CALL ME BY MY NEW NAME: AGING GAYLY

Name changes happen. Facebook is now Meta. Datsun became Nissan. The TV sitcom, “Valerie,” was retitled “The Hogan Family” after Valerie Harper (RIP) left the show. Sir Elton John was born Reginald Dwight. Arnold George Dorsey performed as Gerry Dorsey before switching to—why, oh why—Engelbert Humperdinck. Prince (born Prince Rogers Nelson) transformed into   (aka, The Love Symbol) before settling on The Artist Formerly Known as Prince. Sean John Combs has been Puffy, Puff Daddy, P. Diddy, Diddy, Sean Jean, Brother Love and Sean Love Combs. 

 

I seem to be on the Puff Daddy-P. Diddy-Diddy track. 

 

It’s with some trepidation that I’ve renamed my blog. Way back in 2008, when blogging may have still been a thing, “Rural Gay” fit perfectly since I lived a ferry ride away from civilization. As a single homosexual in his forties, the title was bound to attract a little online attention, if only from initial curiosity. Why the hell would he make that kind of move?

 

Yep. Why, indeed. Seven years after starting the blog—and a decade after that cockeyed relocation experiment—I settled anew in Vancouver. Rural Gay no more! 

 

For some reason, I figured I needed to keep that designation in the blog title, probably since it was the core of the web address. I gave the blog name a clunky tweak: Rural Gay Gone Urban. Always hated it. What did the wretched title say about my writing abilities? Still, I stuck with it, deciding my time was better spent writing posts as a pleasant diversion from drafting essays for occasional publication in the great beyond while continuing to hone novel-length manuscripts.

 

Another seven years have passed. I’m still blogging, even if that’s not much of a thing anymore. I’m an old dog and I haven’t developed an appetite for new tricks like podcasting and TikTok dillydallying. Old dogs can use words like dillydallying.

 

I don’t like to think of myself as old even though I’m almost at the point of admitting that the whiskers from three days’ growth on my chin are gray, not blond. (I should look into softer lighting in the bathroom.) I’m startled when I’m reminded that Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours” is forty-five years old. I curse whenever I think of mentioning VCRs, answering machines or Charles Nelson Reilly in a conversation with my niece. (Charles Nelson Reilly? WTF?!) It’s always hard to transition after a blank stare. 

 

Allow me to transition here to the new name for the blog. Like it or not, from my vantage point there are more young ’uns than old coots. We’re all aging, of course, but I’m more aware of it now. Remember how the time to reach sixteen or twenty-one seemed to move at a snail’s pace? Such an excruciating wait to drive a car or drink without a comically bad fake ID. Years and whole decades whiz by now. Staring into the bathroom mirror is now about checking for wrinkles, not zits. Oh, how I had so much hope for the powers of Clearasil; not so for my L’Oréal Revitalift eye cream. That thing about getting wiser isn’t always a good thing.

 

So, yes. I. Am. Aging.

 

I feel like I’m thirty-six in mind, body and spirit but, judging from how often I’m called “sir” these days, nobody else is buying it. I did get carded at the beer garden at the Washington State Fair last month, but I withheld the urge to woot. Standard procedure. She didn’t even bother squinting to search for where the birthdate is on a British Columbia driver’s licence. 

 

It shouldn’t come as a surprise when I say I’m not exactly aging gracefully. Nope. I’m kicking and screaming. Rod Stewart’s “Forever Young” keeps popping up on my YouTube stream. Same for Candi Staton’s “Young Hearts Run Free,” a disco-era gem. Dammit, my song choices don’t help my case.

Okay, so enough about the “Aging” part of my NEW, IMPROVED blog title. On to “Gayly.” I had to keep some reference to “gay.” The blog has always been about being a gay man and that will continue to be the case. While I’m okay with “queer,” there was a time the term felt too abrasive—a derisive term that gays took back as their own. There are other descriptors under the LGBTQIA2+ umbrella that seem to suit me, but they weren’t around when I did the hard work of coming out. I love that there are more specific terms people can consider when figuring out their identity. I am committed to accepting and supporting anyone based on how they choose to define themselves with regard to gender and sexuality. In turn, I expect to be respected for sticking with “gay,” at least for now. 

 

Old dog, remember. Throw me a bone or, better yet, just drop it in front of me.

