I am very touched by news of people having begun hunger strikes, special religious convocations being having been called and questions asked in the General Assembly of the United Nations as a result of me failing to get a post out last week! My first such failure in a number of months. I blame a combination of me having been swept up in the wild social melee and an attack of early onset dementia; though some would say, not "so" early!
(Please Note - photos/videos are taken from public sites and assumed to be open source. I do not hold the copyrights. If you do, and you wish the picture removed, just advise me and I shall take the photo down. The use of a photo does not presume anything regarding the sexuality of the subject)
The title of this week's post is a quote from my first meeting with a guy who is now a dear friend, Chris. He delivered the line to me and the mutual friend who introduced us, Terry. I was then in my mid forties, Terry in his late forties and his new mate, Chris, was touching twenty. Terry was a shrewd judge of characters and was sure we'd all hit it off despite the age differences, so I met the two of them for a night out. As ever, the night unfolded in the heart of London's eclectic, hedonistic, even Bacchanalian Soho district (see the earlier posts, Fancy a Night Out on London's Soho Scene - Parts 1 and 2). Hours passed, drinks were drunk and sharp, witty banter swirled like snow in a blizzard...and, en passant, guys were cruised. As the witching hour drew nigh Chris had to head home, so we all took our leave of the pulsating Village Bar. After goodbye hugs in the biting Autumn wind, on the junction of Old Compton Street and Wardour Street, our new young friend took a step back and paused, apparently scrutinising Terry and I. Light from the street lamps played over our faces which, now wet from the soft drizzle that hung in the air like a mist, appeared to glisten.
"No, my friends will never believe it," Chris said, drawing quizzical looks from us both.
"Believe what?" I took the bait.
"My friends will never believe I know
two people with wrinkles!" Chris reeled us in and delivered the killer blow!
When I was younger there was a common expression on gay scenes, "Where do all the gays go after forty?" At that time, around 2002, a foray onto London's Soho scene would leave one thinking many a true word spoken in jest. Where were the more "mature" guys?
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| Me at around 44 or 45 years old. Be kind! |
Admittedly, I was then 44 but routinely told by friends that I was passable for my age; once I'd plied them with sufficient drinks! The Soho scene was more or less bereft of longer served men, guys in their late 40s/50s and upwards.....other than in Comptons bar, which opened in 1986, preceding the evolution of the Soho gay village and wherein its ground floor bar was more earthy, gritty and attracted an older crowd (as well as bears and some leather boys) and the Admiral Duncan, where the entertainment included trad drag acts and numbered some older guys amongst its clientele. Akin to every "scene" I have experienced or of which I have heard tell, Soho was fixated on youth and beauty. The scene represented safety, it was liberating, vivacious, irrepressibly hedonistic and its magnetic aura of hope and anticipation was palpable (forgive what may appear as hyperbole, but to many of us the scene was just that, all of those things, for guys who had struggled with the fears of coming out and had lived a lifetime of deception and dissembling, yearning for the sense of identity and belonging that Soho delivered - see the two posts on Coming Out and the two posts on a Night Out in Soho)....but, on the other hand, the scene could be superficial, witheringly judgemental, uncharitable and unforgiving and, to the older gay man, it could appear prohibitively forbidding.
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Photo creds GSN - Hope the FABULOUS
Mr Graham Norton won't mind! |
Huffington Post recently reported on the work of Dr MC LaSala, of Rutgers University, who explained that ageing was particularly difficult for gay men because they are members of a community that is so focused on youth and beauty. The challenges of growing old are not exclusive to gay man, that wasn't Dr LaSala's point and it is not mine, but those challenges can be harder to bear if one lives on/within a gay scene where the greatest value is ascribed to those things that diminish as the years increase....youth and beauty. It is dangerous and divisive for a social group to found itself on one measure of worth, youthful sexual attraction in this case, and elements of that community suffer as a result. Over dependence on just one superficial measure renders that group vulnerable to fracture....in the saying quoted above, that fracture opened up in the forties, when gay men were expected to hobble away, expected to "....get thyself to a nunnery...."; if you will allow me to be rather loose with the words spoken by Shakespear's Hamlet to Ophelia, as the suggested lifestyles for older gays and Ophelia would have shared some similar characteristics! Indeed, a study by YouGov in 2011, commissioned by the UK charity Stonewall, showed that gay and bisexual men over 55 years of age are: three times more likely to be single than their heterosexual counterparts; more likely to live alone (41% compared to 28% for heterosexual counterparts); less likely to see members of their biological family on a weekly basis (25% compared to 50%) and are twice as likely to be diagnosed with depression or anxiety. A sad picture.
