Gayish.

My husband and I are still working our way through “The Mothers In Law” on Amazon Prime. It’s a distraction from the 21st century and all its woes. We’re still making our way through the first season. The quality of the episodes is still quite uneven but it’s improving as we make our way through the trials and tribulations of the Buells and the Hubbards.

It’s interesting to see how hard Desi Arnaz, as Executive Producer and often Director, tried really hard to recreate the showmanship of “I Love Lucy” with this cast, albeit with a late 1960s twist. The writers were all from “I Love Lucy” and while one is working their way through an episode it’s easy to see that while the premise foundation is different, the shenanigans and antics of Eve and Kaye are very Lucy and Ethel. I think the only reason I’m watching the show is to watch Kaye Ballard do her thing in a very large way. There’s some improvisation going on and one of these days I’m going to start calling my husband “Cutes”.

Speaking of Kaye’s husband; while we’re still in the first season he’s being played by Roger C. Carmel.

I can’t help but notice that Roger is a very cute 1960s version of a gay bear, with his handlebar mustache and his hairy chest often showing itself under the collar of his shirt. As I understand it, Roger was part of the underground gays of Hollywood back in the day. He was released from the show before the second season, some say due to contract disputes, other say due to recreational drug use and related activities. He was replaced by Richard Deacon, who apparently was also part of the undergrounds gays of Hollywood. Oh, I do enjoy Roger’s accent as well. I’m so odd.

Much to the chagrin of my husband we’ll continue working our way through “The Mothers In Law”. Desi Arnaz and Desi Arnaz Jr. made an appearance in an episode or two for us earlier this week. I’m sure they’ll be back again before we’re done with this run.

And can I just say I love the fact that Amazon Prime is bringing back all of these old shows that can’t be found anywhere else. The prints these digital streams were mastered off of are a little rough around the edges but mostly cleaned up decently. I’m happy this little slice of nostalgia is able to live on.

So the young man in Boystown calling me “Grandpa” yesterday as I was waiting for a light to turn green while on a bike ride is still weighing on my mind a little bit. It’s not a detriment to my existence or anything; if anything it’s made me a bit more reflective on the current state of the world.

Let’s face it, being a gay man in the 21st century is a young man’s game. The gays like the youth and like much of the rest of American society, once you’re over a certain age you’re no longer relevant to the scene. This does not dishearten me in any way but I can’t help but reflect that it’s the opposite of how we treat, say, employees at work. Corporations want experience and relatively well-seasoned people to carry out the duties they require. The number of gay men that appreciate the handsome experience of an older man is on the low side of the percentage scale.

I don’t dye (what’s left of) my hair. If I grow my beard out I’m about 50/50 ginger and gray. If I grow out my mustache it’s white. I don’t really care about building muscle or running around shirtless to show off a worked out chest. I’ve never had a six pack. Ever. (Though I’ve polished a few in my time). I no longer have the desire to dress in an edgy manner or in anything that has a label. I consider myself put together when my shirt label isn’t hanging out the back of my neck. It usually says “Fruit of the Loom”.

The truth is, I’m happy with the way I look and the way I feel. My attempts at exercise are merely my way of enjoying life without having to go to the doctor every 10 days. Honestly, if it wasn’t for the FAA requirements around my health to retain my Pilot’s Certificate I probably would be a little more casual than I am today about my health.

When I look back at old television shows and whatnot I can’t help but notice that before the baby boomers and Gen-Xers started getting older people aged more gracefully or purposely. When “Maude” went on the air in 1972, Bea Arthur and Bill Macy were younger than I am today. They both had gray hair and pretty much looked their age; though Bea did get a facelift after the first season. Their attitudes were with the times and they didn’t try to use hip slang of the era to try to sound young. Maude and Arthur using “groovy” would be like me trying to use “rad” or “deets”. Gnarly, dude. Just gnarly.

As my husband and I grow old together I feel as young as I did back when we first met in 1995. He makes me as giddy as a school boy. I hope the young lad that called me “Grandpa” yesterday knows that same feeling if he doesn’t already. Giddy keeps you young.

