I'M LATE

I hear many gay men talking about being late bloomers. High school? No way. Twenty-two, twenty-six.

How about forty-nine?

On Monday evening, I drove to West Hollywood to join the gay Frontrunners group for a run on Santa Monica Boulevard into Beverly Hills. It’s a small group—on this particular night a mere half dozen of us and none of the people I knew from last year. A tall, pretty young guy immediately started to chat me up.

What?!

This is not supposed to happen in West Hollywood.

Tall, pretty, young gays pretend old fags like me do not exist. It’s the WeHo way. Nondescript telephone poles are more interesting. As we were waved over to the rest of the teeny group, I realized he was just chatty in general. He immediately introduced me to the others, repeating everything I’d told him about myself. I’ve never had my own spokesperson. Not sure I liked it.

Once we began the run, I expected everyone to spread out. Without the familiar faces from last year, I prepared to run solo. Not a problem. It’s fun to roam through the 90210 zip code, even without a helpful Star Map.

The tall, pretty, young gay guy ran by my side. “Feel free to run ahead,” he said. “I’m by far the slowest.” His words reminded me of my own self-promotion in my early twenties. Perhaps it was sympathy more than flattery that made me keep his pace. The other four weren’t exactly making a break.

Was I interested? No. Was he? Of course not. He mentioned his boyfriend a few blocks into the run. I was simply intrigued that he gave me the time of day.

Eventually, I could sense him struggling to keep up. “Go on ahead,” he said. And so I did. I passed the others and fell into a better pace. A stoplight held me and the others caught up. With the green, I pulled away again, but another tall, pretty, young gay guy picked up his pace to join me.

What the—?!

Is the First Monday now Golden Oldies Day in West Hollywood? Must have missed the flyer on one of those fascinating telephone poles. Still, we ran side by side, chatting about my summer stay and his move from Kansas City. Typical of a young guy, he spoke at length about a recent falling out with his one L.A.-based girl friend from Kansas and talked with pie-eyed enthusiasm about his impressions of West Hollywood.

Anything in common? Of course not. Besides, I am not looking. I’d like to think there is something promising back in Vancouver. The fact that I registered at all with another young gay proved astonishing.

As we reached the iconic fountain at Santa Monica and Wilshire, I said goodbye. Everyone else planned to turn back, but I wanted a longer run. I set off toward Sunset Boulevard. On my own, I took in the palm trees that lined the road and the well-manicured gardens of succulents and bougainvillea. But then it registered that a black open-top Jeep was driving unusually slowly beside me. A young, tanned muscular college student in a baseball cap pivoted his head and stared at me. He looked ahead, looked back, looked ahead, looked back. As a rule, I am clueless about cruising, but this was blatant. A Mercedes approached with aggressive-driver urgency. Jeep dude drove on and I jogged on.

Late bloomer, indeed. Guys like this did not notice me in my twenties, my thirties or, up until now, my forties. Maybe it is the sense that I consider myself to be unavailable that is suddenly getting me noticed. I doubt that. I’ve had years of being in relationships (long, long ago) and I was always easy to ignore. It was effortless.

I am much more confident, sure. My protective wall is thinner—balsa wood instead of concrete. I even appear to be in great shape (though more on that in an upcoming blog post).

I suppose I should appreciate this blip without overanalyzing it. Perhaps I just needed another dose of California sun to finally bloom. Despite slathering up with sunblock, a few rays seem to be sinking in.

Forty-nine and hitting my stride. At last.

CASTE-ING CALL

To my left sits a man, a few years older than me, with premature lines on his face, a likely side effect of a life in the sun. Some would immediately dismiss him. Not me. He is striking. Not once does he look my way. He’s in charge of the dismissal. Why? Pick a flaw.

An absolutely gorgeous tall man in a perfectly form fitting t-shirt approaches with his dog. I smile as our dogs eye one another. The stud (human version) doesn’t break his stoic facial expression and he doesn’t dare let the dogs have a sniff. He goes in, comes out with his oatmeal and coffee, pulls up a seat and turns his back to me. Ouch.