That said, while the perception of life for older gays and the harsh reality highlighted by Stonewall may derive in large part from the scene's obsession with the young and beautiful, I venture to suggest that there was another reason for it in the 1990s and early 2000s, a reason that offers hope for a better life for gay men in their "golden years". Every day sees new history being made and, while LGBT history has progressed at a more sluggish pace than many comparables, the late 20th and early 21st century have seen rainbow rights beam bold and bright in the skies over many countries in Europe and North America; though, I note with necessary caution and chagrin, that LGBT rights remain mired in suspicion, hatred and prejudice born of ignorance and often religious bigotry in many other parts of the world. Across ever increasing swathes of the Northern Hemisphere the 1990s and 2000s, the LGBT community has moved every closer to equality....one step at a time, but less faltering, stronger and more confident advances at each pace. With this has come the development of gay scenes and a greater acceptance by society as a whole of those of different sexualities; though, once again, look back at the two previous posts on Coming Out to gain a sense of the challenges that remain and how many young gay men and women are still cast out, rejected by those they love for being honest about their sexuality. What began as a bold, blush pink trickle of gay men and women coming out in parts of Europe and North America rapidly turned into a veritable rainbow cascade and "villages" such as London's Soho blossomed in the 1990s. As so often happens, while the road to this social revolution had been bravely, selflessly illuminated by gay men of all ages over the years the swelling of the ranks was down to young men and women proclaiming, screaming that they proud to be gay. These youngsters had been brought up in the modern era, had been differently "socialised" (to employ an inelegant term from the social sciences) and did not suffer from self doubt and self esteem issues in the same way as their elders; I shall discuss the part played by the media and role models in this in a future post.
While older gay men and women of the 1990s were still the product of their time and social context, younger gays threw themselves into the safe zone and treasure chest of the newly emerging gay villages and, as a result, it was no surprise that such environments were dominated by the young and beautiful. By the same token, those late teen or early twenties gay boys of the 1990s are now in their 40s and 50s and each generation that trips the light fantastic on Soho's incandescent, skin tingling streets grows older; not even pink fairy dust can hold back time. The difference is that many gays who are now in their 40s and 50s matured (....?!) in the Bacchanalian boiling pot of gay scenes such as Soho and, while there were no, or few older gays on the scenes in those days such older gay men of today are still out and proud and been so for years, decades. They may sashay onto the eclectic, frenetic and fabulous sidewalks of Soho et al less frequently, "been there, done that", he they not feel cowed by the youth of today, do not feel they must eschew the scene's occasional allure because they are one of the "two people with wrinkles"....because these streets were their streets, they had long since found safety, identity and a sense of belonging there, found honest, untrammeled lust and love in the arms and beds of fellow gay men from the scene. They will not get themselves to a nunnery, will not "go gentle into that good night", as Dylan Thomas might have it, because they have already won their star spangled spurs, earned their membership of that rainbow realm and will immerse themselves in it as and when fancy the takes, still laughing and loving and, perhaps, wistfully watching the same people with different faces doing as they did in earlier years. The (to me, saddening) post script to older men on the scene, in fact to anyone on the scene, is that gay villages are shrinking and disappearing. This is not because we are now able to live our lives within the broader straight world (see earlier posts on Gay Identity and Culture), but because just when acceptance amongst the broader community is improving, slowly, gay men are retiring behind computer screens to find corporeal communion and, perhaps, longer term partners over dating/hook-up sites, with research showing a significant number do this in order to avoid "coming out". I find this rather counter-intuitive and, sad; but one man's view who is a product of his time!
Lastly, we should also note the impact of changes in the law to allow Civil Partnerships in many countries and full blown, grown up marriage equality in countries more wedded to the concept of equality and common civil rights. In such civilised parts of this new world, the lucky ones (such as the guy tapping away at this Blog) have been lucky enough not just to find the love of their life but to fully exploit the legal process to secure and cement that relationship; in my case, we have lived together for over 13 years and been married under UK law for 10 years (as they legally backdated the marriage to the date of our initial Civil Partnership). With so many gay men and women emotionally and earnestly embracing the equality of the marriage ceremony relationships can more readily mature into long term, life long commitments and slash the number of older gay men ending their lives single and living alone.
Well, that's more than sufficient for this week and I should let you kind folk who have stayed with me this far on today's Blog escape....after thank you e-hugs or manly embraces from me, as appropriate.
If Saturday and Sunday comprise your weekend and work allows you the luxury of enjoying same, have a fabulous one.
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