There’s a lot of history in the gay community that occasionally seems unimportant to the younger generations. The freedom they take for granted: the ability to get married, the relative freedom of holding hands on the street, the presence of gay characters all over entertainment media, these are all things that haven’t really been around that long. Generations before us and we Gen-Xers have done a lot to give us the freedom to be who we are here in 2020.

I guess the cranky grandpa in me wishes these young whipper-snappers would recognize that.

Now get off my lawn.

I did a search for “The Love Boat” on YouTube and these two screencaps came up together. Betty White! She’s everywhere!

This whole virus thing has given us all the opportunity to catch up on our television viewing. I’m not the voracious viewer of television that I used to be; I feel like the quality of shows has gone down quite a bit over the last decade or so and much of today’s offerings have not been worthy of my time. But we’ve been flipping through the various streaming services we belong to and tonight we watched the third and fourth episodes of Apple TV+’s “Visible: Out On Television”.

I’ve cried a couple of times while watching the documentary; a lot of what is depicted hits close to home: remembering the friends lost during the AIDS crisis, protesting with ACT-UP when I lived in Boston, recounting the amount of progress made with LGBTQ+ characters on television even since my husband and I first met 24 years ago.

We started watching the documentary when the lockdown first began. The word “queer” is used a lot. LGBTQ+. There’s a reason it has evolved from the GLB days of when I first came out in the mid 1980s. I don’t remember when the letters were rearranged and augmented; but I especially don’t remember a lot of folks calling themselves queer back when I was a young gay. There’s a lot power in that word: Queer. I remember one of my grandmothers saying the phrase “queer boy” when I was young. She was referring to a waiter at a restaurant who sounded like the love child of Paul Lynde and Charles Nelson Reilly. I was called queer too often in high school. And while I have tried to ‘take back’ the word queer over the past couple of years, I’ve always struggled with the concept.

My steel trap memory betrays my desire to reclaim the power of the word “queer”.

When we first started watching the documentary I started thinking about the word queer again. At the time I was going to write a blog entry about it and I even went as far as to take an impromptu photo with the word “queer” and an arrow pointing to me in a selfie. I posted it on Instagram for a few seconds before I reconsidered my thoughts processes and deleted it. Did it not fit? Do I not consider myself queer?

I have always identified as gay. When I came out in college I had a hard time saying it, and it was my high school friend Scott who insisted I say that I was gay actually out loud when I told him. (“I like guys” had been my go to phrase). That step made me more comfortable with the whole gay identity thing. It was a big hurdle. But queer? It’s a whole different thing.

The thing is, if we want to use labels, I see ‘queer’ as a label for individuals of a younger generation. I just don’t see me as an over 50 years old queer man. I’m not gender fluid in any way. I’m quite comfortable with myself both inside and out. I’m well seasoned and I’m solid in my identity. Let’s face it, I would say I’m a Kinsey 5.99 when it comes to sexual attraction. (Hey, I’m a bargain!). I’m actually just a guy that has always liked guys and my pilot light burns a little brighter than most and once in a while it shoots off like a big ol’ fabulous flare.

Wow, no sexual connotation there!

The perceived negative energy around the word “queer” is slowly dissipating from my mind. I’ve come to realize that what queer means today is a lot different than what queer meant 30 years ago. But as part of my self-identity? Hmmm, it doesn’t quite fit. It’s not how I see myself. And that’s fine.

There’s power in just being me.

I’m not a fan of the word queer. I never have been, mostly because it was hurled my way too often back in my school days and even though the young gays insist they’re “taking back the word for empowerment”, I still cringe when I hear the word ‘queer’.

I tried embracing the word and taking it back for my personal empowerment a couple of years ago, but old ways die hard for this old gay and the word doesn’t really describe me. I’m gay. I’m eccentric. I can be erratic. I can be flamey from time to time and I’m content just being myself.

Some folks may feel as snug as a bug in a rug and happily embrace the word ‘queer’, it’s just not my thing and I don’t feel part of any queer community. I don’t even feel part of the gay community. I’m just me.

I guess I’m more obsolete than queer.

A documentary series coming out on Apple TV+ on February 14.

I keep getting alerts from the WordPress app that this blog is seeing an unusually high amount of traffic. The 965% increase in daily hits are all focused on this blog entry from 2010, called “Gay”, which features the 1976 episode of Alice called, “Alice Gets A Pass”.

