you're worried about getting what you want, it's always worth asking up front. That way you needn't book if the extras start to pile up; or if you're told there's no extra fee and then that changes after you arrive, you probably have a good case for calling that B&S and walking out.

Well, I think the new groups stuff is awesome. You can do a --lot-- more than before. First up, you can subscribe to groups, or to individual discussions within groups (not sure if you have to be a member of the group to do this, but I see no downside to joining); on the main groups page there's a link at the bottom to your subscriptions, and from there you can see everything that's been updated since you last looked at it (kinda like the threads in the main forum). If you click the "All groups" link from the main groups page you'll get a list very similar to what was there before (all groups, ordered by last activity, most recent first). The discussions in the groups (if you're looking at an individual group's page) now also work pretty much the same as the threads in the main forum; if you click the main title you go to the beginning, but there's little arrows that link to the last post (on the right) and the first unread post (on the left). So, you can still do everything you could do before. But now you can do a hell of a lot more, too!

First up - welcome to the board! I can't imagine you'll get SPs thinking you're a complete freak. I'm sure most of them have heard pretty much everything already, so unless your tastes are really Way Out There you're probably not going to be the first person she's had asking for whatever it is. The most negative reaction you're going to get is probably something along the lines of, "Sorry, I don't offer that service." Do what research you can. Have a look at the ads in your locality and see if anyone's advertizing what you're after, or possibly advertizing similar things. If you feel brave, you could put a post in your city's SP discussion section saying what you're after, and inviting ladies that provide this to contact you. You may get lucky. You could also hop over to the search page and see if anyone's asked about your preferences in the past - it's quite possible that they have. As for when to discuss it with a SP... I'd have thought that early on is probably best. Assuming that you're polite about it, just be up front about what you're looking for so that if she doesn't offer it, she can just say so and neither you nor she wastes any further time. One thing you should NOT do is to book a meeting without mentioning what you want, and then spring it on her the day before (or worse, when you actually get there) - you'll probably piss her off and if you cancel at the last second you'll really piss her off. Finally, remember that we're generally a friendly and non-judgmental bunch here; provided whatever's happening involves only consenting adults, nobody will think any the less of you for it. Hope that helps. And good luck!

Well, I don't leave things in the car... they just stay in my pockets. It's never been an issue. I guess if you're paranoid you could always empty most stuff out of your wallet before you leave home... but I've never bothered. The only problem I've ever had was getting a lapdance with keys in my pocket (not recommended), but that's not the point of this thread :)

Apparently she was there yesterday.

Good. Beer is not there to be resisted!

So, to attempt to take this discussion to greener pastures... I don't think there's a lot more to be said on the original question. However, it gives rise to two more. Firstly: is it cheating more to have sex with an escort as opposed to someone else? Or, to rephrase, does the exchange of money affect the morality of what you're doing, and if so, how? It strikes me that it probably shouldn't make a difference, provided that money was genuinely free to be spent on recreational activities... but it also strikes me that much of society would disagree, even if they might struggle to put their collective finger on precisely why. Second (and one which others have talked about already), assuming someone is seeing SPs and doing so behind their SO's back: how does that rate, ethically? The idea that a relationship should be ended in toto simply because one party wants something sexually that the other can't or won't provide strikes me as sounding terribly harsh, even without considering the impact on others of a full-on schism. There's more to a relationship than sex, despite the importance of sex. A discreet dalliance on the side (even with a different SP every week) may not be the best situation possible, but I can think of far worse things; we've all been through break-ups, and we all know they suck - and that's before you get to the acrimonious divorce with kids involved. So it seems to me that if we're going to consider relationships that fail because one person finds out that the other has been sleeping with someone else, we should also weigh in the balance all those relationships that have been preserved because someone who wasn't getting what they needed managed to find some other means of doing so, and by means of such a safety-valve the entire relationship was saved from being blown into tiny bits because there was no other way than to end it. And I think that SPs have a hugely valuable function in this regard; when we see SPs we can do so knowing that we won't have to call them afterwards, or otherwise carry on potentially risky communications when it may not be convenient to do so, and we can rest safe in the sure and certain knowledge that no SP will suddenly demand that we leave our existing relationship and all that goes with it for her. How many people have had their long-term relationships fall victim to an affair that was fine until it turned sour? I have no idea, but I'm sure there's an awful lot.

