Gay and growing old

A recent news article on Queerty.com about the suicide of therapist Bob Bergeron just as his book The Right Side of Forty: The Complete Guide to Happiness for Gay Men at Midlife and Beyond was being published brought out over 100 comments on the article, many of them vicious, some of the thoughtful, a few of them sad.

It isn’t exclusively a problem of aging gay men. Look around you at billboards, Television shows, magazine advertisements and commercials. Everything is being promoted by young sexy men and women to other young and sexy men and women. I’ve never quite understood this, since most young people can’t really afford what is being marketed, but I suppose that by using images of youth and implying young equals sexy, one of us older farts with money to spend will buy something.

However, being gay and growing old presents certain challenges. Many gay men lack the foundation of family to support them as they grow older. Young gay life is often a constant stream of nightclubs and parties, where even the older men present are interested only in someone younger than themselves, as if being with someone their own age would be like winning third prize at the county fair.

I admit to some of this myself. Although partnered with someone a bit older than I am, my eye is always caught by a trim young man in his twenties, and when I can bear to look at myself in the mirror, I don’t see wisdom and experience and handsome charm, I see a droopy butt and sagging pec’s and lament that no young twenty-something would ever consider me a prize.

Were it not for the AIDS epidemic of the 80’s and 90’s it is likely that our community of gay men would be some 600,000 larger than it is today. Many of us who survive and are in our late 50’s and older have non-existent relations with our families, often not by our own choices. As our friends begin to die, we are left with a shrinking support network, and a lot of us lack the skills or energy to develop new relationships.

Mr. Bergeron, by all reports, was a good-looking and successful man, with a loving family and many friends. As a therapist, he helped to counsel others who had issues with aging and still managed to end up depressed enough to commit suicide.

 John and I are making plans to retire to South Florida, in part because as we age, we realize that shoveling the drive in the winter and caring for the big house and yard in the summer are burdens that we just don’t want to continue. But, a big attraction is that the area we have selected is home to a very large and active chapter of Prime Timers.

Prime Timers is an organization of gay men, open to anyone 21 or older, that get together and form small communities of like people for various forms of fun. In the Fort Lauderdale area, there is everything from cards, to bocce ball to bowling, to monthly trips to the nude beach or pot luck dinners.

When we visited our friend Chuck in late February, we were taken to one of the monthly socials at the local country-western gay bar. There were dozens of men our age and older there, all chatting away with each other, having a grand time.

It’s through endeavors like these that we can reach out and refresh and enlarge our connections to others like ourselves. Although I have a family, that mostly seems to accept me, there are just some needs they can’t fill, and an organization like Prime Timers would certainly help me feel like I was a part of something.

I’ve seen some of these guys devote hours of time and some of their finances to taking care of other men when they were sick and dying. It’s truly a different community that we want to be a part of, and is something lacking where we live now.

It’s hard enough to grow old no matter what your sexual preference or lifestyle, and if you can find a place where you feel welcome and part of the neighborhood, you have a far better chance of living longer and healthier than you would if you stay isolated and alone.

I know a lot of older people can’t move, or won’t, but we can, and will.