Eventually I came to the ninth story, "Dublin Sunday", by P. P. Hartnett. It's about a middle-aged gay man, musing on his life: "It was another beautiful summer sunset, making him feel pretty bloody awful." Luckily he has a full supply of "Oil, nipple clamps, dildo, magazine collection, videos, poppers, and Caverject" (loc 1351, Kindle edition). Or maybe not so luckily.
His left hand was fingering the deep wrinkles in his forehead. He knew exactly how he’d pass the evening. He wasn’t really in the mood for what he was going to put himself through. But it was in his diary. W. Inked in: W for Wank.Oooookay. In case you're wondering, this passage is representative of the entire piece, right up to the ending sentence. "He'd feel better after a good night's weep huddled in the far back corner of his wardrobe, chin on knees, sobbing for the humiliation and, worse, for the loss of he wasn't sure what" (loc 1622). This is a believable picture of some aging men's situations, but what is it doing in a collection of stories about Eros? It comes across as more of a cautionary vignette, propaganda from an anti- or ex-gay organization, and the protagonist is the kind of person who, disappointed or frustrated in lust, becomes a monastic dedicated to the extirpation of all pleasure -- not just for himself but for everybody else.
He wasn’t getting any younger. Who’d have him when he left sentences hanging? Who’d help him when he couldn’t be bothered with food anymore, or washing? Who’d be the first to make him a bowl of clear soup, tidy his bedclothes, do his laundry, help him to (and from and during) the lavatory? Who’d attend to his needs, day and night? Answer: no one.
Just thinking about his life was enough to render him immobile, paralysed by regret and indecision and ruminations on what might have been. The purposelessness of it all, not to mention the incompatibility of pheromones, phobias, and fetishes.
That bit about "Who'd attend to his needs, day and night?" particularly annoyed me. A lot of people have this attitude towards marriage, and I've been asked "What are you going to do when you get old?" myself. So I should find an unpaid body servant to wipe my butt for me when I go gaga? That's highly ... spiritual. Whose needs would he attend to, I wonder? Aging and its attendant debility is unpleasant and scary, but this is the mindset of someone who thinks only of himself, and supposedly in couplehood if not marriage the caregiving should go both ways. If P. P. Hartnett wrote this story as an exhortation to gay men to find boyfriends, he chose a repellent way to do it.
I'm sixty-eight years old, and have been single for almost all my adult life. As I told a friend not long ago, I know that there will be a last time I have sex, though I probably won't know it's the last time until long afterward. I view this with something like detached interest. I still take delight in human beauty, and am comforted by nonsexual physical contact. (When I join others in singing Christmas carols at area nursing homes each year, I notice how important hugs and handholding and other touching are to the people there. I give them as much as I can, which started out being difficult for a shy person like me who's timid about initiating affection with strangers; but I'm getting better, thanks largely to the example of our organizer, who's very good at it.)
I'm inclined to be snarky about people for whom sex is the central focus of their lives, though to be honest I'm a bit skeptical about their existence. I don't think I know of any such person in reality. In Andrew Holleran's later writings, the protagonists are older men who are either still trying to keep up with what Holleran dubbed "fast-food sex" or have given up on it. But Holleran, who seems to be his characters' model, is a writer, and he evidently has an inner life that finds expression in writing, reading at least. His portrayal of aging gay men is therefore highly skewed, editing out everything else that might give a life meaning or interest.
I'm not denying the value of sex. It's probably not possible to distinguish altogether between the pleasure of erotic interaction and the pleasure of affectionate physical contact, but I'm certainly glad I've had numerous sexual partners, far more than I anticipated as a young gay kid who found it hard to believe anyone would ever want him. At the same time, many other pursuits give my life meaning: the arts, intellectual interests, friendship, food, travel. When sexual opportunities or capacity dry up, these and more will I hope remain. This isn't a boast: so far I've been amazingly lucky in my life, and I know it.
But assume that there are people who only find meaning in copulation. That's fine, I don't care if people have different priorities than I do. The trouble is that the protagonist of "Dublin Sunday" doesn't find meaning or fulfillment, or much pleasure, in sex. When that's the case, it's time to try to remember if there's anything else that can give you meaning, or fulfillment, or pleasure. If there are people like the protagonist, their situation is dire. I can't see "Dublin Sunday" as a story of Eros; I think it's a horror story.
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*Edited by Mark Henry (San Francisco: Palm Drive Publishing, 1999).
