It’s gone. Over. A whole damn year.

It seems like things just started, but suddenly wise words ring crystal clear: The older you get the faster time passes. I guess she was right.

In my late ’20s, I guess I’m already beginning to lose large portions of memory, leading me to regret not taking more digital pictures of my travels. I’m one of those travelers who fears looking ‘like a tourist.’ It kept me from lugging around a camera, giving me a quiet, smug sense of self-importance whenever I saw a Japanese tourist taking a snapshot of a public bathroom in Manhattan.

I wasn’t one of them. *insert Kennedy-esque laugh here*

But now, it’s different somehow. I continue to travel, appreciating the world around me, but find a smile forming on my face when I see entire families posing for a group photo in front of some random monument. Maybe it’s sentimentality creeping in. Perhaps it’s that I’ve found a higher dosage of generic Xanax.

All I know is that I like the change. It intrigues me.

I’m just back from spending a week in the Caribbean, walking away from their island casinos with just a few more bucks and realizing that I don’t want to live anywhere where there aren’t traditional seasons. Got some sun, got to wear the same pair of Diesel shorts just about everyday and bummed around with a friend. I’m a big fan of anyplace you can live shirtless and barefoot, leading me to indulge myself in spending my time at the gym and at the beach. Rinse and repeat.

Stumbled on a hot, French teenage-looking (18+, I hope) guy working out with me in the gym. He was one who was gifted with extreme youth and good genetics, appearing to be a leaner, better proportioned and more muscular version of porn star Pierre Fitch. Added, unlike Fitch, he also spoke in complete sentences and when he smiled, I didn’t cringe. It’s funny how Europeans can be so much more straight-forward when it comes to picking people up. He made the offer. I politely turned him down. As much fun as it likely would have been, my time in the gym is focused and one-sided. If this were Steamworks, it’d be a whole other story. He’d be on all-fours in ten seconds flat.

So, what did I ultimately learn from 2008? Several things:

* Don’t wait until the last minute to renew a Russian visa. Also, promising a government passport agent a large bottle of premium vodka in exchange for speedy service is almost always frowned upon.

* A vacation from yourself isn’t always a bad thing. Take time to step back, evaluate and fix.

* DisneyWorld, no matter how logical the argument, will not let you enter their park with a cattle-prod or ball-gag.

* I’m thankful to say the downturn in the economy hasn’t affected me. In fact, I ended up traveling over 300,000 miles this year on commercial airliners. I don’t know whether to be happy or sad about that… Have you seen the inside of a Northwest airliner nowadays? It’s like Buchenwald with adjustable air vents.

* While the Holiday Inn may have an international amnesty day for stolen bath towels, IHOP can and will throw you out if you offer to bring them back entire sets of dishware you ‘borrowed’ in college.

* If you spend enough time in Vegas, you realize that EVERYONE dabbles in gay escorts.

I’ve spent the last year traveling the world, but laid low on the public-face front, opting not to regularly update 15mm, participate in message centers and basically slacking off with a greater purpose. At this point, I think I’ve spent more than enough time making personal amends, figuring things out and now I plan on making 2009 the year that this blog gets back into the habit of jaw-dropping jot, traveloguing and the whodunit-style that made it popular in the first place.

Let’s face it: No one’s been able to replace 15 Minutes… The gloves are once again off kids and I’m taking no prisoners. While I plan on tweaking the format a little around here, you can look for more frequent postings (albeit shorter in length), regular eye candy updates and weekly gossip regarding not only the celeb front, but the niche-within-a-niche we call the male escort industry.

A quick shout-out to Daddy at Daddy’s Reviews for a spot on his top escorts of 2008. Muchos gracias! 15mm is looking very much forward to the top-secret revamp of the website and appreciates the hard work you do.

2008 was also the year that I reviewed my first escort. HERE’S the link.

Also, 15mm is proud to be a nominee in this years CyberSocket web awards for best gossip/celeb website. Sure, we’re going up against homo-juggernaut Perez Hilton, but at least it’s a good excuse to have a few drinks and celebrate.

Just as a preview of what’s cooking in the gay crotch-crockpot: Who’s ditzy personal assistant is making the email rounds offering private jet airfare to join his hearthrob boss at his Hawaiian condo in Lanai? Money, light bondage and a confidentiality agreement are the grand prizes given to the chosen escort who accepts the deal. Only platinum blondes and redheads need apply (or so the message indicated).

Which male escort is currently under FBI surveillance thanks to his penchant for mixing his sex work with for-sale psychoactives? While we’re not sure if his phone is yet tapped Dragnet-style, questions are being asked from those who are closest to him. With the drugs that are being combined, it’s no surprise that this guy might be taking a more permanent vacation at Club Fed in the very near future.

This escort listing website, teetering on the ledge of financial and personal bankruptcy, continues baffling updates to their design, all while wondering why they’re not bringing in the level of money they need. With the main event now canceled, how long will it take the public to figure out that their upper management is so tweaked out on drugs that most of the profits are snorted up.

On the Daddy’s Message Center front: Would the real owner of the screename ‘Donnie’ please stand up? You’re getting close to being outed by your online peers, so you might as well own up to the fact that you’ve been browbeating fellow escorts under disguise for years. These suspicions were confirmed by former management.

And finally…

With the return of some old faces, 15mm asks WHY? Another important question you might want to ask your just-out-of-retirement escort is his HIV status. Then again, if he was never honest about it before he retired, what makes you think he’d tell you the truth now?

Next week, long after the demise of CES and the whole AVN craptactular, I’ll be heading to Vegas to test-drive the new Encore resort by Steve Wynn. I got an invite for a few free nights, so I’m taking them up, shacking up on their dime and checking things out. I’ll be posting pics on the photoblog and day-to-day thoughts on things while I’m there. Kinda bummed I couldn’t make it out there for the final curtain on Mamma Mia at Mandalay Bay, but I hear it was a big, honking event: Audience members in spandex and platforms. Yeow.

Look for Disney’s The Lion King to start performances at Mandalay Bay in late May. I’d rather blow Bea Arthur than sit through that badly written musical…

Yep, I’m still twittering: http://twitter.com/bnicholas

It feels good to be back.

BN