12 - CIT" october 2001 FEATURES

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

BY VINCENT DOWNING

For my 29th birthday, I
got violently ill 11 days
beforehandjl was diag-
nosed with a “viral arthri-
tis” and spent about two
weeks doddering on sore
ankles. I briefly had to use
a cane." For my 30th birth-
day, I was awake at the time
that my birth certificate
said I’d been born-andiiwas
seized with violent chills

‘ and a fever" at that very

minute. I spent three days
in bed. The last birthday I
actually enjoyed was my
27th, with a solid three
years cushion between me
and having my youth ripped
from me in the space of a
moment. The last birthday
I in any way celebrated my

28th. That was 11 birth-
days ago. I was 39 this
yean

The only time I’ve ever
had a problem sustaining an
erection was at the age of
31. Somehow I wound up
in bed with a sweet, charm-
ing fellow of 39. I remem-
ber thinking “39-this is the
best I can do?” » My fear and

revulsion of somebody
else’s age rendered _me
impotent. Somehow, with-

out seeing it at all, I’d
become something other
than a mere bisexual: a
fetishist. Somebody unable
to function sexually with-
out the presence of a very
specific thing like a shoe of
a certain color. Of course
my fetish was and is for
something common there-
fore acceptable: youth.

It seems natural to fear
the aging process. It dimin-
ishes us physically and
often mentally as well.
American culture is — I’ve
been told — unusually age
averse. Gay male American

culture is worse. A
gay man is middle
aged at 35, old by 45
and virtually invisible

shortly thereafter.
(I’m not going to
address lesbian

American culture for
obvious reasons but
judging from the
remarks I’ve heard
from lesbians my wild
guess is that the wim-
min are as well
trained to
despise the
aging process

as we men are.

For example,
I’ve heard at
least one les-
bian in her
fifties say

that the age
discrimina-
tion she finds in the lesbian
community to be worse
than the homophobia she’s
found in the society at
large.) The difficulty we
run into with our feelings
towards the aging process
is the same difficulty that
Christians run into with

0 their moral judgments: how

many people do you think
can actually hate the sin
and lovefthe sinner? "
~ What set me off on this is
that I’d recently borrowed a
lot of books from the
R.U.1.2? library. Ten or
twelve collections of eroti-
ca, short stories and four
novels. Out of the dozens
of stories I read in the space
of a month there was just
one that expressed anything
other than bald (pun unin-
tended?) contempt and
revulsion for men in their
forties or older. There was
a handful of stories from
the point of view of men in
their forties. Every one of
these emphasized yearning
for lost youth. Even more
interesting is that I didn’t
read a single story from the
point of view of any men
older than this. If they
were depicted at all, it was
as flabby loveless predators
yearning only for the young
and usually making
unwanted advances towards
some young protagonist in
some tearoom, rest stop, or
locker room. Seen through
the eyes of these authors
they are as outcast and
unclean as biblical lepers. I
don’t see this kind of
relentlessly unapologetic
hatred against any other
group in gay male litera-
ture, _with the possible
exception of the religious
fundamentalists.
The most frightening
thing about this to me is

that I have all these feel-
ings myself. The three
times I’ve bedded with men
considerably older than
myself were deliberate for-
ays into unknown territory
rather than lovemaking or
even just getting off. With
one exception I never even
considered seeing them
again other than as
“friends.” All three of them
were interesting, accom-
plished, charming men who
would have had a great deal
to contribute. But that just
didn’t matter. I was just
too afraid. Part of what I

fear is a loss of status
among the only people
whose opinions count:

those in their 20s and 30s.

Part of it is that its like_

aging is a disease and I
don’t want to be around
anyone I can catch it from.
Part of it is that my attitude
is plenty of time to have
sex with the old and ugly
when I’m old and ugly
myself and nobody worth-
while will have anything to
do with me. I
Now in all fairness to our
collective panic about get-
ting older, most of the mid-
dle aged and old don’t seem

_to me to have gained much

of anything. Generally, you
learn a few tricks, gain a bit
of perspective, have a bit
more money than when you
were young. But unless
you keep yourself agile
with physical and mental
exercise, and flexible by
forcing yourself to do new
things, the only feature you
seem guaranteed to gain is
the tendency to rot.