 

As a stickler for the grammar and spelling, I’m accustomed to using “gaily” when writing, assuming I would use the word at all. Still, Merriam-Webster recognizes “gayly” as a variant used “less commonly.” I like that. After all, I’ve spent my whole life navigating less common tracts.

 

As a twenty-something, in a pre-GPS world, there were many times I sat in a car with gay friends and someone called out directions by saying, “Go straight.” The remark was always corrected. “Impossible. Go gayly forward.” Yuk yuk. Yes, these were the same people who chuckled over random references to balls, nuts and the number 69. Don’t be fooled by arty, gay pretensions. We’re as simple as other men…although I’m pleased to say I no longer laugh over farts and fart jokes. Some things just get old when one gets, ahem, old.

 

So there it is. A new blog title, keeping “gay” and chucking the rest. What do you think of “Aging Gayly”? This is likely a superficial change. I plan to continue to post on similar topics as before: gay culture, my relationship, queer literature and entertainment, and mental health issues, including eating disorders. I hope you’ll stick around, check the blog from time to time, leave a comment on occasion, here or on Twitter. (Retweets and other forms of sharing are always welcome!) I don’t want millennials to shy away from clicking to the blog, but I suppose it’s time for me to accept the gray whiskers while continuing to strive to sustain a healthy, active lifestyle. Thanks, as always, for reading!

     

AGING GRACELESSLY

I struggle with the fact I’m getting older. We all do, I know. A newborn at five days is older than it was at birth. Obviously. To be more precise, I’m at least at the trailhead of the path marked with the sign Growing Old. I cringe just typing that. I’m an anxious person and the thought of aging has always been an issue. Sure, I couldn’t wait until I reached sixteen. I can drive a car! (Actually, in Texas, you can get a “hardship” license that allows you to drive to work and school at fifteen. No open beer or unregistered gun though. Even the Lone Star State has a few limits.) Twenty-one was kinda cool, too. I could drink without my are-you-kidding-me fake ID. It’s not that I was a lush—getting drunk has never had any appeal, much less been a Friday night (AND Saturday night) goal; it’s just that I happened to be two years younger than my peers and didn’t want to have youth highlighted by the possibility of a server denying me my amaretto sour. Youth. If only.

 

I took hitting thirty hard. It was my premature midlife crisis, prompting me to walk away from my career as a lawyer (after a whopping two and a half years), and move from Los Angeles back to Canada, not to the area where I grew up, pre-Texas, but to Vancouver where I knew only one person.

 

After that, deep funks over getting older didn’t wait until I hit a new decade. Instead, every single birthday was cause for sorrow instead of celebration. Another year older…why the woo-hoo? As my mother is fond of saying, “Beats the alternative.” Sure. Technically so, but is that cause for cake? I’m not a cake fan even in general terms. I don’t tell people when my birthday is and I certainly don’t want parties or gifts. Let it pass. Don’t remind me. 

I don't want to board airplanes before everybody else.

 

Does it feel worse because I’m gay? I’ve long passed the threshold for being dead in gay years. I’m supposed to be settled down, out of sight, shopping for antique hutches with a partner, or I must submit to buying a one-way ticket for an aimless trip on an ice floe, waiting for a polar bear to scramble up after a swim and have breakfast. It would be easy to blame gay culture but, if anything, that’s only reinforced a mindset that was already there.

 

When I dated a guy last year, my running joke—which wasn’t funny at all—was that I was thirty-four, as if I’d undergone that cryonic frozen-in-time procedure without any of the problematic side effects like being in a block of ice. For a number of years now, I have truly felt like I was thirty-four in mind and body. Frozen in time, figuratively anyway. I’m more hyper than I’ve ever been, always rarin’ to go. My daily tasks are all punctuated with urgent exclamation marks. Jog! Bike! Write! Hike! Read! Work out! Thirty minutes after I finish a run, I’ll step outside, see someone else jogging and my mind automatically thinks, I should do another run. Now! I don’t but I really, really want to. 

 

I see the difference in my friends. My closest friend talks about his body turning pear-shaped (“like my [eighty-nine-year-old] father”) and spoke with pride this past weekend about how he likes to just sit and watch the morning show with Gayle King and her colleagues for three hours straight. While younger gay men send butt and dick pics to strangers, I send my friend pie pics (and, lately, croissant shots). He’s overjoyed. Another good friend has spent the past three years recovering from foot surgeries and considers an annual chat a significant investment. I hear lots about people’s aches and pains, frequent references to the way things used to be and all that talk about stocks, mortgages and pensions that made me cringe thinking about in my twenties, a sentiment that hasn’t changed. They aren’t willing to try oat milk, wonder out loud if they should get an e-bike (“It’d probably just sit in the garage”) and don’t believe meat-eating younger people would actually choose to eat at a vegan spot sometimes—just another option like Thai or Lebanese. 

