Preaching to the Converted: Fighting the Stroke

When I was just dipping my toe into gay life as a senior in college in New Orleans, there was a man who frequented the triumvirate of the most popular gay bars in the French Quarter. He was inevitably fall-down drunk, often inappropriately flirtatious to an embarrassing degree, and clearly too old and feeble to be anywhere but somewhere warm, having a nice nap and an early bird dinner.

We called him ‘Fighting the Stroke.’ He was a talisman, a cautionary tale. At 22 and on (as he remained a fixture on the scene for many years after I graduated and would see him during my many visits to New Orleans in my 20s), he represented to me exactly what I did not want to become. Some sad old desperate queen trolling gay bars, ignorant of how depressing I looked.

Thinking back on it now, ‘FTS’ may have been 60 when I first met him (more accurately when I first got hit on by him. “Do you play for the Saints? You could with that physique!”).

When I was in my 20s that seemed a universe away, but now at 48, its right around the corner. But the truth for me is that I haven’t been in a gay bar five times in the last five years, and not 15 in the last 10. There reached a point in my late 30s where the idea of going to the bar and listening to the same people have the same conversations about the same other people became exhausting to even think about.

By that point in my life, I had built a strong and diverse network within my community but outside the gay bar. Gay tennis, bowling and softball leagues had helped, but I also had just met enough people by then to have cultivated meaningful and pertinent friendships that existed beyond the boys and the booze that lie at the center of gay bar life.

But there are still many people my age and older for whom weekends in the club are an integral part of their social life. Recently a 20-something named Dalton Heinrich stirred up massive controversy on GayGuys.com (and other sites where the blog appeared) by saying that gay men over the age of 30 should stay out of the club. While there was ample snark and snap to his comments, there was also a clear-eyed and genuine observation asking for the whereabouts of his role models.

“This portion of grown men clinging to the wild nights and serial dating of their twenties seem to live in a secret Neverland,” he wrote. “It is this category of men that I have personally diagnosed with Peter Pan Syndrome. These Lost Boys that are terrified of actually looking their age and are always fighting off time instead of aging gracefully and being something helpful for the young gay man to idolize?”

Now it’s no one’s obligation to be someone else’s idol, but I do think that everyone—gay, straight, black, white, Team-Jay or Team-Solange—has an obligation to be respectful to their life stage. Because, yes, 40-something, roided-up muscle bear in daisy dukes, doing poppers on the dance floor at 3 a.m., you do look foolish and sad. The perpetualized adolescence and arrested development on display reinforces what has been laid at the feet of gay men for as long as my memory can scan: that gay men are sex-obsessed and shallow.

There was a very popular business book a dozen years ago called Who Moved My Cheese? The basic tenant was that a problem many businesses have is continuing to return to the same pool of prospects once the prospects have up and left the room.

This is how I feel when I hear about someone my age or older hanging out at the club: someone moved your cheese. What you’re looking for doesn’t exist anymore. I’m not suggesting that life is over after 30 for gay men. Far from it. For me, it had only just begun when I stopped going to the bar so damned much. As opposed to looking at it as being “too old” for the bar, I’ve long looked at it that I simply outgrew it. There came that time, as it should, to put away childish things.

But it’s okay, honey. Come on. We’ll go have a nice dinner or a quick tropical vacation. Unlike the 20-somethings, we can afford it.