A MIRAGE OF THE MATURE GAY MAN AS A MALE SPENSTER

The very first time I entered a Gay club I was only 16 years old.  The Bar/Cocktail Lounge was an old established watering hole called “Knob Hill” which has since closed and consisted of a simple Washington, D.C. Row House that had been converted to a bar on the 1^st floor with a small stage at the far end and a series of smaller changing and meeting rooms on the second story.  The bar was sparsely populated with a number of well to do mature men seated vultureously along the narrow ledge running from the entrance well to the middle of the room with a dusty chandelier hanging precariously low over the bar top.   Younger men stood against the wall of this dimly lit saloon waiting to be invited for a drink by one of the older gentlemen.  Fortunately there was a DJ there and lively house music was playing on the small dance floor.  At 16 I was not much of a drinker but loved to dance so that is where my older boyfriend took me, showing me off to the lonely men peering at us from the dark corners of the cheerless bar.  All I cared about was that we were far from the 15 degree winter night just outside the door, a typical 1960’s stock wooden door with three four-sided diamond moldings running up its length finished in a dried out walnut veneer.  This was a typical Gay entertainment establishment of the late 1970’s, cozy, dark, homely and oddly reminiscent of someone’s basement outfitted in wall to wall faux wood paneling and a black, brown and white tiled linoleum floor.  This is the type of club that people who considered themselves to be the “Down To Earth” Washingtonians frequented… a far cry from the more upscale Discotheques all over the city. 

Without a word I scanned the room for any semblance of liveliness, I recognized some of the faces of the men in the room.  There was one of my supervisors from a summer internship, and there was one of my classmates from the all men’s preparatory school my parents I attended.  At that point I didn’t quite get it all but what I did get was the loneliness and desperation that exuded from every molecule of that room.  I secretly thought, “This will not be me at 40, alone, drinking, desperate for company, wasting away in a dark bar waiting for some young man to show me a good time.”  Actually the young men were waiting for the older men to show them a good time as well, it was a balanced system.  For the first time I contemplated the possibility of having to pay a man to like me.  So I decided then and there that by the time I was 40 I would have found a soulmate and married him.  We would have a house and have adopted children and would be always planning vacations and doing family things the way my family did.  The musings of a young idealistic adolescent are amusing in hind sight…

Later that year I would learn more about the true nature of Gay culture; then and now it would be to me a very cold and inhospitable landscape no different from heterosexual culture in that it was filled with lots of lost and lonely people desperately scratching at what they felt might bring them some degree of happiness even if it meant scratching someone else’s eyes, hopes and dreams out in the process…  I survived that ordeal and the holocaust that was soon to follow it in the early 1980’s and 1990’s watching all of those lonely and hopeful faces drop out of sight, out of all recollection.  Although I was fortunate enough to elude it's grasp the sheer dynamic of it altered me mentally… I watched while the entire pool of potential husbands, lovers, soulmates, and partners literally vanished from the earth… Today only a couple of my old acquaintances are still here to remember those times and we have all turned to new times… still with hopes of someday finding love…

I struggled with the image of the mature Gay man with four or five dogs or cats, impeccably dressed at all times, seen only at the most exclusive brunches and luncheons and affairs; Always headed to the tropics or some other exotic location alone…  That, I said, would never be me, I would find a husband and live a happy domestic life and raise a boy and girl to adulthood.  But at 49, single and still waiting to meet my life companion the prospect of becoming a male spinster has crossed my mind even and anon… I often joke with my ex telling him that I will have to move in with him and his husband to take care of me in my golden years as a single man and he has promised that in the event I am correct there will be a very special rocker on the porch just for me and right outside of my bedroom.  I do believe that he will take care of me when I get very old… and I expect I will be quite a piece of work at 95years. 

I recall a song as sung by Nancy Wilson entitled, “Ten Good Years”, in which she says candidly, “You betta light your fire while you still got wood”!  So as I make it to the gym in my fiftieth year of life I do so more so “to let the bastards know I’ve still got it” as Jennifer Lewis says while executing a precarious high kick!  Well, there is every reason now to expect that I will find my soulmate yet.  I have already got six cantankerous turtles to keep me company… and a string of ex’s to look after me and my dear family to support me.  So chances are that even if I do join the ranks of the Gay male spinster I will be happy and well loved…

FIN

Written by David Vollin on 5-1-12