"Inside every older person is a younger person—wondering what the hell happened." ~ Cora Harvey Armstrong
When did I start turning into an old man?
Okay, so I'm not old, as in driving a golf cart around a retirement community old (or even anywhere near it), but old as in realizing that many of the people I work with could be my children if I were straight and had married and produced offspring at the "usual" age for doing such things. I also learned the other day that my recruiter had referred to me as "an older gentleman" to one of the other contractors. Older gentleman?
Fuck me.
It is kind of funny, because while I still envision myself being near that age and more or less feel like I did in the picture (from 1984) below, it's only when I happen to catch my reflection somewhere that I realize I sure as heck don't look it anymore. And more often than not, when I stop to actually gaze into a mirror I find myself asking, "Who the hell are you, and how did you get into this house?"
Of course, that's a question I've been asking myself since long before the picture to the right was taken, but it now has a totally different thrust behind it.
Definitely well into "middle age," I've now been forced to confront that my hair has for the most part completely disappeared (and is never coming back—I've often wondered if I should just start shaving it regularly—and get it over with), the morning puffiness under my eyes does not spontaneously disappear as I wake up, and I've been wearing monocular contact lenses (one for distance, one for reading) for years now. Lastly, where did all that added poundage come from? At the time that photo was taken I thought I looked fat. Oh, that I were so fat now!
Along the same lines, when did all my friends get so old?
At least we're all wondering these same things together, and can freely discuss them without feeling too—I dunno—silly. Because of the AIDS epidemic however, we lost almost the entire first generation of openly gay men who could've answered so many of our questions and become the role models in whose footsteps we followed. They might've helped us define what it meant to be a middle-aged—and ultimately elderly—out gay man in America. But sadly, we are left to find our own paths, and with so many of my own generation lost in the 1990s, even those resources are not as boundless as they might've been.
Oh but wait! It gets even weirder. That hair on your head hasn't really disappeared. It will now grow at a phenomenal rate out of your ears and nose and eyebrows! I saw Billy Crystal on a talk show some years ago, and he said that he no longer takes showers. He has himself sandblasted because of all of the disgusting shit appearing on his skin! So if there is any doubt about whether there is or is not a "god" I say no sane person could believe in the myth, because no benevolent god would ever impose on his subjects the crap that we have to deal with as we age. We're born, we age, we die. That's all folks! And congrats on your union. Although we're born alone and die alone, it's nice to have someone to share the journey.
Well said.
Hi there… been reading your blog for a while now. I really enjoy reading it.
Your last paragraph in this entry is something I've been thinking about for a while now. Those of us that are in our late 40's and older are among the first generation of out gay men to survive wholesale into middle age and beyond. But that's not a curse at all. It means we get to blaze a few trails and set the standard for what it means to be older, active and out gay men. We get to do it OUR way.
But we also have to make sure that the experience of aging (gods i hate that term, but it's the only one that fits.) is a positive one. And that is going to be the real work for our generation.
I've been saying the same thing lately. It's as though I went to bed at 22 and woke up at 44, but it doesn't FEEL like 22 years have passed.