 

What happened to fun? What about spontaneity? What happened to being open to new things, someday at least, if no longer with that sense of right away? It should be no surprise that the person I hang out the most with now is—you guessed it—thirty-four. This morning she sent me a TikTok video. I couldn’t figure out how to get it to play, but she filled me in after a couple follow-up texts. I’m (sorta) in the loop with the cool kids. On the weekend, I met her and her boyfriend to do a canopy walk in the forest. They drove there; I biked it. Afterwards, we sat on the grass and chatted. Friends my age look for benches. (“It’s too hard to get up,” one said recently.)

 

Ah, yes. Growing old takes some getting used to. My TV-watching friend talks about it with his own exclamation marks. Mushroom videos on YouTube! Pie! TV news! Horror movie marathons! I’m neither exaggerating nor making fun of him. I’m even partially in awe. He fully embraces the slower pace and, as he says, “doing nothing.” I was aghast this weekend on our “hike”—his term; I called it a walk—when he said, “What’s so great about our virtual world now is that I don’t have to travel anymore. I can just watch it all on my screen.” Sometimes you just know when not to argue a point. Sometimes people’s views are just too far apart. 

 

I do realize being sedentary isn’t solely for people growing older—there are plenty of twenty-something couch potatoes and nonstop gamers—but this friend of mind used to be on volleyball, softball and curling teams. He was my tennis bud. He backpacked across Europe and climbed Kilimanjaro. He’s three years younger than me but has a much older mindset. 

 

It used to be that my fear of growing old was about being alone. I didn’t want to be single and die alone. I’ve let most of that angst go. I still don’t want to die and go three weeks in my condo, body decomposing, only to be discovered because neighbors wondered about the bad smell in the hallway. Of course, I won’t be around to face them or be duly mortified, but it still seems more than a tad undignified for a final exit. I think I’ve solved this by deciding that, at some point, I’ll get my pastry pal to agree that we’ll text each other hello every morning. No text by noon requires investigation. Problem solved.

 

I’ve also worried aplenty about becoming invisible. I’ve observed many times how an elderly person walking with a cane has to stop at the edge of a sidewalk as a chatty couple or a group of younger folk (at that point, they’re all younger folk) pass by, oblivious to the gentleman’s need for space and constant concern about the possibility of falling and breaking a hip. I’m already getting a taste for being unnoticed and irrelevant. It’s one part freeing and two parts depressing. I’m learning to deal with it.

 

I may feel thirty-four, but that’s not what passersby see. I get called “sir” a lot and, while it’s supposed to convey respect, I hate it. The checkout person, the barista, the computer tech guy who has to show me how to download photos…to all of them I’m a sir. The only way I’ve “earned” the reference is in a “respect your elders” kind of way.

 

For all my denial about aging, the signs are surfacing. Six years ago, I got my first pair of glasses and now I can’t read anything without them. If I take a selfie, I’ll glance at it and think the crow’s feet and deep, saggy crevices under my eyes are an indicator of the low-quality camera on my cell phone. (I should get a newer version, but I can’t bear to hear all that gobbledygook about giga-somethings and some sort of cloud in the sky that stores my stuff. (What happens on a sunny day?) Even more telling, I can be as sour as those two old Muppets, Statler and Waldorf. Early onset of “cranky old man.”

 

Every time I forget something (What was that brilliant writing idea? Why did I open the fridge? Why am I holding this whisk?) I immediately attribute it to aging and fret that maybe I’m in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. Did I forget things when I was twenty-three? No, never. Of course not!

 

Worst of all, I’ve had to ease up a bit on my hiking for the last six weeks because my left knee has a persistent pain. Running is totally on hold. This is the beginning…

DEAD TO YOU

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.

MIRROR, MIRROR

It’s uncomfortable. I’d much rather look down than stare straight ahead. But Vicky keeps admonishing me: “Head up, please.” I’m not sure I’ll ever master sitting in the barber’s chair. I’m still the antsy little kid; only now there’s no green sucker as a parting gift.

