I’ve blogged before my concerns—fears, actually—regarding growing older. I currently have a partner and I feel like we’ll last, but sometimes it’s hard to shake the track record of relationships not lasting. Every so often, thoughts continue to pester my brain about the possibility of growing old alone. As an alternative, a queer nursing home may have some appeal for others and maybe even for me, provided it’s a no-Grindr zone. If we must stare at screens, let us boogie in our wheelchairs to Ricky Martin videos and trade the latest moose-in-someone’s-backyard clips.
I hope to never require nursing home care. Does anyone aspire to such an accommodation? If I’m alone and old, I might not realize I need it. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.
A looser kind of queer retirement community might have some merit. Separate homes, yards and fences to keep people at bay. Waves over hedges are underrated. Perhaps that’ll be all I’ll need. Someone waved at me today. I still exist. Go figure.
It doesn’t have to be a gated neighborhood. Maybe it can be a whole town, full of gay folks but sprinkled with a few kids. By kids, I mean thirty-somethings. None of that crying in the candy aisle. They’ll still stock those jumbo bags of Smarties and Coffee Crisps, but we’ll buy them without any pretense of saving them for greedy goblins at our door on Halloween.
Palm Springs comes to mind. Not fully queer, not entirely elderly, but enough old gays to make me feel like I’m not entirely alone. Maybe it has a café that plays Barry Manilow and Donna Summer before 7 a.m., before the young ‘uns stop in to grab a latte before a busy day of social media influencing. I can sit around with the other old gays wondering how that’s even a thing. I never managed to influence a boyfriend, much less a bunch of strangers scrolling through their phones.
In my five years living in Los Angeles, I never made my way to Palm Springs. It was long, long ago during my first years living as a less closeted young, gay man. I had zero desire to make the two-hour drive for a weekend getaway. It wasn’t on account of being ageist. Back then, I didn’t know of it as a haven for older gays. I might have enjoyed the kitsch of bumping into celebrities like Bob Hope and Phyllis Diller, even Sonny sans Cher.
Two things served as a potent repellent. First, the heat. Temps often climb above 100 degrees. It’s in the desert, after all. I hate heat. The standard line pro-Palm Springers would offer was, “But there’s misters,” not meaning men who demand salutations but hose apparatuses spraying passersby on sidewalks with faint water clouds. Refreshing! No thank you. It sounded as lovely as being squirted by some clown’s pocket flower. Besides, all that heat and mist would create havoc with my very big head of hair. (Again, it was long, long ago.) Then there was the annual White Party which, as I recall, seemed to happen around Easter. As I understood it, the event was one long party over an extended weekend, lots of drugs, everyone clad in white, at least to the extent a thong clads a person at all. In the weeks leading up to the event, the gays packed my gym, bulking up between tanning sessions. White thongs are meant to show off ripped, tanned bodies. My perpetually ashen skin had no chance of ripping or tanning. Why would I want to spend a weekend feeling wholly less-than? A little time in West Hollywood did that plenty well. Palm Springs sounded like pure Hell, temperature and all.
Eventually I left sunny Southern California and retreated to Canada where pale skin doesn’t cause glare against gray skies and seasonably sensible parkas cover any lack of body toning. Pre-COVID, I traveled back to Los Angeles at least twice a year, but not once did I think of heading down the 10 to check out Palm Springs on a whim. Brutal L.A. traffic has a way of killing whims.
Living in Vancouver, I dated two men who’ve since moved to Palm Springs. I’d like to think they had other reasons for leaving Canada. Still, it was a fortuitous move on their part. No chance I’d ever see them again. We could politely like occasional Facebook posts without them ever having to fret over some out-of-the-blue message from me: “Hey! I’m coming to Palm Springs for a week! Can I sack out on your sofa?”
Still, both of them had mentioned the mid-century modern architecture in Palm Springs. Who knew? That had never come up in conversation with my then twenty-something friends who returned from the White Party with endless tales to tell of sex and gods as I focused on my fat-free frozen yogurt, topped with fresh berries, never something as indulgent as brownie bits or rainbow sprinkles. Modernism Week in February and a “mini” encore in the fall? That sounded appealing.
But still the heat and those silly misters. Palm Springs was never gonna happen.
Until it did. My visit didn’t even coincide with Modern Week. After Christmas, I embarked on a crazy road trip for a reason too crazy to explain, but it was enough to make me drive far enough to listen to a certain song by The Proclaimers—their only song?—422 times. (I didn’t though. Back pain and constant rain provided enough annoyance.) Driving from Vancouver, Phoenix was the destination. I made it. Purpose met.
But then I had to do it all over again to get home.
