You’ve
heard the joke. It shows up on many Twitter bios: “In gay years,
I’m dead.”
So
I’ve got company. Rainbow zombies.
I
suppose the age at which we qualify for a gay death certificate isn’t
firmly established. Fifty? Forty? Again on Twitter, I’ve seen gay
men bemoan the fact they’re turning thirty-two. I half-expect them
to include a selfie, holding up a hand-printed poster board sign: The
End Is Near. Or maybe it already happened.
Whatever
the age, it’s clear that I’ve passed it. Fifty-five. Off life
support. Flatlined. Dead.
And
yet I still have a pulse. (Just checked again.) I still bear the
signs of youth—and, by that, I mean a zit showed up on my back last
week. I almost smiled. Almost. (There was a time in the ‘80s when I
think I must have covered all-expense
paid vacations to Tahiti for everyone on the Clearasil management
team.) My bank account appears active—more withdrawals than
deposits, nothing new there. My fridge has a several items with
expiration dates still pending. (Never mind that bottle of “Calorie
Wise” Kraft ranch dressing on the bottom shelf. There was never
anything smart about that purchase.)
Ageism
has long existed in the gay community. For a supposedly inclusive
group, we’ve thrived on compartmentalizing ourselves, on creating
clear divides rather than doing what we expect of others—embracing
diversity.
When
I first came on the scene, it was at the ripe “old” age of
twenty-four. There was a whole back-pocket handkerchief culture still
lingering but on the way out. Thank
god. I
didn’t understand it. For some reason, instilled fear in me. What
was the difference between a green hanky in the left pocket and one
in the right pocket? Did a yellow hanky really have something to do
with urine or did people just find it entertaining to elicit looks of
horror from me? If only there’d been Google or any sort of
Internet. Dating myself, yes. Or some of you might think of it as
carbon-dating.
I
don’t recall if young gays were called twinks way, way back then.
The common term I remember is chicken,
more derisively used to label older gay men as chickenhawks. Being
gay felt more underground back then. It was past the time when police
would do raids on gay bars
and the American Psychiatric Association had removed homosexuality
from its listing of mental illnesses (although that news didn’t
seem to have reached Texas). That’s about as far as gay rights had
progressed. “Fag bashing” still floated about on the bored
heterosexual men’s list of Things to Do This Weekend. The
cheap
thrill alternative
was
just driving by a reputed
gay area,
rolling down the
window
and yelling,
“Faggot”, “Cocksucker”
or something
equally
hateful/hysterical.
Aside
from a few straight women lovingly or not so lovingly referred as fag
hags, it was safe to assume that everyone in a gay bar was gay. (The
community hadn’t fully embraced bisexuals who were viewed as
suspect, guys with one foot in and one foot out of the closet.)
Coming out stories, commonly shared, were typically dramatic, often
punctuated with references to being kicked out, disowned, damned to
hell or simply the cause of a lot of tears and ensuing awkwardness.
I
say all this because there was a sense that we were an oppressed
group and, for some reason, it bred a sense of survival whereby
caustic and campy attitudes were very much in vogue. It wasn’t just
drag queens that read one another. Put-downs were part of gay play.
Without
a doubt, older gays were often mocked by the younger set. “Look at
that old queen...” A drunk older gay man or one who dared take off
his shirt or went solo on a mostly empty dance floor made for easy
dissing. I attributed all this to a great deal of insecurity—that
comes with feeling oppressed—and a sense that in our main playing
field, the gay bar, everyone was being sized up. Everyone was ripe
for derision. Everyone except the rarefied hotties who knew all eyes
were upon them and only paired up their kind, waiting for the dance
floor to get crowded before taking off their shirts, and joining in,
more grinding than actually busting a move.
I’ll
admit that I played along as best I could. (No, definitely not as one
of the gods!) The campiness often bothered me. It felt mean. But it
went down better with a couple of Tom Collins. (I never took to beer
unless I could stuff a half dozen lime wedges down the neck of the
bottle.) Being camp was the sanctioned humor du jour and, while
I was secretly appalled by many of the comments, I was also awed. How
was it that these guys were so quick? I
couldn’t keep
up.
This
is around the time that I honed my self-deprecating nature. If I
could freely make fun of myself, it took away the sting of being a
target by other gays. In theory, at least, that’s how it was
supposed to go.
I
will admit that I participated
in
disparaging
older gays. They were easier fodder for people like me who struggled
to nail a
campy persona. There were certain bars that were almost no-go zones,
places where the older among us congregated. We’d go every so often
for a laugh, in the same way we’d occasionally do a couple of laps
in The Spike, a leather bar. Niche groups. As if the gay community
never really broke free from the crushing categorization mindset
of
high school. Gawking
within our own supposed
“community”. Lots
of “Would you look at her...” Easiest line, often
no elaboration required. Whether it was someone in leather or someone
whose hair had gone salt-and-pepper, I’d always squirm and make a
face of horror when one of my small pack would nod in that direction
and say, “There’s your boyfriend.”
It’s
all an example of how the “pride” part of gay pride was very much
a work-in-progress. More of a fake it till you make it concept. I
suppose flaunting pride worked better in parades than donning banners
that read, “Gay Shame”.
The
point to all of this is that I’d like to think gay culture has
evolved. Enlightenment comes with acceptance. Indeed, the old campy
humor seems
very much passe, preserved by the drag queens but, even among them,
it feels more forced than ever.
Here
in North America, it seems a stretch to claim to be oppressed, at
least for the LGB and Qs in our LGBTQ community. Announcing you’re
gay draws fewer looks than saying you got a new tattoo. We can
marry—something none of us packed into gay bars in 1990 would have
ever believed possible. Sexual orientation is included in hate crime
legislation in many jurisdictions. Same goes for housing and job
discrimination laws. More to do, yes, but things seem to hinge more
on a matter of time rather than on possibility.
Maybe
it’s time we change our ways. Some of them, at least. Reflect. Keep
whatever is or was good about gay culture but grow as well. All this
time we’ve been focused on others changing to accept us. Oh, the
strides we’ve made! How about acknowledging that we’ve got some
changing to do, too? How about greater acceptance within our
“community”?
At
fifty-five, I don’t expect to be resuscitated anytime soon. I can
accept that this is karma, biting me in the ass for past misconduct.
I don’t plan on making buttons that say, “60 is the new 40” and
passing them out at Pride.
I can learn to knit. Maybe I’ll adopt half
a dozen
cats.
(I’ll knit them little sweaters!) Still, I hope that gay men
fretting over thirty candles on a cake can avoid getting their own
death certificates until many
decades from now. Let them continue to live, to be seen, to be heard
and, most of all, to be valued.
