Well I think I passed one of those life thresholds today.  I admitted that I’m getting old.  It was in the comments on another guy’s blog.  Nice guy.  Young, gay man.  I visit his blog every now and then and today he made a passing crack about how an older gay guy he knows should have spent more time in a church social group or community group and less time in the gay club party scene and maybe he’d know fewer gay guys who died young.  And I had to raise a voice in his defense.  Our generation had it rough.  There were a lot fewer venues for meeting other gays back in the day then there are now.  There’s a reason why my generation grew up in a degrading, demeaning subculture of cheap sex and booze and drugs.  And some of us fought like hell to change that I said.  Every tiny little shred of dignity and freedom to live our lives openly and proudly we had to claw bitterly to win out of a culture that refused to admit that such as we deserved to exist, let alone have any dignity and pride.  And now that it’s here I said, now that we have more opportunities to live our lives outside of the bar scene…we’re getting old.

That would be me I was talking about.  Yeah.  Getting old.  Tired.  Going out for my evening walks…cigar adding to the high of my evening cocktail.  Alone.  Tired.  Old.  I was afraid of this.  I knew when I started going out again, and socializing with my friends in D.C. that it would be like this.  I just have to barrel my way though it I guess if I’m ever going to find someone.  I would enjoy the company of friends, most of whom are themselves happily coupled, or content to just find a someone to spend a few hours of random intimate companionship with every now and then.  Some helpfully suggest I should do the same.  Better then being all alone they say.  But that isn’t me.  I want the soulmate.  Nothing else will do.  And you aren’t much likely to find that in the bars.  But where else is there for the likes of me?  I can’t spend my life all alone, and yet going out always leaves me in this state of solitary grief at the end of the day.  I can’t just let myself get picked up.  I can’t just have a casual fling for the night.  It isn’t me.  I want the soulmate.  Nothing else will do.

So I go back home to my little nest and I get myself wasted to ease the grief a bit, then drift off to bed and maybe if I’m lucky I get to dream about being in love.  It’s disgusting but there it is.  I’ve been in a holding pattern since I was about 25, waiting for that intimate other that never seems to come into my life, so it could really start.  So many near misses.  So many chances that just seemed to slip away.  So many faces I remember.  And one in particular that never drifts far away from my thoughts.  I’m not the only lovelorn soul in this poor world.  But I’m the only one who has to deal with my own life.  I have the best job in the world.  A nice little rowhouse.  A good life by any measure.  But I feel like life has just passed me by.  They say you’re as old as you feel.  I’m 53 and I feel like I’m still 25 and you would not believe how old that can feel.

There’s one more thing I have to admit.  And I’m afraid to.  It’s not going to happen.