Andrew Holleran "Sex through the Ages"

[+ Tom Isern]

http://glreview.com/issues/12.4/12.4-holleran.php

 

Sex through the Ages

Andrew Holleran

 

WHEN I WAS IN MY THIRTIES I remember walking by the Empire State Building one day thinking, How did they get people to stop looking for sex long enough to put up a building this big?

 

Years later, I’m home in the evening with my laptop, browsing the sex ads on http://www.silverdaddies.com, like an old man playing solitaire. Everything’s changed. When I go to the gym or baths to see actual bodies, I’m content with glimpses, or end up, at the latter, walking the halls like a man in a museum, looking into the rooms—and usually leaving without doing anything.

 

Conceptions of sex, after all, vary from one cultural epoch to the next, but also during the lifespan of an individual. The urge to reproduce is an arc, you might say, that rises into the sky, like a rainbow, and then returns to earth. Once it occurred to me to ask a friend who’d sired six children if this had lessened his sex drive, and it made no sense when he said No.

 

There seems to be an idea in this culture, judging by the medications being sold, that one should continue to have sex till the day you die. However, how you view sex in your later years may have something to do with the way you viewed it all along. Seneca said the diminution of the sex drive was like being freed from “a cruel and insane master.” Some people may not be so relieved. In the Visconti movie Il Gattopardo (“The Leopard”), Burt Lancaster hangs himself after an episode of impotence. A friend of mine jumped off a bridge—after saying he could no longer “access Lust.” Most gay men—the generation that read books, at least—are not quite so upset by this change, though they probably do think of Aschenbach in Death In Venice and Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire.

 

As a matter of fact, many young gay men fear that after a certain age they will never be offered sex again. But only last week at the baths I came upon a young man copulating with a much older person in the hallway; and I thought of the opening of Proust’s Cities of the Plain, when the narrator discovers that the Guermantes’ butler is attracted to the Baron de Charlus because the only thing he desires is an older man—like the man I know in Key West who at 85 is still looking for a Daddy. He may be doing so now on silverdaddies.com, which features two galleries: one called “Daddies,” the other “Admirers.” The first time I viewed the latter I assumed the good-looking young men all must be hustlers. Not so. Beautiful young men who want a sixty-something bald chubby do exist. Why else would some of the Daddies, their enormous stomachs rising like Ayers Rock above the Australian plain while getting blown, put their images on line—images that at times, it must be admitted, come close to aversion therapy for the rest of us?

 

The existence of gerontophiles of any age is a great comfort to the older man, and the reason at least one friend of mine has the wonderful younger partner he does; though this is apparently not the solution for everyone.

Some older men find the young boring, callow, fill in the blank. Others are so disgusted with their physical state that they think anyone who desires them must be an idiot—the same way Groucho Marx said he had no wish to belong to a club that would have him as a member. “See that old Chinese lady over there?” someone at the baths asks in a picture book by David Leddick comparing men in their youth and old age. “He used to be the most beautiful man in New York.” A kind of physical self-loathing may dampen the later years among people of any sexual orientation. The sad truth is that older gay men too often show no sexual interest in their peers, but regard one another as broken down wrecks. Then there are the particularly sensitive who are so afraid of being taken as a dirty old man that they refuse to make the first move, remembering all too well the older men who, when they were young, would not take No for an answer. The English writer J. R. Ackerley, for instance, so agile a seducer in his beautiful youth, became marmoreal in his maturity; he had to be spoken to first. This may have been a matter of wounded pride.

 

There is an element of narcissism in all sex, after all. In worshiping the Beautiful, people usually assume their own beauty, or youth, or fitness; they approach the altar because they know they bring gifts. When one feels poor, one remains in the back of the church. Thomas Mann said old age was essentially feminine; what I think Mann meant was that old age was weak, unable to be aggressive, to be the active courtier. Or, as Madeline Kahn, playing the dance hall girl in

 

Blazing Saddles based on Marlene Dietrich (who was not about to let the public see her in old age), put it: “I’m kaput from the waist down.”

 

 

Hugs are nice, however. A man my age and I go out to museums and a

restaurant; and sometimes, after the outing, return to my apartment. There

we lie down on the day bed and hold each other. A sort of electrical current

passes between our bodies. It’s like recharging my electric toothbrush or

shaver. It means a lot to me. I used to worry about the fact that I was not

having an orgasm. Was this Lesbian Bed Death? It seemed to me a problem we

should talk about; but when we did, nothing came of broaching the subject,

so I stopped worrying. This is one of the main things that may happen when

you age: Eros gives way to Agape, sex to intimacy, desire to friendship.

