Gay Men at Midlife

Age Before Beauty

John Dececco, Phd,Alan L Ellis

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317765820
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: LGBT-Studien

"Those of us in our forties and fifties came of age in the 1960s and 1970s--a time when the available commentary on gay life was anything but supportive. Until 1973, homosexuality was a diagnosable mental illness." --from the Introduction by Alan L. EllisToday, that literary blindness is being remedied. Take an in-depth look into the lives of 15 gay men and how they relate to their own aging with Gay Men at Midlife: Age Before Beauty, a fascinating new book that explores and clarifies the issues that confront gay men as they age. What happens to gay men's lives when they reach middle age?The essays in Gay Men at Midlife: Age Before Beauty offer a realistic picture of both the challenges and the joys that present themselves in the lives of gay men at midlife. The book does not gloss over the difficulties of the experience; you will truly come to understand that each gay man is not alone in confronting the pain and mourning that may accompany middle age.The people who frankly, openly, and intelligently discuss their personal lives in Gay Men at Midlife: Age Before Beauty include:

• psychotherapist/popular columnist Tom Moon (San Francisco, California)
• professor of philosophy and literature Alejandro Medina-Bermudez (Madrid, Spain)
• television executive George Pierson (Bethesda, Maryland)
• multimedia artist Trevor Southey (born in the country now known as Zimbabwe, currently working in San Francisco)
• activist/researcher Frank Wong (New York)... plus 10 more individuals from varying backgrounds!

Gay Men at Midlife: Age Before Beauty provides a look at how these individuals are redefining the stereotypes of aging gay men and empowering themselves to find meaning and purpose in the second half of their lives.

Chapter 1

Introduction: The Beauty of Men

Alan L. Ellis

Everyone was a God, and no one grew old in a single night No, it took years for that to happen ...

Andrew Holleran, Dancer from the Dance

Dancer from the Dance¹ was published in 1978, and while those of us now in our forties and fifties didn’t grow old in a single night, two decades passed, and we did grow older. In those twenty-some-odd years, the gay community matured as well. Considerable progress has been made toward altering many of the negative stereotypes about gay men and other members of the queer community. However, we still live in a homophobic and heterosexist society. When we combine negative biases about homosexuality with similarly negative biases about aging, we are left to confront a societal script for aging gay men that tends to propagate a stereotype of isolated and alienated individuals. It is a script in which isolation, bitterness, and regret multiply with age. One of the choices many of us as gay men face is whether to live out a script that society wishes to impose on us or to empower ourselves to write our own.

Clearly, it’s not an easy task. Both straight and gay writers have reinforced the concept of the lonely and bitter aging gay male throughout our lifetimes. Andrew Holleran’s recent book The Beauty of Men² presents a devastating portrait of a fifty-year-old gay male who embodies most, if not all, of the negative characteristics of the stereotype. Reviews of the book describe the male protagonist as “riddled not only with the guilt of a survivor whose friends have succumbed to AIDS but with a deeper sense of despair at his own homosexuality,”³ and as a man “who pines for lost youth and to meet again a younger man he had sex with a year ago ... he thinks intelligently if ego-centrically about his life and his plight. He is pathetic.”⁴

Not surprisingly, everyone I know who read the book found it depressing. Whereas Holleran’s Dancer from the Dance had helped me and others to come to terms with our sexuality and even to come out, reading The Beauty of Men led to a growing sense of dread about our future. The book reinforces the belief that aging gay men are isolated, bitter, angry, unhappy, alienated, and lonely. Perhaps we should be grateful to Holleran because The Beauty of Men and its depressing depiction of an aging gay man forces us to confront our fears of aging.

Internalizing societal fears and beliefs about aging can keep us from questioning the status quo. Ray Berger, the author of Gay and Gray,⁵ has noted that negative stereotypes are one of the most damaging weapons that a society can wield against devalued and oppressed groups.⁶ Negative stereotypes can lead the oppressed to oppress themselves. Most of us can attest to the pain of growing up in a homophobic and heterosexist culture. The negative stereotypes about what it was to be gay required us as younger men either to continue living in fear or confront our own insecurities about who we were. Most of us have struggled to accept our sexuality, and to move beyond the negative stereotypes and beliefs about what it means to be gay. Now, we find ourselves confronting ageism—an ageism that can be particularly virulent when applied to older gay men. If we’re lucky, we have largely won the battle against our internalized homophobia just in time to battle internalized beliefs about aging. Many of us, however, are likely to enter middle age still working to liberate ourselves from the effects of growing up in a homophobic and heterosexist society.