There’s no other time during the month when I’m forced to face a mirror for a prolonged period of time. It shouldn’t be so painful but I’m the polar opposite of Narcissus. My image spawns awkwardness, followed by a swell of self-hate.

That nose. So big.

Those eyes. Look at the bags under them. So dark. Coon eyes.

Vicky combs my wet hair back. It’s a rough gesture that jolts my whole head. Is she frustrated? Does she hate her job? Is she wishing she could be pickier about her clientele?

Oh, god. I’m face to face with me again. Aack!* When did my hair recede so far? And the bigger question: WHEN DID I GET SO OLD?

Just last week, my younger cousin—he’s 44, I’m 51—blurted in both exasperation and envy, “How do you keep getting younger?! You look 30.” I hear it from others, too. There’s a consensus that I look considerably younger than my age. But objects in the mirror at close range and under bright lighting look harsh. Every year shows. Every trauma leaves a souvenir.

If only I could look away.

Torture for me would be a room full of mirrors. It’s a good thing I’m not privy to top-secret anything. I’d crumble minutes. Forget waterboarding and cocked pistols; just hold a hand mirror to my head. Aack! What Canadians really mean when they say “sorry” would be known to all. (Sorry ‘bout that, Mr. Trudeau.)

This is a touch-and-go period. It’s only my second appointment with Vicky. As noted in a recent post, I’ve had to find a new stylist now that I am finally living and working in the Vancouver area once again. Maybe I should have been pickier, maybe I should have done more research but my hair was overgrown and verging on becoming a home to paper clips and dryer lint, not to mention a snake or two. Vicky’s salon is but a few blocks from home. It was the perfect confluence of convenience and urgency. The rest is up to the two of us. How’s her chair-side manner? Can she avoid nicking that mole at the back on my head more than once? Can I adjust to twice the price for the same service?

There are, of course, other options. Plenty of salons. For a while, it seemed that Vancouver’s nearby Yaletown was solely comprised of salons and storage warehouses. But most of the places in the downtown area have a certain level of pretentiousness. I always have to fight off the too-cool-for-me complex and I’ve already acclimated to the salon where Vicky works. There is no receptionist, no clear sense of where to announce your arrival and where to stand or sit while you wait. Little dogs that belong to the stylists dart between chairs on a mission they don’t seem to have defined. They have no interest in my gestures to pat them. They’ve mastered salon aloofness.

Barber shops are out. I’m not the kind of guy who can drop, take a seat and wait for the next available groomer to snip and shave. I like my hair—what’s left of it—and I can’t bear to have it butchered. “It’ll grow back” isn’t much comfort in the weeks of waiting. I have bad memories of succumbing to an overeager razor back when I lived in Malibu. And, if I’m being honest, I feel uneasy about how much cheaper a cut is at the barber’s. While I may have gasped internally at what I had to pay the first time I saw Vicky, a price too low makes me feel I’ve gotten a hatchet job…even if I can’t spot the flaws. (This admission would make my father cry. Where did he go wrong?!)

I suppose I’m hair-obsessed. Like Pamela Anderson and her boobs. Newman and his eyes. That Crawford guy and his body. Not that I’m anywhere near the Anderson/Newman/Crawford zone in anything (unless penmanship counts). But most of us are aware of a feature that gets the most—or only—compliments. Naturally, we want to highlight it or at least preserve it.

At 51, preserving is becoming a challenge. Summer toning at the gym doesn’t get the same results. The stomach protrudes too much no matter how many laps I swim. But the hair, well, it was always supposed to be there. I blocked out the history of baldness in the family. I let past hairstylists reassure me that my follicular fountain wouldn’t run dry. (Never trust anyone whose livelihood depends on a healthy tip.)

After the cut...I survived.

The vibrant curls and waves in my hair now look like thinning frizz. I keep switching hair products in a state of desperation I haven’t had since I heavily invested in the acne cream industry in my youth. Alas, the body has a mind of its own.

As Vicky finishes—Oh god, not the blow dryer! We haven’t had that talk yet. Extra frizz!—she offers a hand mirror for me to glance at the back. Are you kidding me?! I already know there’s a spot at the top where hair can’t grow because of a cyst I had removed two years ago. I don’t want to do any more spot checking.

