Bruce
Wainwright
Olden wonder
I’M THE DADDY
I know it’s dreadfully superficial and perhaps not even
very PC, but I’ve always had a fondness for a pretty face, and little
inclination to apologise for the fact.
I don’t suppose it’s so unusual in a culture which puts so much
emphasis on looks and a trim figure. The fact is that our culture pretty much
demands we step onto that particular treadmill, and, like the damn fools we
are, we too often buy into the whole image bit. Get down to the gym and work
on those pecs and you’ll pull at the weekend, if not before, and what
an improvement it’ll make to that Gaydar profile. Now, of course, the
price we inevitably pay for all this comes on that fateful day when you look
a little too long into that bathroom mirror and see, not the chiselled features
of your golden youth, but thinning hair, bags under the eyes and a roundness
of feature which invites a deep and abiding despair for something which has
gone forever.
Like
a close friend who has died and gone, you mourn a lost youth which can never
be recaptured. All the attributes which seemed an essential component of an
active and successful life (including a sex life) are no more, and the grave
yawns. Add to that a regular handful of pills which remind you daily of your
own mortality, and gloom descends like the last act of Götterdämmerung.
Of course, you could just stick your head in the sand and spend the children’s
inheritance on liposuction and tummy tucks, but self-delusion was never my
style. It might also be worth adding that the loss of one’s hair and
teeth aren’t the only causes of existential angst, not by any means.
The loss of good health, particularly for a younger person can be a loss just
as deeply felt as any death in the family. Gilded youth believes itself to
be immortal and the sudden discovery that health is not to be taken for granted
anymore can be deeply felt, to the point of deep depression. However, I then
made an amazing discovery. In point of fact I made no such discovery; it was
a wonderful, gay psychiatrist who told me that out there, in the real world,
there are lots of very hunky, intelligent and do-able young men (and, for
all I know, gorgeous young women too) who enjoy the company of older men.
It took me quite some time to process this information and to consider its
longer term implications and logistics. Even now, I’m not quite sure
I’ve got a firm enough handle on it. But the realisation that life doesn’t
stop either with a positive diagnosis or the inexorable ravages of time was,
to put it mildly, something of an epiphany. Of course, there have always been
young men who would have sex with someone of my age and decrepitude if a sufficient
number of £10 notes were laid out on the table, but I don’t mean
those. I mean young men possessed of a sound mind and the full complement
of moral baggage who actually like being with older men, indeed the older
the better, and don’t give twopence for guys their own age. That to
me is a revelation, and one which I notice has also been made by the author
and playwright Alan Bennett who, after some 70 odd years, now finds himself
possessed of a young gentleman in his 30s. What a joy! Grey hair is an asset;
we have nothing to lose but our Zimmer frames.