Instead of going to the baths, you sit home reading Nancy Mitford’s

biography of Madame de Pompadour. A case in point: “This love affair took

its course,” writes Mitford of Louis XV and Madame de Pompadour. “After a

few years of physical passion on his side it gradually turned into that

ideal friendship which can only exist between a man and a woman when there

has been a long physical intimacy. There was always love.”

 

 

This waning of genital sex in favor of a more companionable connection means

the older gay man no longer feels as frequent a compulsion to possess people

physically, but still needs the intimacy. (In Florida retirement

communities, however, the question a woman asks when considering a boyfriend

is less sentimental—not how strong, handsome, or rich he is, but merely: Can

he drive at night?) Affection is still needed. Beauty makes an impression

but does not constitute a crisis. It’s a bit like going deaf: you see the

lips moving but no longer have to hear what is being said. If sex required

no effort, I suppose people would have it indefinitely; but it does. Even

one’s role becomes hard to figure out. The older man may wonder: Does the

young person expect him to be a top or bottom? Is one being viewed as the

Virile Older Man or as a geezer who will fall down and worship Youth and

Beauty?

 

In Peter Parker’s biography of Ackerley, we read of a handsome young man in

Ackerley’s neighborhood who always smiled at him when they passed, but with

whom he never got together because, when Ackerley ran into him, he didn’t

have his dentures in, and when he did wear his dentures in hopes of a

meeting, the youth never showed up. (Of course, Ackerley had already given

up cruising at that point and married his dog.) Others were luckier. As an

old man living with the Blue Nuns in Rome just after World War Two, the

philosopher George Santayana loved being taken out in an Army Jeep to drive

around Rome with a handsome American soldier. Still others made do with

less. Cavafy wrote a poem about a clerk who’d waited on him in a store;

Thomas Mann fell in love with a waiter in Switzerland.

 

What, then, of friends who still must have two loads a day? I have one in

Boston with a large doorbell trade, another in California who offers

massages on the Internet. How, I wonder, can they still be doing it? Their

rhapsodies to the penis, their energy and resourcefulness, their sheer

vitality, seem inexplicable; though the answer may be staring us in the

face. “It is said,” Mitford writes, “that the King’s doctor warned him that

he was making love too often. ‘But you told me I could, as much as I wanted

to, so long as I used no aphrodisiacs.’ ‘Ah! Sire! Change is the greatest

aphrodisiac of all!’” Obviously the sex drive endures at various levels as

men age. “We know that when Madame de Maintenon was seventy-five and the

King seventy,” Mitford says of Louis XIV, “she told her confessor that it

tired her very much to make love with him twice a day and asked whether she

was obliged to go on doing so. The confessor wrote and put the question to

his bishop, who, of course, replied that as a wife she must submit.”

 

 

Versailles is what pre-AIDS gay America looks like to some youngsters, a

lost world they regard as a golden age (of promiscuity). At Versailles “the

four main pastimes were love, gambling, hunting and the official

entertainments. Love was played like a game, or like a comedy by Marivaux;

it had, of course, nothing to do with marriage.” But there was a difference.

At Versailles, Mitford writes, “in those pre-Freudian days the act of love

was not yet regarded with an almost mystical awe; it had but a limited

importance. Like eating, drinking, fighting, hunting and praying it was part

of a man’s life, but not the very most important part of all.” That must be

why getting older as a gay man feels more civilized somehow—though of course

this could be an illusion. Thom Gunn’s last book of poetry was called Boss

Cupid; Tennessee Williams said he hoped when dying he would have a handsome

doctor.

 

Andrew Holleran’s Dancer from the Dance has recently been issued in France

as Le Danseur de Manhattan.

[trilingual]

RE: Andrew Holleran "Sex through the Ages"

 

What a great piece by Holleran! Very apropos, too, since I turned 60 yesterday! And here I am, still prowling around M4M and Gaydar and the saunas in Brazil. . .

 

There are probably no generalizations about aging and sex that apply universally, but some of Holleran's points hit pretty close, in my case. It's amazing to me, as I look back, that I was able to stop thinking about sex long enough ever to graduate from college and have a career! How they ever built the Empire State Building, seen through that prism, seems like a miracle! I think, though, that I must have really been hyper-sexual when I was younger, and so were the other gay men I knew. (I've seen articles hypothesizing that gay men's sex drives are generally higher than straight men's -- we may have way too much testosterone!) It was only in my 40s that the urge began to diminish enough that it wasn't the all-consuming force in my life, and even then it may have been partly due to clinical depression that I was only beginning to understand that I experienced. Still, I remember feeling at times that I was finally able to go "on holiday" from the urge to merge that seemed to have governed my life in earlier years. It was exhilarating to find that I could focus for relatively long periods of time on other important and rewarding matters. But the urge never faded entirely, and it waxes and wanes. Most of the time, I still have it, although at a less urgent level than before.