I don’t raise my arms. I shake my head. At this point, after fifty minutes of mirror scrutiny, I’m too despondent to speak. Let it be over. Please just set me free.

Before I leave, I book my next appointment. I suspect it wasn’t any better for her than it was for me, but it’s harder to say no in person. Besides, I retain a foolish sense of denial. No one else sees my head up close. No one else sees how my asset has become a liability. Vicky and I mark our calendars for the next ordeal.

Maybe she’s the one who deserves the green sucker.

MUST LOVE BEER

Well, it was my chance for an obligatory pint of Guinness. I know when I return from my trip to Dublin, that’s what every will ask about. As if it’s not readily available in Canada. I suppose I could have gone to a pub—people will ask about that, too—but I’m a quirky vegetarian and pub food looked greasy and uninspiring. So I decided to consume my Guinness at The George, a Dublin gay bar.

It was a convenient stop. I’d gone to see the musical “Once” on Friday night—the perfect show to see in Dublin—and the theatre was right around the corner. Still, it took some prodding. Go on. Step inside. You can do this. (I have the same conversation with myself whenever I have to get a blood test.) 

I did it. I paid the cover, wandered nervously into a dimly lit bar and quickly fled to the upstairs area. I stepped up to the bar—no line—and got my Guinness. I sipped. It wasn’t as bad as I’d expected. (I’m a Chardonnay guy.)

I sipped again. And again.

At this rate, I’d be finished in twenty minutes and then the inevitable would happen: I’d flee. When I’m all alone, I’m a one-drink bar guy.

Slow down, you lush. You’re the new guy here. Let the locals see you.

I headed back downstairs and perched on a stool. Clinging tightly to my glass, I dared to look around. Hello again, junior high. The dance floor was empty. Small clusters of girls danced together, showing off moves they’d practiced in their bedrooms. The guys chatted in pairs. An older single guy—my age—neared. I’d glimpsed him when I first entered. It hadn’t been a matter of interest. I simply needed reassurance that I wasn’t the only loner in the place. He looked at me for a moment, offering his best poker face. I couldn’t help notice a resemblance to Liam Neeson. Only homely. He walked on. Probably made a similar assessment of me—Carrot Top, only homelier.

It’s easy to feel the self-esteem slide when you’re all alone in a gay bar on Friday night. Some things never change.

After the Orlando shootings and during Pride celebrations, there was a lot of talk about gay bars being a safe hub, a place where we can be ourselves. I get that in theory, but I’m not sure I’ve ever been myself in one. With a group of friends, I’m gaiety on steroids, laughing too loudly, sending out vibes that I’m having soooo much fun, doing what I can to cover up feelings of unworthiness amongst hotter men in muscle-flaunting apparel. On my own, I fight the tendency to be dismissive, rejecting people before they reject me. I try to smile but it’s harder to fake a good time when solo. I can’t prove it, but I think an involuntary sneer surfaces on my face whenever anyone nears. It arises from fear of interaction.

It doesn’t matter that I wasn’t looking for a boyfriend or even a hookup when I decided to check out The George. My sole objective was to have a conversation with a gay Dubliner just to get a sense of the city and whether I could fit in here. And have that obligatory beer.

I sipped again and focused on the music. Relax your shoulders. Move a little on your stool. Feel the beat.

Beyonce.

Gaga.

Even Kylie Minogue.

Some things haven’t changed. The gays love the divas.

By the time Selina Gomez was killing 'em with kindness, I’d let go of any hope of conversation with a charming Irish man. Or even a brash, drunken lad. I’d put away my defensive sneers. I accepted my role as the creepy fiftysomething (“young” 50s, but those words don’t go together in a gay bar). I let the music take over, if only for another song or two. Sometimes it’s hard to tell when one ends and another begins.

I realized I was clutching my glass with both hands, holding it close the way a fearful child grips a teddy bear. Comfort me. Shield me. And that’s when I noticed the Guinness was gone. I’d managed to stick around for almost a whole hour. My mind interprets this as an achievement. I’d given it a try. The gay bar. And the Guinness. 

I got up, dutifully returning my glass to the bar to make it clear that my nesting ground was now free. I walked on and out, into night air, through the ambling crowds of weekend partiers spilling out from Temple Bar and back to the quiet alongside the River Liffey, ready for the long walk back to my hotel, a trek only made longer by my complete inability to master the layout of this city. It’s another chance to see more of Dublin than I’d ever intended.