Those of us in our forties and fifties came of age in the 1960s and 1970s—a time when the available commentary on gay life was anything but supportive. Until 1973, homosexuality was a diagnosable mental illness, and even after 1973 writers of articles in the mainstream press still felt free to denigrate us. For example, the following review of Edmund White’s States of Desire was printed in The New York Times in 1980:

They seem to live in a modern-day inferno, where they despise their own aging flesh, where they inflict ceaseless physical and psychological harm on themselves and one another all in the name of happiness.⁷

Unfortunately, comments such as the above were what many of us as young gay men came across as we contemplated and attempted to understand our attraction to other men. Very little information was available and what was available often reinforced the fears that kept us in hiding. It is not surprising that many of us who grew up reading such statements internalized them. At the time, we might have winced at the suggestion that we lived in a modern-day inferno—and possibly noted somewhere in the back of our minds that we apparently “despise our own aging flesh.” The effects of these negative beliefs persist and continue to influence our community. For example, young gay men often refer to a glass-paned bar on Castro Street that caters to older gay men (forty-plus) as the “Glass Coffin.”

For those of us who carry the scars and wounds of decades of being exposed to antigay sentiment (as well as the loss and grief of two decades of AIDS) the question is how can we respond now in ways that improve our lives as we grow older? In part, this question requires addressing our role as victims of societal oppression. It is important that we give ourselves permission to acknowledge and process the pain and hurt that we feel as a result of having grown up in a culture that rejected us because of our sexual and affectional desires. However, if we remain focused only on our status as victims, we may be more likely to live out the script that a homophobic society has written for us. By continuing our individual struggles to move through the pain, we are more likely to find the strength and ability to write our own scripts. Developing a new script is not easy, but it does offer us the opportunity to create a future that is based on our own desires and hopes.

One of the primary challenges of aging for gay men is that societal measures of success are typically less relevant to gay lives. Traditionally, society has rewarded those who have children and are in culturally sanctioned relationships. However, recent surveys of the population indicate that approximately one in three adults—regardless of sexual orientation—is single. Currently, the majority of gay men age as singles. Despite these realities, there is an ongoing and persistent cultural belief that being single is somehow representative of failure. While many of us have created effective communities and support networks either as couples or singles, we live in a culture that has few ways of celebrating singles. Part of rewriting the script involves creating ways to honor and celebrate everyone, regardless of relationship status.

Society also rewards those who follow traditional career paths—although even that concept is undergoing significant change. Many of us have chosen to step aside from career paths and mainstream lives in order to explore our sexuality and other aspects of ourselves. As a result, we may find ourselves wondering what forms the foundation of our lives. Although mainstream heterosexuals may face similar challenges in their lives, they also tend to encounter greater support for their choices. Those of us (including queers who are straight) who must find our worth outside mainstream society may find the going tougher, but we may also ultimately be stronger for it because it requires us to confront more directly how we define our being.

Based on the findings of several studies looking at gay men over the age of sixty, it appears that, despite the negative stereotypes, most older gay men adapt as well, if not better, to aging than do straight-identified men.⁸ The research suggests that, overall, older gay men adjust better than heterosexual men because older gay men have learned to operate independently of traditional societal structures. That is, older gay men have developed coping skills to deal with societal stigma. Because our society tends to stigmatize the elderly, older gay men may be better prepared to cope with that stigma based on their years of living with the stigma of homosexuality. The positive implication of these findings is that we can collectively challenge and alter the debilitating stereotypes and beliefs about older gay men by living individual lives that neutralize those stereotypes. To do so, we may need to individually confront the negative stereotypes and beliefs as they relate to our lives. This can require integrating those aspects of ourselves that we believe are weaknesses and learning to accept about ourselves what others may view negatively. This process is often referred to as “shadow work.”

