More Queer Ageing . . .

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In her book “How to Grow Old Disgracefully”, the actress Hermione Gingold remarked: “There’s nothing so ageing as the past – especially when it catches up with you. I like to live in the present”. How gay was Hermione? Well for starters her sister Angela Baddeley played iconic Mrs Bridges in the 70’s TV drama Upstairs Downstairs (? ask yer mum), Hermoine sang Sondheim on Broadway in A Little Night Music and if that wasn’t camp enough, she also found herself a lover when she was age 84. He was 21.

She called him Little Big Boy and said it was the best relationship in all her life. She continued, “He moved into my apartment and we lived together for five happy years, which was longer than I lived with either of my husbands. In many ways, we were perfectly suited. In spite of the age difference, we enjoyed the same things, he was independently wealthy, and we made each other laugh. We had a marvelous sex life too. Although I must confess that after I turned 85, I found sex wasn’t as important to me as it had been when I was 80″. She wrote, “This confession surprises even me, because up till then, I had always been a sex maniac”. Gay man trapped in a female body?

LIVING IN THE PRESENT is the key to harmonious living, at any age, and a perfect antidote to fear based projection. Plan ahead but don’t live in it. Because what you focus on expands, it’s best if you focus only on the footwork, not the destination. In my view; goals trainings, resolutions are only visions if you are not interested in the journey and it’s the journey that provides the lessons, intrigue and growth. I found that my own solution to ageing resided with where I had come from, and where I was going and in order to look at one I needed to discover the other. Approaching 50 I began to travel extensively and found that I had nothing in common with the hetero ” Young At Heart ” Saga type packages overflowing with couples who didn’t speak to each other, other than when they were flashing pics of grandchildren before my eyes. I thought at the time – is that all they live for? So once again in my life I didn’t fit in, but then again this is my key to ageing – don’t fit in to ageist philosophy.

There is a validated heterosexual vision of growing older, although this is changing rapidly with divorce figures between 50 & 60 the highest in any age band. Gayers have an open field with hardly any child dependent responsibilities but no clear vision of what the alternative is, we are experimenting, not quite as boldly as Hermoine did but quite close. So in order to look forward, I looked back to gay history for the answer. I picked up Rictor Norton’s Mother Clapps Molly House in ‘93 at a time of chronic homophobia, a long term Conservative government still hell bent on Clause 28 and no solution for AIDS. No one thought we would reach old age but here we are living la vida loca.

By connecting to the past, the present became validated including political struggle and it’s solutions. My story will become someone else’s intrigue. In order to eradicate the fear of ageing I needed to connect with older gayers and their own personal history plus examining at close hand what being older meant. A few streets away from where I live is a senior gay of 84 and unlike Hermoine he has SEVERAL lovers, and all without using the internet, cruising grounds or cottages. He is like a man magnet. He has a vitality and sprint in his step that knocks out the vision of faded gayers living alone with the gas fire on. He is my hero. He knocks on my door sometimes with a bag of porn DVDs or VHS Tapes in case “I could use them” LOL.

I suggest that you find a gay dad/grandad to nurture, learn from, and eradicate the fear of ageing. When I have delivered lectures on Gay Ageing to Seniors I always say “drop the notion of sex with young guys within this context”. There are plenty of sites for young/mature, for those that seek it, sometimes we are our own worst enemy when it comes to uninvited attention – the old queen touch-up. With the rise of Daddies on-scene in Barcode or XXL, a valuable resource lies untapped in your own neighbourhood. Find out like I did about Gay History and where you play your role in it.

Last year upstairs at The Horse & Groom, Shoreditch I was invited by djhistory.com to contribute (as Marmite Madge) to a discussion panel on Gay Clubland 1960’s – 1980’s with Gareth Marshall, Patrick Lilley & Steve Swindells, compered by Bill Brewster. The room was jam packed with a majority of under 30 indie twinks transfixed by our memories for an hour and a quarter with hardly anyone moving to the bar. The olds were in command.

So there you have it, we are not all pissing ourselves waiting for meals on wheels, some of us are still connected to the creative energy of clubland, fashion and diversity. Can you imagine getting old? Well, find a role model and realise that one day the young will be asking you “at what age do you stop having sex?”. Print this out and hand it to them or better than that – share your own experience – I promise you there is a waiting hunger.

http://www.djhistory.com/

Queer Ageing

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Back in the days of ’50/60’s homo criminalisation they used to sing ” Nobody loves a Fairy when she’s Forty ” but now the internet is awash with Daddies, Bears and Spanking GrandDads – thankfully nobody needs to look like Cher anymore to still be in the game.

A report came out in 2010 about the upward trend of older users of recreational drugs suggesting on evidence that people over fifty just ain’t gonna give it up for health concerns or abstain which is why the government stance on harm reduction is one of last resort. We also know that many gayers well over 40 sit at home on Gaydar with tina or chemical friends for companion. One wonders when Addison Lee will get a STONEWALL Award for services to the community, delivering all that gear, but the majority of older gayers just wanna have fun or the fun to continue sanely.

However, myths and negative stereotypes concerning older gayers still exist but the old chestnut of being depressed, isolated, desperate, sexless and predatory is fading fast. We have the internet to thank for that. Most research confirms that growing older as gay or str8 is not much different, embracing or ignoring life changes, but noting that any person who hasn’t adjusted well to other aspects of life won’t adjust well to ageing either. I think that by nature of the beast, gayers are better prepared for ageing having lived independently, are in the habit of socialising with many more different strands of society and are not dependent on grandchildren in later years to provide distraction from retirement. Being lonely in old age was always the fear thrust upon us by society when in reality it is older str8s that now realise that access to grandchildren are not a given anymore, with family break-ups, divorce and low marriage statistics in the mix.

