Transition

An announcement posted on ASPD this morning:

BustyGirl, “Amber,” our ‘Mother Hen” who founded this site, has succumbed to her continuing illness and passed away.

Services, and arrangements for a memorial fund to support her child, are pending. If you would like to contribute, please contact support@aspd.net for details.

While many in the ASPD community may be devastated by this news, please know that the site’s operations are not materially affected. Amber more than a year ago made management arrangements for continuity here.

My condolences to her family and friends.  I only met her once in person, very briefly (less than a minute), and had only a couple of phone conversations with her, but a lot of people in the ASPD community were close to her.

———————

Whatever the current problems or deficiencies of ASPD may be, she built something that was virtually the only game in town for many years and was a great resource for many of us.  There will be a time to continue the criticism of ASPD’s problems and debate what effect the “management arrangements for continuity” will have.  But not this week, please, on this or any of the other related threads on my blog.  Thank you.

Giving versus receiving

I read a thread on ASPD a week or so ago asking which ladies were best at “making love” compared to “fucking one another’s brains out.”  OK, mostly the thread devolved into the usual “name your favorites” responses, which were not particularly of interest to me.  I’m not actively looking for someone to add to my short list of favorites/regulars at the moment, and even if I were, that Mary clicked with Joe doesn’t say much if anything about whether Mary would click with me.

But there was one comment I found somewhat interesting, because it reminded of both parties’ responsibilities for a tryst reaching that level.  That fundamental point itself is fairly obvious; what was mildly interesting is the paradigm through which it was expressed, which I’m not sure is the best way to think of it.  Particularly when you look at it at a more granular level.

Funding

In the past few years, my approach to accumulating funds for this pastime — where/how I get them — has solidified into a couple of basic sources.  Without going into too much detail, one source is fairly steady, regular, and reliable and comes in small amounts; the other comes in larger increments but less frequently and less regularly/reliably.  Without a lot of analysis, I’d guess that the former may be about 40% of the total.  As a result of the irregular flow of the latter, sometimes the balance in my “stash” remains relatively low and other times it rises to a moderately significant amount, say $3,000 – $4,000.

Does the irregular flow change how/when I play?  Other than the obvious limitations

Belated

I had thought to post something on Wednesday or Thursday about Thanksgiving, and didn’t get around to it.  Actually, in looking back, I found a pretty good summary of several things I’ve very grateful for (particularly the first three) from last year.  Without the constraints of only a few items, I might have added family and the people with whom I work (because I genuinely enjoy working with them).

So rather than start from scratch, I’ll just endorse that old list and add a couple of things specific to P4P:

Belle de Jour

Belle’s “coming out” under her civilian name recently has, of course, been the talk of the P4P community.  I must confess I neither read the book nor watched the show, so I don’t have much of an opinion about those.  The coming out part is interesting, and may have a salutary effect on perceptions of P4P.  Or may not.

In any event, I’m a little bit late to the topic, but just ran across (through Alexa’s blog entry about it) an interesting article in the UK.  I’m not sure to what extent the author’s perspective, and her “investigation,” were objective, but at least a perspective that is not totally negative.  And she makes a very obvious point — that the reality of P4P for the lady may vary quite a bit depending on her reasons for entering the industry and what market niche she occupies.  There’s a substantial difference, quite often, between a streetwalker or girl working for a pimp and an upscale call girl charging $300/hour or more.  Sometimes it’s a good choice for a lady; sometimes it’s the least bad choice.  Sweeping generalizations aren’t very useful.

Alexa, of course, has some very interesting things to say about the whole affair as well; better insights than the newspaper article.  Be sure to check the comments as well; there’s lots of good stuff there, too.

Other than bringing these to readers’ attention, I’m not sure I have anything worthwhile to add.  So, go read those links and enjoy.

Emotional attachments

I ran across a thread on ASPD awhile back about emotional attachments in P4P, almost inevitably turning into disaster.  If the comments in the thread were at all representative, it happens a lot more often than I would have assumed 10 years ago.  In fact, it seems to be a fairly frequent discussion on a lot of P4P sites.

And I wonder . . . why do so many wind up in these failed relationships?

Whom to blame when ASPD is down

On another post, someone just commented:

WTF. Its Down AGAIN. This site is down more than up !!! Admins need to be fired.

Well.  I’ve criticized a lot of policies and actions by the staff at ASPD, but this may not be their fault. 

Five new rules

I ran across an amusing thread over at TER about “five new rules for whoremongering in the new millenium.”  Namely:

1. Stop treating your sessions as dates. If you want a date, go to Date.com and sign up and pray.

2. Pay in cash. Your VISA may be convenient, but the paper trail back to all of the pussy you’ve bought will be your ruin.

3. See a variety of women. Familiarity breeds contempt and it’s not strange anymore if you provider refers to you as a client or worse a friend.

4. Don’t overpay for foolish whims such as Pornstars, PSE, GFE and other alphabet BS. Find a provider who has the personality, temperament, and likes what she does.

5. Remember rule #4.

OK, amusing because it was provocative — perhaps deliberately so — and the post led to some heated words on both sides.  Some of the rebuttals were also amusing, for example:

Telling the world

I spent time with another of those “just right” ladies yesterday.  There are very few of my favorites still active, but quality is more important than quantity, n’est ce pas? Sarah commented on the other thread that

you wanna shout out loud for the world to hear!

Why, yes, I do. Although I’m still a bit suspicious of my motives with respect to the idea of doing so in the form of a review or otherwise on a P4P board.  Not that I think the ladies would necessarily object.  But would “telling the world about it” be for the benefit of readers and/or the lady . . . or to brag about my good luck?  Most of us have run across people who drift toward becoming obnoxious because they review and comment too frequently about their favorites — more online flirtation and promotion than sharing information — and it seems to be increasing in recent years.  So, in the interests of not becoming “one of those guys,” I’ll continue to communicate my appreciation and enthusiasm privately to the ladies and perhaps make the occasional brief and anonymous comment here, but I think I’ll continue to mostly limit my reviews on P4P sites to when the lady suggests that it would be useful.  Too many or too frequent reviews/comments, or reviews/comments primarily by just a few clients, are not necessarily a good thing.

MFM threesomes

Gia posted recently on ASPD and ECCIE about the idea of a MFM threesome, and others posted some interesting comments.  It seems very popular with the ladies; probably more so — understandably — than with the guys.