Jungian psychology is known for its attention to “shadow work.” Shadows are those aspects of ourselves that we dislike and that we have spent most of our lives attempting to ban from consciousness. Ultimately, they slip into consciousness and require that we confront and accept them. Shadow work typically accompanies middle age and often around age forty most of us begin to confront our shadows. In doing so, the hope is that we develop an increasing sense of worth and peace about ourselves. But “shadow work” is not easy. It can force us into some of the most challenging places we have ever been psychologically. Initially, many of us may work even harder to “distract” ourselves from the dark elements of the psyche. Over time, however, the distractions begin to fail. As gay men, we may be more likely to confront our shadows sooner than heterosexuals because heterosexuals can continue to remain distracted by family, career, and the pursuit of societal approbation—from an early age, we have had to question the value of society’s acceptance. As painful as that process has been for many of us, it may ultimately benefit us as we must look elsewhere to establish our inherent worth. We may initially transfer our need for approval to other members of the gay community but are likely to find that, as we age, approval that lies outside ourselves is both transient and ultimately unfulfilling.

Shadow work forces us, then, to confront the difficult questions of our lives—whatever they may be for each individual. A host of promises are associated with acknowledging one’s shadows. For example, the author of The Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment writes “all you need do to get free of pain... is to be willing to be aware of anything that enters your consciousness.”⁹ Aging reduces the effectiveness of the defenses and distractions that we use to avoid those things that are uncomfortable. From a spiritual perspective, it may be the universe’s way of encouraging us to look at the real meaning of our lives. Regardless, however, of one’s perspective, middle age is generally accompanied by an intense focus on determining the meaning of one’s life.

In Letters to a Young Poet, Rilke wrote: “Live the questions now. Perhaps, you will then gradually, without noticing, live along some distant day into the answer.”¹⁰ Later in those same letters he wrote “. . . let life happen to you. Believe me: life is right, in any case.”¹¹ The essays in this book are about questions that are being lived and lives that are happening. My hope is that by reading about other men’s lives, you will encounter experiences, fears, joys, frustrations, and interpretations that help to illuminate your own life. Undoubtedly, some of the stories will resonate more than others with your life. I have chosen to leave the interpretation of each of the stories up to you, the reader, based on your own life experience. I also hope that in these men’s stories you will find experiences that help you further explore the challenges and joys of your own life, and encounter the true “beauty of men,” regardless of sexual orientation or age.

Notes

  1. Holleran, A. (1978). Dancer from the Dance. New York: Plume.

  2. Holleran, A. (1996). The Beauty of Men. New York: William Morrow & Co.

  3. Hollinghurst, A. (June 30, 1996). So I’m Shallow. The New York Times Book Review (p. 7).

  4. Olson, R. (June 1, 1996). Review of Andrew Holleran’s The Beauty of Men. Booklist (p. 1643).

  5. Berger, R. M. (1996). Gay and Gray: The Older Homosexual Man. Binghamton, NY: Harrington Park Press.

  6. Berger, R. M. and Kelly, J. J. (1996). Gay men and lesbians grown older. In R. P. Cabaj and T. S. Stein (Eds.), Textbook of Homosexuality and Mental Health (p. 306). Washington DC: American Psychiatric Press, Inc.

  7. Cowan, P. (February 3, 1980). The Pursuit of Happiness. The New York Times Book Review (p. 13).

  8. For a review of this research, see Berger, R. M. and Kelly, J. J. (1996). Gay men and lesbians grown older. In R. P. Cabaj and T. S. Stein (Eds.), Textbook of Homosexuality and Mental Health (pp. 306–316). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Press, Inc.

  9. Golas, T. (1972). The Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment (p. 42). Redway, CA: Seed Center.

10. Rilke, R. M. (1934). Letters to a Young Poet (p. 35). New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

11. Ibid., p. 74.

Chapter 2

A Vipassana Romance

Tom Moon

Samsara

From earliest childhood, an almost mystical hunger to be close to other males—physically, emotionally, and spiritually—has dominated my life like a force of nature: ancient, impersonal, and elemental. It speaks through me; it uses me; and someday, it will use me up.

In one of my earliest memories—I couldn’t have been older than four—I sit on the landing outside my family’s apartment on Capp Street in the Mission District of San Francisco with my friend Davey, who’s waiting for his father to come home. The door to the building opens and heavy footsteps are heard below. Then I see Davey’s father, Sal, a big, sweaty, unshaven Italian fireman, in red suspenders and a dirty T-shirt, bound up the stairs, pick Davey up, throw him in the air, and give him a bear hug while Davey squeals with delight. I stand watching with i...