Why I Write

WHY NOW?

2018-2019 has been a banner year for this 68 year-old, cisgender, gay, white man. I have lived to see the 50th anniversary of the Stonewall Riots, my 50th high school reunion, 40 years of sobriety from alcohol and other drugs and 30 years of recovery from sex addiction and codependency. I have undergone my first major surgery and I even got gay-married after years of railing against it. If I’ve learned anything this year, it’s not to get too attached to my self-concepts.

Obviously, a website called “My Messy Ol’ Gay Life” is not a place for cyber-bragging. My blogs reveal my human foibles as well as my strengths. By presenting my authentic self, I hope that readers can identify with my less-than-perfect life. I have nothing to sell, I don’t crave recognition or celebrity and I don’t really mind if you don’t like everything you read. I just want us to connect.

I hope that my story will transcend differences and illustrate the unique place LGBTQ+ people have always occupied in the mosaic of humankind. I want to provide a place where anyone who is interested can read my personal stories and musings before they are lost forever.

There are lots of scary things going on around us, but I don’t want this site to feed the maw of political division and despair. If MMOGL serves as a platform for the voice of our shared humanity, then our time together will be well-spent.

LONELINESS EPIDEMIC

The research is in and it really disturbs me.

I remember when daily life required the regular human contacts that began to dwindle as we learned to use ATMs and scan our own groceries. Sadly, younger generations weaned on technology are now reporting high rates of loneliness. Social media keeps us in touch with family and friends, but some sites post highly curated profiles that often generate “less than” feelings in their readers, the opposite of connection.

Many of us oldsters are tech-challenged as we cherry-pick our way through the virtual world. Technology has improved our lives in many ways, but trading information, photos and emojis, while entertaining, is just not as nourishing as the face-to-face relations that we grew up with.

Gay Boomer men are particularly susceptible to isolation. At the height of the AIDS disaster in the 80’s, our herd was severely thinned and intimacy began to look dangerous, both physically and emotionally. As a last ditch effort to escape the plague, some men fled into hasty, monogamous relationships, but these too were often shattered by the onset of illness and the inevitable death of one or both partners.

By end of the decade, many survivors reached the tipping point for how much grief they could bear and retreated into self-contained existences. During the formative years of the twenties and thirties when other people were figuring out the intricacies of primary partnerships, many of my tribe opted for self-sufficiency since the epidemic made the idea of such “committed” relationships seem not only implausible, but downright deadly. (I use quotations marks around “committed” because if sitting by the death bed of a friend or partner until his last breath doesn’t qualify as a commitment, I don’t know what does!).

Exhausted after too much loss and care-taking, some survivors still avoided primary relationships after AIDS became a manageable condition in the 90’s. They were too hard to find and many of us didn’t know how to maintain them. There is nothing wrong with opting for a singlehood, I have spent most of my life as a single man. I have even learned that being part of a couple doesn’t necessarily preclude feeling lonely. However, I have found that singlehood presented an ongoing challenge to managing loneliness, especially as I was growing older.

By the 90’s, many of us had aged out of the meat market (“40 is 80 in gay years,” as the saying goes). But gay men of my generation came of age in a time of highly sexualized identities and many of us, contrary to popular belief, still had sexual needs and desires. The advent of the Internet made it easier to separate sexual needs from relational needs (and minimize rejection) with a quick click.

Like many older men, I was attracted to younger guys. In my late fifties, I met, hooked up with and sometimes dated young men on websites like DaddyHunt, but these connections often proved tenuous and hyper-sexual. Let me be clear, there is nothing wrong with sex! As both a single and coupled man, I have dallied in hook-ups (what we used to call “tricking”) over the years and have had many pleasant experiences along the way … some better than others, some not so great and some near tragic, as my stories will reveal.

Swiping through a never-ending stream of better offers on Grindr looked like fun. Hell, I was thrilled if someone (anyone!) looked upon me as a sex object in my golden years. But I eventually learned that obsessively objectifying others can lead to a deepening loneliness over time. Online porn (and there’s nothing wrong with porn outside of underage sites and sex slavery) is also a good time, but overuse can also lead to isolation.

ELDER ISOLATION

Seniors have always been a high-risk group for loneliness. Partners die or leave, families live far away, new friends are hard to find and old friends are harder to see. Physical and mental deficits can also limit social interactions. But alarming news has surfaced recently that ailing LGBTQ+ seniors are returning to the closet!

Having no one at home, or family nearby, some elder-gays enter care facilities where they fear abuse and/or neglect due to their sexual orientation. After years spent in out- and-proud communities, some gay men and women feel compelled to re-enter the closet for their survival. For them, it’s the 1950’s all over again … with the additional agony that Adam and Eve must have felt when they looked back at the Garden. Despite growing social acceptance, their plight makes clear an undeniable truth: it has never been safe to be totally out in the world outside of our community.

After fifty years of living as an out gay man, I still have an invisible antenna that goes up whenever I enter a room full of (usually male) strangers to determine if the environment is safe. When I mentioned this to three heterosexual women in my writing group a few years ago, I was astounded when they said: “We always feel that way!” With the advent of the #MeToo movement reminds me that we all inhabit, and are affected by, the same culture.

Being an older member of the LGBTQ+ community carries the risk of becoming a curmudgeon or a scold; the reverse ageism that is the kiss of death to connection. I have fallen prey to these attitudes from time to time, but I don’t want to live there.

The LGBTQ+ community has evolved and the world has moved on. I’m lucky to have played whatever small part in the major changes that I’ve seen along the way. If I have any doubts about how fortunate I am, I only have to think of how my long-dead friends would stare in awe and disbelief if they were suddenly resurrected into the LGBTQ+ world of today.

In today’s divided political environment, it is easy to forget that finding and joining one’s tribe was not always been a bad thing. For many gay people of my generation, it was the difference between life and death. Whether we feel compelled to sequester ourselves in silence, closets, self-containment or internet silos, the result is always the same: despair and loneliness.

For all its faults, the internet can still unite us. It all depends on our intent. The purpose of this website is to give equal voice to the facets of humanity that we have in common, not to focus exclusively on the issues that divide us. There are plenty of other venues for that.

I hope that the personal reflections and stories in this blog site can give some readers a respite, however brief, from feelings of separation and loneliness.