It feels like the old gay bar rejections but this is 8 a.m. and I’m trying to concentrate on kickstarting my writing for the day. There just happen to be a few menacing distractions. Maybe the Starbucks at Santa Monica Boulevard and Robertson is not the right venue. Sometimes being smack in the middle of West Hollywood is the worst place for a gay man to be.

So now I am sandwiched between two beautiful men, feeling like the subject of a No Contact clause.

Two women walk by and tell T-shirt Guy, “Your dog is so cute!” I can see the side of his face. He says nothing and again fails to register a facial expression.

So it’s nothing personal. He’s a de facto mannequin. But I still feel it.

I’d forgotten this part of L.A. The attitude. The you’re-not-worth-a-split-second-of-my-time crowd. They plant themselves at all places hip or even quasi-hip. Their mission is to make the rest of us feel bad, to chip away at our egos, to remind us that, even though we ran 12K last night and are chipping away at that muffin top above the waistline, we’ll never ever be worth even the faintest smile.

And, not that I have the looks to begin with, but my goofy grin is the dead giveaway that I am not one of them. “You’re always smiling.” I used to hear the comment all the time when I lived in L.A. I couldn’t help it. I was under the mistaken belief that one should express happiness, an unfortunate brainwashing brought on by too many listenings of that Bobby McFerrin ditty that every loved for all of five minutes before loathing it became the only acceptable response. (Despite my pessimism (realism?) over dating, I’m just a happy guy. I still like this song and this one too.)

For many Hollywood wannabes, I’ll assume that smiling is a wrinkle hazard, an early call to a lifetime of Botox dependency. Maybe I never even smiled that much. Two, three times a day? That would be enough to stand out. I was hopelessly attitude free.

I am well aware that the WeHo attitude masters are models/actors who primarily work as caterers. I know the Better than You vibe is hollow, but in a shallow town, it cuts deep.

That’s why I never ventured into the core of West Hollywood alone. I never knew how to respond to the silent but potent attitude smackdown:  that catwalk strut, eyes focused forward, never making eye contact with any animate object; that cluster of forever-junior high girls (posing as grown men), congregating in closer circles and talking loudly, punctuating every utterance with laughter to show EVERYONE how much fun they are having.

I’ve studied some of The Attitude Brood in the last few days. After twenty years, their walk has not changed. I wonder if someone takes the pretty newbies under their wing to give them pointers or maybe it’s a genetic thing, a more distinguished hypothalamus than my own. How much effort does it take to suppress a smile, to never blink? I wonder if they’re all playing that parlor game where, if someone blinks at you you’re dead. Why is it that the players seem like the dead ones?

The danger, of course, is how easy it is to let WeHo attitude influence my own interactions—and non-interactions. It’s all part of the pecking order. No one has ever mistaken me for a model/actor/caterer, but, in the WeHo caste system, there are still others “beneath” me. For now, there are still gay men who are older than me who have the gall to embrace their middle-aged bellies. There are others who have failed to learn the art of manscaping, letting thick tufts of hair sprout unchecked from ears and backs. And there are those who abhor clothes shopping and delude themselves into thinking that wearing a poncho-like Packers jersey in the off season is a fashion statement about one’s masculinity. I’ve caught myself falling into that Look Away strut. Yes, for now I self-correct. But that’s only because I’m still in my second week here. What will I become by the time the month’s stay ends? And what if U.S. Immigration dusts off my papers and allows me to move back here permanently? Will I turn on "RuPaul’s Drag Race" and fail to see the spectacle in it? Will I remove “Walking on Sunshine” from my iPod? Pathological fear of needles notwithstanding, will I add my Botox administrators to my Christmas card list?

I suppose being aware of what is not real in West Hollywood keeps me from succumbing. As soon as I say, “What attitude?”, I’m a goner. Still, I need to take precautionary measures. Before I head out for coffee tomorrow morning, I shall force myself to stand in the mirror for five minutes, blinking and smiling. (Work those wrinkles!) I shall say hello to strangers with dogs. And, just to be perfectly safe, I shall walk to another Starbucks.