Aging. It’s Bullshit!

Posted on June 11, 2015

You know what? This whole aging thing isn’t working for me. I’m serious. And it’s just hitting me a bit harder this year than in others. I received a call from a friend and he told me his son is graduating from high school this year. I laughed. “Good one. You punked me!” Yeah, he wasn’t kidding. There are three people I knew from my high school years who have kids of their own graduating from high school. Is that just not screwed up? When the heck did these people find time to court someone, marry them, actually set aside time for sex, and then have kids? My mind is still burning up with the fever that is the story I’m writing, and now I have to deal with this, too?

I wish I’d come out as gay when I was in my early teens. I certainly would have enjoyed them more being myself. Sadly, it wasn’t a great time to come out at all and would have caused me far more undo stress than I could have handled. Still, when I did come out, I was twenty-four on the cusp of turning twenty-five. That gave me five years until I received official notification in the mail in the form of a post card stating “You just turned 30, so your useful days in the gay community have EXPIRED.” Thirty made me an old fart. 35 put me in my golden years. At 40? I was rust.

Have any of you close to my fake age seen how many celebrities we knew from our real age have been dying or having strokes lately? HOLY SHIT! We looked up to them, wanted to be them, and now we’re trying to avoid the same fates as them. The weird thing is my sense of ‘self’ doesn’t include an age. It has a level of experience, which I feel is more accurate. I have younger friends who have far more experience in life than I do, and older friends who have less. I’ve never felt I was any better or any worse than these people. They are my peers. They are my friends. They’ll be sitting next to me the next time I get Botox.

My husband has had tremendous difficulty remembering my age since I’ve known him. Oh, let’s be honest, he’s had tremendous difficulty remembering how to spell my name since I’ve known him. He may have even been overheard exclaiming “That’s how you spell your name???” when we had our marriage license signed by the Jewish Rabbi in NYC three years ago.

Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not against gaining more experience in life. I’m simply against looking like I’ve gained more experience in life. I have friends who happen to be Asian. Big surprise, right? These same friends constantly remind me how badly white folks like myself age. And it’s true. I’ve been invited to visit the Philippines, only I know better than to go during the summer. It’s hot there. White people melt! That’s why I’ve never gone to Hong Kong during the summer. His grandmother wouldn’t think twice about locking my ass up on the roof, then sending the janitor up there the next morning with a mop to wipe me up.

So, for those of you out there aging in years…stop it. Not everybody is with you on this. Have a little consideration for the rest of us fighting the good fight.

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Kristoffer Gair (who formerly wrote under the pseudonym Kage Alan) is the Detroit-based author of Honor Unbound, A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To My Sexual Orientation, Andy Stevenson Vs. The Lord Of The Loins, Gaylias: Operation Thunderspell, several short stories featured in anthologies (to be combined in a forthcoming book), the recently re-published novella Falling Awake, its sequel, Falling Awake II: Revenant and Falling Awake III: Requiem.