 

Although there were some "near-misses," I never had a real relationship when I was younger, and assumed that romantic love had passed me by. I wasn't pining away regretting things; I had built a rich and satisfying life with which I was very content and I wasn't suffering from loneliness or boredom in any way. So it was quite a surprise to find myself, at age 57, embarking on a relationship with a young man of 25. I wouldn't say he's exactly a "gerontophile," because I know he's also attracted to men much younger than me. But at least part of it must be attributable to my own mindset: by and large I don't think of myself as "old," or act that way. Most of the time I never think about my age except when I see myself in a mirror and wonder who is the gray-haird guy staring back at me! Of course, age has wrought some changes: the idea of spending all night at a loud, sweaty, crowded dance club no longer appeals to me and I virtually never go. By midnight my body is saying "bed!" So my partner goes on his own (almost always with a crowd of friends his own age). On the other hand, when his friends are over and we're all talking and laughing and gossiping, I don't feel any older than they are and I don't think I act "older," either. We all seem to be equals. The only times I do feel "old" is when, once in a while, that dreadful phrase "When I was your age. . ." comes up and I'm suddenly conscious of being the oldest person in the room, by far!!! (It was unnerving the first time I met my "mother-in-law," and realized she is 12 years younger than I am!)

 

I'm lucky, I suppose, that I'm living this part of my life in Brazil, where there is still greater respect for older people. Brazilians are much more used to living in extended family situations with relatives of all ages, so they're comfortable with people outside of their own age group. In the U.S. and in parts of Europe with our emphasis on small "nuclear" families, I think we've become much more segregated and isolated by age group. For example, the idea that my partner is a "gerontophile" would, I think, be alien to him and most Brazilians. Just the word itself suggests that finding yourself attracted to someone older than you is somewhat aberrational, and that's not the case in Brazil and other countries, where May - September (and even November and December) relationships aren't uncommon in both the gay and straight worlds. (And now it's even become fairly common in Brazil between older women and younger men!) In fact, there's even a common expression in Brazilian Portuguese ("coroa") that means "an attractive/desirable older person!" I don't think there's any equivalent in English or other Northern European languages! Being an American, with all of the cultural baggage that entails, I felt a bit weird about the relationship at first. It was only when I realized that nobody in Brazil seemed to find it out of the ordinary, and that it wasn't something uncommon, that I got over my cultural prejudices and came to accept the relationship as perfectly natural.

 

Although I recognize much about myself in Holleran's article, I realize that my Brazilian experience has taught me not to feel even slightly ashamed or bizarre for still having sexual desires at this stage of my life. It's normal! And I don't think that the phenomenon of fading passion is age-related. I think that for men in relationships at any age the initial passion fades relatively quickly. The question then is whether the relationship has built other foundations on which to survive. If there's love, companionship, shared experience, etc., then it's possible to continue and even deepen a relationship, no matter what age you are. It takes maturity to develop that kind of a relationship, but it's not the kind of maturity that only comes with old age!

 

In this sense, I think my own experience is somewhat different than Holleran's, and I suspect that's true for many other M4Mers. Some people as they age seem to begin to pull back from life, and become "old." Others never seem to disengage from life, and even at very advanced ages aren't "old" in mind or in spirit. I think M4Mers tend to fall into the latter group -- many of us may be "old" on our ID documents, but I would never be able to guess their actual ages from the way they write and the outlooks on life they express. There must be a lot of truth to the expression that "you're only as old as you think you are!" In my heart of hearts I know I don't think of myself as "old." Just "improved!" :7

[Lookin]

RE: Andrew Holleran "Sex through the Ages"

 

<What a great piece by Holleran!>

 

What a great piece by Trilingual! Your insight and empathy are a great combo, as usual. No wonder you're still getting chased around. And Happy Birthday!

[bigguyinpasadena]

Thanks for this Tom,And Tri your comments are very insightful.

[+ Charlie]

Damn! Holleran must have been eavesdropping on my conversation with Lucky the other night, after seeing "Guys and Dolls." Such shameless line-stealing!

[Rod Hagen]

This is so depressing. What is it that people think will happen if they try to intellectualize sex even just a little?

 

 

http://www.RodHagen.com

310.360.9890

Fun, Fit, Friendly Fucker in West Hollywood.

-Rod Hagen

[trilingual]

Your point, Rod, is. . .? I think all of us know that ultimately sex is in our heads, but I don't see anyone objecting to Holleran's article. . .

[Guest Gringo]

Hoping that this next decade of the Adventure brings you only health and happiness.