I have no idea why the sudden interest in this post, but OK, let’s say hey! Hey!

A “National Coming Out Day” post I wrote back in 2007.

I don’t think National Coming Out Day was around when I “came out”. Well, I actually didn’t really come out, for the most part I didn’t really feel the need to. I guess people just assumed. After all, in high school, I ended the morning announcements with phrases like “Have a Wonderful Wednesday” or “Have a Fabulous Friday”. I mean, come on, all that was missing was the flashing pink neon light. When I lived in Massachusetts, my dear friend Donna told me that coming out was only a big deal because gay men and women made such a big deal about coming out. If it’s not a big deal to you, then it’s not a big deal to anyone else. I can sort of see the logic in that and it’s a theory that I subscribe to, though I don’t think it fits in every scenario. For example, I don’t think that a teenage boy living in the middle of the Bible belt is going to be able to drop a “That was a wonderful six hour sermon today. I really liked Maude’s punch at the church social afterwards. By the way, I’ve been sleeping with the farm hand, we both like boys, but it’s really no big deal” and not have the family get their panties in a knot. It would be wonderful is the Mother and Father then embraced the boy and welcomed the farm hand into the family, and the positive energy in me tells me that this has happened at least once in a great while, but I fear that there’s not enough of that type of support in the world.

So here it is, National Coming Out day, so I’m going to share my story. I knew my sexual orientation in my early teens. Actually, now that I think about it, I knew I liked other boys when I was in elementary school. Second grade to be exact. I always opted to be on the girls’ team when we played “shove the kids on the ground” on the playground because after all, the girls needed help (wink wink). I actually wanted to be pushed around by the boys and I wanted to wrestle them to the ground. But it wasn’t until my early teens that I knew what all this meant. I figured it was just something that all guys went through. God Bless my mother and father, they never talked to me about how these things worked so I had to figure it out myself. It wasn’t until my later teens that I figured that whatever “this” was was here to stay and I might as well just live with it. Even though I had a girlfriend at the time. Luckily, my girlfriend dumped me (guess I didn’t put out for the prom or something) and I was free to pursue my true feelings. I had a crush on a classmate named Dave, but he ended up going out with my sister. She always got the cute ones back then. Towards the end of high school I accepted the fact that I found some of my male schoolmates attractive, though I didn’t really do anything about it. When my parents dropped me off at college, I made a vow to myself. I was never going to hide who I was again and I would always allow my inner feelings to be. And boy, was I “out” in college. It’s all I ever talked about! Small wonder I failed out of school, I was too busy trying to be gay (even though I didn’t go on ANY dates!). Someone should have dumped a bucket of water on me because my pilot light was flarin’ WAY too high. So much for preconceived notions on how gay men should act. Luckily I was at a music school or else I would have been beat up a lot.

I didn’t really talk about my homosexuality with my family until Earl came along, save for my mother, my sister and my cousin Stephanie. I told my mother my first break home from college, with the usual dramatic flair, but she told me she knew all along and that she still loved me very much. I can still picture sitting in my parents’ living room having that discussion with my Mom back in 1986. My sister just knew. Perhaps it was the discussions years earlier about how cute Rick Springfield, Jack Wagner and the guys in Duran Duran were. And my cousin and I were very close and she always teased me about being gay so I finally just confirmed it. I finally calmed down a bit and ended up having one boyfriend in the year or two after college that I brought around once or twice, then a half hearted attempt at a relationship after that, but until my commitment ceremony with Earl it was just an unspoken assumption, I suppose. I just went out and did my thing and everyone worried about me. I think everyone breathed a sigh of relief when Earl and I began wearing our wedding bands after our commitment ceremony. Then it was like the closet doors just blew off their hinges, even though no words were spoken. I was in love and I was happy. And am even more so to this day.

I wish everyone had an easy path with their homosexuality, coming out and acceptance. I cringe when people say that being gay is a choice. It’s not. It’s part of who I am. Without the “gay”, I would not be the man I am today. It is just as inherent to us as eye color or left- or right-handedness.

So on this National Coming Out Day, whether you’re contemplating, talking or listening, know that there are others in similar situations. You are not alone.