Gay & Gray: A Celebration of Aging and Experience

“When you turn 30, you are in Gay middle age. When you pass 35, you might as well be dead.”

To this day, I remember some of the first lessons I learned as a young gay man. I was 24 at the time I heard those words and then went by me with a small laugh. Mainly because I had only been out a very short time and I was still young. I had no designs of what life would like beyond 35, anyway. I had only learned about the amazingness of being able to freely admit that I was attracted to men and the immensity of what gay sex was like had only been tasted. To paraphrase Kirsten Dunst in Interview with a Vampire, I wanted more.

At 51, there are times that those words echo through my mind with such intensity that it sometimes drowns out my thoughts. But in that same fleeting moment, I take stock in the life I am living and the man that I get to share it with and realize that my so-called gay life really didn’t start until about six years ago. At this part of my journey, I realize that, for me, this is my view of being older and queer. There are more that do not have this luxury and feel they are invisible to the very community they have spent their entire lives in, fought for, and simply endured. Much like life in general, queer life is wasted on the youth. The importance of positive aging representations for LGBTQ+ individuals is the focus we should have. But how do we combat the challenges of aging in the LGBTQ+ community?

Join me today as we discuss Gay & Gray: A Celebration of Aging and Experience.

1. Ageism in Gay/Bi culture: The tyranny of youth
2. Learning from the past: How older LGBTQ men shaped my life
3. Embracing age in Gay/Bi realtionships
4. Promoting age-positive narratives in LGBTQ+ culture

Ageism in Gay/Bi culture: The tyranny of youth

Whether you are flipping through a magazine at your local bookstore (does anyone do that anymore?) or opening your favorite hookup app, I bet you will be treated with a bevy of hot, young, and probably shirtless gay/bi men. Even worse, the reality is that age is a time bomb in gay/bi male culture. Each year brings you closer to leaving behind the decadent days of being 18 – 20 something and desired by the masses. The belief is that we are only desirable as a twink, young, lithe, and without a care. 

As we age, we see this focus on youth and beauty and we go to great lengths to recapture it. We torture ourselves with fad diets that do more harm to us than good. We buy all the young looking clothing we can find and swaddle ourselves in it. We even create overly complicated skincare regiments in the hopes our faces will stay creased line free for as long as humanly, or inhumanly possible. We should be redefining beauty standards in LGBTQ+ culture.

Learning from the past: How older LGBTQ men shaped my life

There were an immense amount of things that I was taught by my first boyfriend, Shawn, least of which was the sexual side of being gay. One of the most important lessons he repeated over and over was a respect for those LGBTQ people that came before us, the ones that paved the way for us to be free and live the way we get to. It was important to remember the battles that we are reaping the rewards of and, also, that each of us will be that old person sitting alone at the bar, staring out at the sea of young supple bodies gyrating to the pulsing base sounds of some dimly lit bar. As youth fades, so will the line of people wanting to be with you. 

Many people in my life have commented on how I often appear to be an old soul. I think that in most of my life, I have felt more comfortable with people who were older than I am. They had seen what life will show them and survived the bloody battles of life. I knew there was knowledge there and felt more akin to it. As luck would have it, it also started a desire in me for falling in love with those that were older than I am. I learned through my own experiences that those my age were caught up in the frivolity of youth and amassing those childlike memories. 

This ideal moved with me into my gay life, as I aged. Thanks to Shawn, I met and befriended a host of older gay men. I knew them by name and a good bit about what got them to where they were in life. They were who we often hung out with, when we went to the bars. Once you got past the darkness they wore on the outside, you got to bathe in the vibrancy of experience and views on the world. I think Reba McIntire said it best, “Be nice to the gentlemen, Fancy, and they will be nice to you.” To me, this is truly aging gracefully in the LGBTQ+ community.

No truer words have ever been spoken.

Embracing age in Gay/Bi realtionships

It is often forgotten that us older queer folk grew up in a time where marriage was not legal and lived in states that still had laws about being gay that could result in being arrested and outted. We had conflicting ideals of the world we danced through. On one-hand, we had authorities telling us we can’t be who we are, its a sin, its illegal, and just plain wrong. And the other hand were our publications and community telling us we need to celebrate who we are. The underground magazines we clung to were emblazoned with bars, parties, and barely clothed bodies in all their glory. We grew up drinking and doing various other substances to dim the hurt we felt from the world that so coldly rejected us and to also allow us to feel the love we were supposed to have for ourselves and from our community. 

Now, in our middle years and beyond, we are out of time and place. We have an understanding of the technology that our younger generations use with abandon. We see those young queer sharing their lives so openly and without fear that our jealousy rises and makes us into those bitter queens the youth often see perched somewhere romanticizing over the golden days of our memory. The importance of positive aging representations for LGBTQ+ individual is never more important. The younger queer men need healthy and positive role models as much as there is a need to show that us older gay/bi men are still as sexy and vibrant as the youth of our culture.

Promoting age-positive narratives in LGBTQ+ culture

Change often comes from the smallest of actions, but action nonetheless. If, we as older gay/bi men, want more promoting of age-positive narratives in LGBTQ+ culture, then it is up to us to start changing that narrative. How do we learn how to combat ageism in the gay/bi community? We first have to learn to love ourselves, as we are. Appreciate our flaws as much as our positives. We have to be the ones to show that we are just as sexually attractive, physically appealing, emotionally available, and intellectually able to handle aging gracefully. Instead of being the older gay/bi male afraid of aging and need to prove our worth by having a twink on our arm, date someone more akin to us, normalize dating and being around older gay/bi men. As for younger gay/bi men out there, you must realize that we, as older gay/bi men, still have much to offer and teach. 

Do you feel that gay/bi culture focuses too much on age over any other characteristic? How have you learned to deal with it, if you have? Perhaps you are a younger gay/bi male who also see the problems with ageism and want to help, what are some ways you are trying to combat ageism in LGBTQ+ culture? Let me know in the comments below. Thanks to each and everyone of you who took the time to read this article it is greatly appreciated, you are what makes GayintheCLE possible.