I have my opinion as to
which the majority of us
wind down doing. It really
does seem to me that most
of us no longer young are
essentially the same goods
we were 20 or 30 years ago
except that now we sag,
bag, and lag.

But this is what there is.
And hearing people in their
early 20s voicing their fears
about a birthday they just
had is a symptom of some-
thing very very bad.
Something certainly as bad
as aging physically_ and
probably worse since it
begins to afflict you far
sooner than the afflictions
of ' growing older.
Sometimes it seems as if
what we fear more than
anything else is social:
being devalued and dehu-
manized. This ischilling
when you consider the fear
of the inevitable decline of
our bodies and how vast
this is.

What I hadn’t understood

- not really - as I ever more
anxiously watched the
countdown of birthdays
during my twenties is how I
was devaluing myself. Oh,
if somebody had pointed it
out to me I would have
agreed with them. But all I
really knew was that I was
afraid. And that it was
going to be harder and
harder to find anybody
worthwhile (read: young) to
be with the older I got.

Strictly speaking I don’t
consider my attitudes as
just ageism but also a
symptom of my addiction to
a certain kind of physical
beauty. My beauty addic-
tion is as unforgiving and
unrealistic as regards the
young as anybody else. If
they’re not athletic looking
or at least slim, I dismiss
them as prospective part-
ners regardless of any other
merits they may have.
Where choosing a friend or
a co-worker or accomplice
of any kind is‘ considered —
for me age or appearance is
not much of a factor. It’s
just when I’m looking at
folks from the perspective
of a sexual partner that I’m
almost a complete prisoner
of these feelings. I’d rather
have partners — male or
female — who are around
my age. It’s just that as the
age group gets older, there
are even fewer people who
look sexy. It’s as if how
people feel, taste, smell,
and sound don’t matter at
all. Its as if sex were only
visual.

Addiction is specific.

I don’t use the word
addiction lightly. It took
years to recognize the simi-
larity between my single
minded pursuit of my type
and my single minded
devotion to smoking ciga-
rettes. I enter a bar looking
for a prettyboy with the
same unhappy intensity that
I do entering a store look-
ing for my brand of ciga-
rettes. It just so happens
that my type is exactly what
they’ve been selling us for
years in the ads in Gay
magazines: buff
smooth young
m e s o m o r p h s .
Quite the coinci-
dence don’t you
think? A

What confuses
this whole ‘issue
of aging and sex-
iness for me is
that I do believe the
preference for youth
in a partner‘ is borne
from the logic of
reproduction. Youth =
fertility & virility. In

  

From Meat to Carrion: Which are You?

addition youth in a repro-
ductive partner means they
are more likely to survive
the years necessary to raise
children. It makes sense
that generally what mem-
bers of our species will find
sexy are signs of youth and
health. No, I’m not saying
that this is universal, and
I’m not saying that it is
impossible to learn the
attractions of anything else.
I’m just saying that we
can’t blame the media and
leave it at that.

But I do have the sense
that the media is, with our
acquiescence, exaggerating
this natural tendency. Now
on steroids, our instincts
are swollen into attitudes
that pollute a whole range
of pleasurable activities
that are anatomically and
psychologically related to
reproduction, but have
nothing directly to do with
it at all. As I’m fond of
quipping: Well of course
gay men prefer young part-
ners. Eggs age! (Women
are born with all the eggs
their bodies will ever pro-
duce.)

Nobody wins. I’ve
looked at my young smooth
mesomorphs and have been i

blind to who they were. 3

Unless they possessed truly
extraordinary qualities ~
bad or good — I just didn’t ‘
care. I was dazzled by their i
bodies. At such moments
somebody is not a person.
And I can remember when I
was in my twenties and
some old guy (just about
anyone more than five
maybe ten years older than
me) would try to strike up a
conversation and I’d escape
as soon as I could, stiffen-
ing at any touch, careful not I
to smile. The possibility i
never even occurred to me
that these creatures could
have any other motive in
approaching me other than
sexual. And if I’d have
thought there was, it would-
n’t have mattered. I don’t
know what to label this
state of affairs, but the idea