In 1978 Bell & Weinberg ( Homosexualities : A Study of Diversity Among Men and Women ) found that lesbians and gay men were more likely to have a network of close friends than heterosexuals. They postulate that heterosexuals are more likely to be involved in family interactions as opposed to outside friendships. Integration into a homosexual community is an important factor in the adaptation of older male homosexuals, as the community of friendships is important to the gay and lesbian throughout the lifespan, it continues, they are not dependent on family for their emotional support and needs. This is important for several reasons. First, gays and lesbians are much less likely to experience an ” empty nest syndrome” as support already comes from outside the home. Second, the community affords older gays and lesbians the opportunity to meet new people and socialise. As the homosexual community is usually noted for its diversity, older individuals have the opportunity to socialise with a wide range of individuals, young and old. In addition, work relations usually do not make up the majority of personal contacts outside the home, thus, upon retirement, the network of friends remains relatively unchanged. The establishment of friendship networks appears to make the ageing process EASIER for gays and lesbians”.

Now if this was the conclusion in 1978, before Gay Pride, before the reduction in Age of Consent, before the Internet and before Elton came out, post marriage as a gayer, then we are streets ahead in senior age management in the new century. Civil Partnership will not have much effect on ageing, except that men no longer need to stay in a dysfunctional relationship to avoid loneliness in later years. The rush in the first year of being able to ” marry ” was mostly existing long term relationships in mature years already. Thankfully, couples will chose to marry for reasons, other than fear of ageing. Middle age gayers now have other options, not so widely available in 1978, worshiping the post-clubbing Gay Holy Trinity – Travel, Therapy & Interior Design to fill those autumn years.

When AIDS took the Daddies away in the 80’s/90’s, an emotional wound remained until time took it’s course after combo’s in 1996. Rarely then did young gay men freely admit they fancied Dads, hairy bodies or leadership in direction, yet it was obvious that once the fad for smooth bods lessened and gay men shopped around a bit on fetish sites or XTube, older suddenly became wiser. Now the rise of big muscle bears, silverdaddies.com and even mature escorts prove that the hunger for wisdom is being satisfied. Not all guys want a hot bod, many just want to be held in silence by older hands. But it is our minds and thought patterns that remain the biggest enemy, when projecting fear with procrastination on greying hair, if any remains of course. On asking a client whether he had many older friends he replied ” I don’t know anyone gay over 35 because I don’t sleep with anyone over 35 “.

So there you have it, and I doubt whether he is the only one.

The Love Drug

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Being exposed to self-help books in the early eighties saved my arse. I was hungry for results dealing with an incurable disease, liver damage and the many consequences of my past behaviours. Along came a new language, words like ” dysfunctional ” ” co-dependent ” and ” inner child ” which asked more questions than they answered. One of the major tomes that became part of the regime I call ” Airport Spirituality ” was Scott Pecks 1978 trailblazer – THE ROAD LESS TRAVELLED.
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Airport Spirituality is what I call dip in, dip out, working on yourself, as if snatching a spiritual best seller leaving Gatwick, to read on a Greek beach in 40 degrees is the answer to the reason why you ” need to get away ” in the first place. It isn’t.
If you need to ” get away ” the best idea is often to stay put and work through it. Peck’s book challenged many ideas that people hold around the illusion of LOVE and the time spent leeching rather than loving. Whatever is unhealed we bring to the table and that platform of desire is riddled with remembered LACK than remembered MORE THAN I NEED – Abundance. If you felt you were dysfunctionally parented, then you will create the same kind of relationships as an adult.
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Peck writes,
” I define dependency as the inability to experience wholeness or to function adequately without the certainty that one is being actively cared for by another. We all – each and every one of us – even if we try to pretend to others and to ourselves that we don’t – have dependency needs and feelings. All of us have desires to be babied, to be nurtured without effort on our parts, to be cared for by persons stronger than us who have our interests at heart. No matter how strong we are, no matter how caring and responsible and adult, if we look clearly into ourselves we will find the wish to be taken care of for a change. But for most of us these desires or feelings DO NOT RULE OUR LIVES. When they do rule our lives and dictate the quality of our existence, then we have something more than just dependency needs or feelings, we are dependent.
Specifically, one whose life is ruled and dictated by dependency needs suffers from a psychiatric disorder to which we ascribe the diagnostic name ” passive dependent personality disorder “. It is perhaps the most common of all psychiatric disorders. People with this disorder, passive dependent people, are so busy seeking to be loved that they have no energy left to LOVE. They never feel ” fulfilled ” or have a sense of completeness. They always feel ” a part of me is missing “. They tolerate loneliness very poorly. Because of their lack of wholeness they have no real sense of identity, and they define themselves by their relationships, who they know and often live through other peoples lives “.

A decade after Peck described ” a passive dependent personality disorder ” the personal development industry called it CODEPENDENCY, with Pecks illustration being just one symptom of ” the disease of NEVER ENOUGH”, that lay at the core of all addictions. Never enough LOVE, MONEY, Drugs, ALCOHOL, Food and yes, even SELF HELP BOOKS. The affirmation ” I AM enough, I DO enough, MY PRESENCE is enough . . .  is an instant pacifier for recovering Codependents, so stick that dummy in your mouth whenever a LACK feeling arises. Since many codependents think they gain LOVE through DOING, or gaining approval OUTSIDE of themselves . . . love, like charity begins at home, so check out the vision of love revealed in your early childhood years and work forward. If you are expecting to be parented by your partner, or you babysit them already in the name of LOVE, it may be time for that Greek holiday after all – but on separate Islands – just to find out who you are.