Well, wasn't Clinton poking Monica's pudenda with a cigar in the Oval Office bathroom? At the time we thought it was all about cigars, but in retrospect the bathroom was the real story. It was Clinton who brought the bathroom out of the closet and into the Senate.

Maybe there's a gap between the kinds of jobs where world-savvy and people-skills aren't as important, and the kinds of guys who are falling through the cracks. I don't know how to say this exactly. I am told electricians can make 100K. But does a guy who grew up playing video games even know such a world exists? It's not that being an electrician doesn't take smarts. But knowing how and where to even begin looking for these jobs takes a certain kind of skill some people may not have.

I am not sure what playing video games has to do with anything, but this writer raises a very important point and a good example. You don't need a college degree to get into one of numerous construction related trades, like electrician, where people make pretty good money.

But even in these fields there are gradations. I have had some electrical work done recently by a contractor, and here are the people involved:

a) the general contractor, the guy who evaluates the job, knows the people, farms out the work and schmoozes with the client.

b) the electrician (1), they guy who holds the license, gets the permits, buys the materials, pays other guys to work for him.

c) the electrician (2), the guy who does the actual installation working under a sweltering sun in a Florida summer.

d) the electrician's helper, who fetches and carries and pulls cables, buys lunch and does whatever he has to do.

Now clearly each is working at a certain level, according to his own innate capacity, skill, and qualifications. All the guys except the lowest level guy can make pretty good money, and (trust me on this), they do not have to worry about the cost of gasoline for their humongous limmo-trucks.

You can really take this paradigm and apply it to any field of work:

systems analyst, programmer, trainee

doctor, nurse practitioner, RN, practical nurse, nurses aide

editor, subeditor, columnist, reporter, copy editor, proofreader, telesales person, delivery person.

The problem in our current economy is that there is such a huge discrepancy in earnings between the lowest level in the workplace, and the higher levels, and that even though there are many higher level jobs going begging, there are not enough skilled people to fill them, because a significant part of any population consists of people who just aren't managerial material.

Fighting wars has traditionally been an effective way of thinning the unskilled young male population, but even that has gone out of vogue these days.

What does this have to do with the LW, you ask. Possibly not a lot, since he seems to have money to spend on himself. But if his failure to get his own home, marry, fly the nest, etc. is due to economic failure, then it may explain all.

Many people in his position, sad to say, end up being better off when the parent dies and leaves some kind of estate, retirement account, or life insurance, but since the mother (LW) in this case is a renter, even that avenue to advancement probably does not exist.

Probably there is no pot at the end of the rainbow. Probably these two people with no living relatives will continue to cling together in lives of quiet desperation.

But at least she should make him pay his share of the rent, utilities, and household expenses. That is a given.

A reader says:

By the way, my decision to purge this Flirt from my heart, was made easier by the fact that my husband and I devote a lot of energy to our sex life, communicating about our deep, dark desires, and acting out each other's fantasies.

I guess if you can do this, then there is never any real desire for infidelity, but I don't think that 99% of women in the real world could deal with hearing about their husband's sexual fantasies and enacting them.

Somehow the idea of a female veteran of 15 years of marriage getting herself up as a fourteen-year-old African American schoolgirl (or whatever his deep, dark desires du jour might be) and acting out the scenario for their mutual pleasure seems far fetched and tacky, but I guess if it works for you, then it works for you. I just think that for most people it would not, or perhaps it would just work for a while and then lose its hold or turn nasty when the fantasies get to be too much.

I can just see the divorce papers claiming that hubby made wifey act out unnatural sexual situations to feed his perverted lusts.

Still these are desperate times, so what do I know?

Great idea--not.

#1. Using hookers is not legal in Las Vegas.

#2. What makes you think that if he goes to Las Vegas and has sex with some hookers that he will now be fixed for the next three years? If he enjoys it, he will want to be back the next week and his finances and family life will disintegrate.

#3. Have you (prior poster) tried this, and did it work? Thought not.

#4. Has nothing at all to do with the original question.