A few days ago, some guy commented under a Facebook post in a group devoted to gay bars: "Nobody wants you when you're old and gay." I don't remember what the topic of the post was, but I don't think it was about being old and gay. I commented that it's false; he said he knows it because he's old and gay. I replied that I'm 75, and I know it's false from my own experience. He insisted that it is so true.
That was as far as it went; I should have hammered at him more. I want to stress that it's not just about him, or me. When I was young, in my early 20s, I was told this same lie, and that you could only get sex then by paying for it. "Old" among college students meant 25, 30 at most. Of course worrying about one's dating prospects ten or more years in the future is like worrying about what you'll do when the sun goes nova in three millions years or better, the heat death of the universe in ten billion years. It's not going to affect you or me; most likely the human race will be long extinct by then.
But that's not really the problem. The point of spreading that lie, or the one about gay relationships never last, that gay men only care about looks, or that you can't find a sex partner if you're not a gym bunny or otherwise "hot," is to try to scare young gay kids into going straight, and if you can't do that, you can at least ensure that they are forever insecure and miserable. I can understand why bigots would want to do this, but why would other gay people want to? I have no idea, but it shouldn't be tolerated.
Even stranger, the older gay men I've known who spread the lie were quite sexually active, thank you very much, and tended to be pretty aggressive in their pursuit of partners. One who sticks in my mind, in his mid-forties when I was in my mid-twenties, and surely the terror of his nursing home now, had the effect of inadvertently letting me know that the lie was a lie. Still, I was somewhat nervous until I was well into my fifties and found I was more in demand than I'd been in the twenties - a low bar, but still reassuring.
There are no guarantees in life, and I can't promise young gay people that they'll find love or even transient partners, or how to deal with loneliness or dating droughts or heartbreak. But if I can find love, and I have, so can they. For me, just knowing that happiness as a gay man was possible made all the difference to me; I think that many people want more than the possibility, but that's all you have to get on with. And it's my belief that any older gay person who tries to discourage, let alone terrify the young with these falsehoods should be challenged and shunned, just like bigots should be.
