Going Deep: A Gay Guide to Reality

I was recently at an all-gay birthday party, standing in a small gaggle of well-known friends comparing ages. The birthday “boy” was 44. I let the group know I will be 59 this April.

Then said, “I’m old.”

“You’re not old!” One of them insisted, his eyes confused.

I stood my ground and insisted that, by the numbers around life expectancy, I was in the final 3rd or 4th of my life. His expression changed to befuddled surprise. He then scanned me up and down before saying, with some exasperation, “But you’re not ‘old.’”

It was an attempt to be gracious, so why, even as I write this, does it piss me the fuck off?

Isn’t that what we all want to hear? Isn’t that what we all want to believe? Isn’t that polite?

The response was all those things, and I still want to discuss it.

But when I push the subject, and I don’t fawn over the Emporor’s forever young clothes, even when I’m the one wearing them, the frigid response I receive tells me I’ve broken a social contract by saying the word “old.”

One reason I want my olderness confirmed is because getting old, especially gay-old, is so disorienting.

I shouldn’t be struggling with this. I was supposed to be dead at 23. That’s what the doctor said when he told me I was HIV+ at 20. Decades and decades ago, AIDS was supposed to kill me. It didn’t. It still hasn’t. In fact, by the numbers of my regularly measured blood work, I’ve never been healthier.

I need help figuring out how to be this way, how to be gay, out, male, alive, and old. To be me. Right now.

What the fuck is going on?

Disorientation turns into fear, and fear turns into anger.

Yes, gurl, she’s old. Calm down!

We have collectively created a culture where death only comes from a bullet, a bomb, a space phaser, a drive-by, a drug overdose, a medieval ax, or a superhero’s pummeling. That’s how we see it play out in the media.

It doesn’t come to good people who have followed all the rules, bought all the supplements, and stretched through every yoga class.

Except that it does.

That’s reality.

Another reason I want my age acknowledged is because I know I’m invited to a themed party called “Aging, or Olds, or Elders,” one that includes big ideas, deep love, and fleeting beauty that is usually only witnessed by those left behind at funerals.

Every gay knows (or should know) that it’s rude to attend a party and not participate in the theme.

I want to pack, wear, and inhabit the most stunning version of the theme on offer. Please don’t ask me to show up wearing what I arrived wearing 35 years ago. First of all, it doesn’t fit. More importantly, it’s not as interesting as the metaphorical garb this new adventure called “aging” suggests.

How cool would it be to have a role in my culture because of my proximity to the end of my natural life cycle? Not in spite of it.

I’d like to live in a village described by Don Kilhefner in a White Crane Institute essay, Gay Adults! Gay Adults! Where Are You? where each stage of life has its own gifts and responsibilities.

If you’d like to hear me in conversation with Mr. Kilhefner, we discussed “Boy Energy vs. Man Energy vs. Elder Energy” and several other topics on my podcast.

“Cultural anthropologists tell us that whenever and wherever humans are found, there seems to be a patterning of life into four stages called youth, adult, elder, and ancestor. Moreover, each of these stages has significant social roles to play in the village. There is a profound and fundamental interdependence between these stages and societal roles upon which the health and vitality of the village or tribe are largely based.”

Unfortunately, American culture, and especially gay culture, doesn’t recognize its youth, adults, elders, and ancients. We don’t celebrate the challenges and gifts unique to each stage of life. We don’t mentor up or down the age spectrum. We simply have young people and old people.

The young are celebrated and left alone to sort out life, while the old are cloaked in invisibility. This allows the olds and the youngs to maintain a kind of magical thinking – a fantasy where the culturally imposed indignities of being forgotten and deemed useless are shielded from witnesses – like a curtain pulled in an emergency room to separate both sides against witnessing the vulnerability, pain, and death, we close our eyes to the realities of aging and mortality.

Unfortunately, attention, let alone deference and respect, are only given to elders in movies, not in real life. I’m Daddied, in a good way, on the dance floor and hookup apps, but it’s not the same thing as having a role. It feels more like a superficial outfit assessment than a social role. Like I’m now wearing a United Federation of Planets Starfleet Captain’s uniform instead of the Spiderman costume. No fundamental role changes, just a different look.

I have a fantasy of being a respected elder, but I don’t know where to do that or with whom.

And, to be honest, I don’t want to leave the dance floor.

I’ve scoffed at the idea that I have Peter Pan Syndrome, a Neverland desire to stay forever young. Still, aside from Cher, I don’t know many 60-year-olds wearing body glitter under psychedelic lights as they dance to booming music until four in the morning.

Maybe I’m paving a road forward. Maybe a mentor will appear and guide me. Maybe I’m in the wrong room.

Since nobody is old, it’s hard to find fellow travelers. I feel lost and alone. I keep dancing.

Is it time to throw in the towel and give up the intense maintenance required for physical beauty and sexual relevance? Do I capitulate to aging and settle for the comfort of a sloth-like existence in front of the TV? Like all the waves of hotties I’ve seen at the gay gym over decades, rise to their peak of beauty, reign in our gay social sexual circles, and then, as the beauty slowly fades, disappear?

Time is running out.

The Centers for Disease Control says men will live until 73.5 years old. That gives me 14.5 years left.

Adding the words “gay men” to my Google search was very depressing. It says we need to reduce that life expectancy number by 20 years, giving me 3.5 years left.

My mom is now the only person in my bio-family older than me. All my grandparents, my father, and my older brother are dead. The gay men closest to me in my 20s are dead. My best friend Alvin, my 12-step mentor Gustav, and my boyfriend Tony, all men 5-10 years older than me. All gone.

That’s reality.

We spent so much time, focus, and energy on survival that we didn’t have a chance to think about what this existence would look like.

I see clearly, like it or not, that this being old thing is a new frontier for out gay men.

Like the Mattachine Society in the early 50s (the first queens to take on the United States Postal Service and win a Supreme Court decision allowing ONE Inc., a news magazine about gays, to be distributed through the mail), we need to find a new way forward. With that magazine, the Mattachine Society created a virtual gathering place where we could see and be seen as queers, paving the way for all kinds of queer thought to be sent through the mail.

We, Olds, need to decide who and how to be at this age – because the examples shown by the non-gays are pretty grim. Most fatal gunshot wounds are self-inflicted by straight men suffering from that construct.

We liked the Golden Girls, and that’s not a bad family model to start with.

Whatever we’re doing, I refuse to pretend to be something that I’m not. I didn’t when I was a young gay and won’t as an old gay either.

If we can’t say and hear the word “old,” we’ll never learn to navigate its reality.

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