So, we have groups for food, and for wine and whisky, but beer has been unaccountably omitted. Not any more! http://www.cerb.ca/vbulletin/group.php?groupid=172

This looks like it could be fun....

That sounds pretty frightening! Hope you recover soon, Kianna!

Yeah... that's great if group owners remember to do it before they leave :) The problem, alas, is that I suspect that frequently won't happen, and for many it's already too late. One other thing which I've just discovered and I'm very happy about - you can now subscribe to the discussions within the groups, so you get notifications when they've been updated (and you can also, by implication, skip groups where there's nothing new). Which is awesome.

Does anyone know if there's anything that can be done about groups whose owners have either left he board entirely, or are no longer active? There's not usually a lot for group owners to do, but since there's stuff to do now, could ownership be transferred to a willing volunteer if need be?

The "All groups" page seems to be what you want. On the main groups page, it has a link at the bottom-right of the "random group" that pops up. What I really don't like at the moment is that groups now have an icon, and if a group doesn't have an icon then that space will be taken up by some of the text of the group description, which makes the pages messy as hell and means the group names don't stand out. But this can be solved by having group owners add icons to the groups they own... Also: groups can now be put into categories, but there aren't any categories yet and I didn't see a link to add them, so presumably this is something Mod would have to do. Mod, any chance of doing that when you have a sec? It'd presumably make navigating the groups easier...

I'm afraid I missed the bit where respecting the fact that you're in a relationship with another person was somehow equivalent to being unable to think for yourself. No, it's not. There is absolutely no moral equivalence between the thought of an action and the act itself. To posit such creates a standard that would be impossible for anyone to meet and utterly useless for all practical purposes. Well, that's why I put "cheating" in quotes in my post. For me, it depends on whether dishonesty is involved. If you're not being open about what you're doing with someone who may have a legitimate reason to object, then yes, it's cheating. Of course, that opens up a can of worms about who may or may not have a legitimate reason to object, which would depend on the exact nature of the relationship(s) you're involved in... It also says absolutely nothing about whether seeing a SP - be it cheating or no - is preferable to the alternative, be it miserable celibacy or a miserable divorce or an affair with someone who may have their own demands on you, or something else entirely.

Maurice Sendak's thoughts on getting old and dying. Worth five minutes of your time...

Ask your SO. If they consider it cheating, then it probably is. If you don't feel like you can ask your SO, then it also probably is. No. There's a lot of difference between temptation and succumbing to that temptation. The cookies that I merely lust after do not show up on my waistline. Of course, none of that casts any light on whether "cheating" is good, bad, or neutral...

And as for MisterT... he's an awesome cook, and does awesome TV interviews!

Yeah... just looking at the shape of these things, I can see how the ladies could become addicted to them. Akshully, hang on... how big are they? Just asking dietary reasons, of course... :)

Yes, this is clearly just harassment. And they don't understand the CDC; that applies to organizations who act in good faith and take down stuff that people object to when they're asked to. What they're doing is extortion, pure and simple. Alas, prosecuting douchebags like this is frequently not easy. The person behind it is probably in the US, but if the servers are in another country and the domain is registered in the a third and administered by a company in a fourth jurisdiction... well, it's difficult. And if someone does successfully bring an action against them in one country they can just move that bit of the operation to yet another. Realistically, it can't be done. Which, alas, only really leaves direct action. I'm not entirely convinced about the ethics of that either way, but I suspect that now this has come to the attention of the Interwebs, it won't be long before someone outs the people behind it and a hole truckload of crap comes their way...

Hope you had a great birthday, Loneskater!

AFAIK, there aren't any in Orleans. I have no idea why...

Happy Birthday, CH! Hope you had a great one!

I gave up on New Year's resolutions a long time ago. Any day is a good day to decide to make some sort of improvement to your life. And I refuse to be forced into it with a herd of lemmings on any particular day of the year. I won't be doing anything today. But tomorrow, or the day after? Maybe.