We’re More Afraid Of Catching Age Than Aids
If you say “I am forty-three” people will hear “I have leprosy.”
Guest Blogger Tony Thompson on how 30 is the new 70.
There is no bigger cosmic joke on humanity than aging. It’s a universally non-biased experience laden with irony. One moment it’s congratulating you on your successes (a promotion at work), then the next moment it’s reminding you that you’ll die someday (you find your first gray pubic hair).
It’s proof not only that there is a God, but that he has a wicked sense of humor. For example, by the time you can actually afford to drink in martini bars, your body can no longer tolerate alcohol like it could when you were young and poor. Or by the time you actually start to see the world as a beautiful place full of grace and understanding, you’re old and no one cares how you see anything.
Gay men struggle more with age than any other pocket of the population. While most straight people resign themselves to physical collapse at age 30, gay men on this birthday MUST begin working out regularly, otherwise they are no longer allowed to attend Gay Pride parades or watch “Project Runway.” I was at a 30th birthday party once for someone whose friends purchased him a gym membership. How’s that for unconditional love?
Although we gays fight aging with more purpose and drive than the Allied had when defeating the Germans, we are all still fully aware that it’ll happen. We use three gauges to measure our marches from Twink to Sugar Daddy:
• By when different Madonna albums were released. I was enrolled in a school run by Southern Baptists during the Like a Prayer era. I was a junior in high school during the Erotica and Sex book era. I moved to Chicago during the American Life era. Every gay man, no matter how masculine they may appear to be, can tell you exactly where and how old he was the first time he heard “Ray of Light.”
• By how many Republican presidents have screwed us. Maybe you remember Richard Nixon ignoring the Stonewall Riots. Or you might recall Gerald Ford not acknowledging gay Americans despite having been saved from assassination by one, Oliver Sipple, in 1975. Maybe you remember Ronald Reagan’s Communications Director calling AIDS “nature’s revenge on gay men.” Or maybe you’re only young enough to recall George W. Bush’s attempts to write social discrimination into the pages of the Constitution with his proposed marriage amendment. The GOP! Progress defined!
• By which bars and social scenes you tend to gravitate towards. Since most cities only have a handful of gay bars, there is little wiggle room surrounding the types of clientele they tend to attract. The dance bars tend to attract younger people. The quieter, more civil bars tend to attract an older crowd. Recently, along with two other thirty-something friends of mine, we went to a bar that would more likely have a place for us to sit down and hear each other talk, bypassing the late night disco packed with half naked drunk boys. “Did that just happen?” my friend Matt asked worriedly. “Did we really pick this place over the dance bar? Wow. We just got old.”
And it does happen that fast. One second you’re jumping up and down shirtless to Madonna’s “Music.” Then, in the blink of an eye, you’re asking the DJ if he can turn down his extended mix of “4 Minutes” because you can‘t hear yourself think. Gay men have a very dysfunctional relationship with aging. We hate it, but without it, we wouldn’t be alive. Much like the relationship most of us have with our parents.