There was a moment when I thought of Googling how to ship the car back and then hopping on a plane from Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. Alas, I’m crazy but not crazy rich. At the very least, I needed an alternate driving route.
First stop, Palm Springs.
No heat. No misters. Turns out Palm Springs is perfectly pleasant in January. Okay, not perfectly but mostly. I got caught in a whoosh of rain and wind ten minutes into my late afternoon jog after checking into my budget motel. (I didn’t message either ex-boyfriend. Their sofas could remain safe zones.) I’d researched jogging routes and found one that served as a self-guided tour of many of the town’s posh mid-century modern homes. Gazing and gawking was compromised by having to dodge massive puddles and falling/flying palm fronds but still there was a retro-cool factor. Maybe I could live here, in winter if not the rest of the year.
We all dream a little when we travel.
To make things more enticing, I’d stumbled on a couple of swanky radio stations as I neared the town and while taking many wrong turns before finding the motel. (GPS was invented for people like me, but still I resist.) First came a grooved-up remix of Lionel Richie’s “Dancing on the Ceiling” on a station the deejay boldly announced as K-GAY. Yes, of course. The call letters were meant for Palm Springs. I switched stations when the fourth song turned out to be another grooved-up remix of a Lionel Richie song. Really? Lionel Richie? It wasn’t “Ballerina Girl,” but still I was Lioneled out so I landed on MOD-FM which lured me with a soft, jazzy song by Diane Schuur, “Alright, OK, You Win.” Palm Springs could muster up a slice of heaven, too.
The next morning, I got up before sunrise to do a nearby hike, an activity I love but I rarely do in winter back in British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest due to snow in the mountains and my reasonable wish not to make local news as someone who spends a frosty night in a crevasse, waiting to be saved by a search and rescue team. Besides, I like having all my toes and fingers. Hiking in Palm Springs would be a treat. I popped into a café on my way, Barry Manilow’s “Can’t Smile Without You” playing—I kid you not—as I waited for my iced oat milk latte. P.S., now you’re really messing with me!
The little parking lot was empty when I pulled up by the trailhead. I could explore without human distraction. It felt good to slip on my hiking boots and set out on ruddy soil, walking between oversized versions of the kind of plant life only seen in terrariums back home. The rising sun made gave the landscape a golden glow. I snapped pics on my phone, giddy over the perfect lighting, no editing required.
Unfortunately, the heavy rains from the previous evening had washed away all tracks, making the path uncertain. Whenever I glanced ahead at the land, dotted with cacti and knee-high desert bushes, I couldn’t tell what spaces between plants constituted a path and what ones were just, well, spaces. After a few trials and errors, including one “trail” that took me straight up a mountain only to disappear mid-ascent, requiring an undignified scramble back down, I climbed a different “trail” and spotted a picnic table at the top…a very good sign for a citified nature lover. I ambled on for an hour along a distinct path and then unknowingly wandered off-trail again in pursuit of a waterfall I’d read about the night before. Alas, my trek only took me to a gulch encased by pink boulders, a trickle of water probably nothing more than runoff from the storm. Midmorning now, the sun felt more intense, not enough to send sun-worshipping Palm Springs residents onto their pool decks with bottles of Coppertone coconut oil, but enough to worry a wayward, pale Canadian with a history of melanoma.
As a person with a terrible sense of direction, I’ve been lost several times on hikes. Once, while going solo in the Santa Monica Mountains, I got totally turned around and wound up on a rock ledge that I couldn’t figure out how to get down from with only animal bones to stare at as I waved up at a passing helicopter I could hear but not see. They were animal bones, weren’t they? Eventually, at dusk, I managed to slide down a slope on my butt and find my way back to my Malibu apartment on a mercifully deserted Pepperdine campus since it was winter break. I’ve gotten myself out of other panicked experiences, lost deep in B.C. forests. The nice thing about my Palm Springs hike was that the low vegetation meant that the town was always in view. I figured I’d make myself back on my own personalized pathway and Uber it back to the car. At the very worst, my pale skin would impersonate a red lobster for a few days before blistering and peeling away, the experience unsightly, maybe even gross, but nothing as bad as losing a few digits.
The hiking debacle turned out not to be as dramatic as it momentarily seemed to be. I didn’t search the sky for helicopters, I never called nonsensically out for my mother and my butt only had one small patch of red dirt that couldn’t be swatted away. I didn’t have to Uber it. I didn’t even burn after tightening my hoodie to the point where there was only a narrow opening to peer out.
Still, whatever allure had been building for living out my last years in Palm Springs had been lost, quite literally, I suppose. As I left town, the car radio segued from a Frank Sinatra song to a Metamucil commercial, followed by an ad about a local doctor specializing in elder medicine. Mecca for older gays, sure. But I’ve always been one to opt for the road not taken.
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