Common Sense	Common Sense Archive

I have noticed one distinct advantage of being my age (57). It is that so much of what is pitched in our culture is aimed for audiences ahead of me, past me, off to one side, everywhere but where I am.

I like that. Since I don't watch more than one hour of television a day-- usually canned news shows-- I don't know who any of the current crop of TV entertainment people are. I see write-ups about them in the newspaper, but as I know nothing about them other than these print accounts, it puts them in a weird kind of inchoate contextualization-- they are famous for something I know nothing about! I haven't gotten to the stage-- think of HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey, when his thinking units are unplugged-- where I find the culture completely beyond the looking glass, but I am happy to be positioned just as I am.

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Parts of the culture have been safe havens-- or, perhaps, flypaper-- for gay men. Think of the classic years of the movies. I could turn into an old quean with my apartment done up in pictures of Marilyn Monroe. Actually I'd be more inclined to Barbara Stanwyck. A couple days ago, this sweet man called me up to inform me that he had just published a book about Constance Bennett and her sister, Joan. I congratulated him and thought this was sweet. But I did have to wonder if the work he put into the project would be reflected in audience appeal. Excluding old-time movie queans, what percentage of the American populace knows whom Constance Bennett is? I'd like to find out.

I went through my phase of totally-gay immersion in popular and mid-brow cultural artifacts. It was fun for a while, but, like Snow White, I drifted. I've always preferred the small-scale oddities to the giantism of so much popular culture, more inclined to a Joseph Cornell box than to a Mike Todd production. It's a big country, and I suppose people have to scream to be heard, but I've never understood why the model must be the balloon size in the Macy's day parade, a phenomenon that playwright Jean-Claude van Itallie so vividly depicted in his small masterpiece, America, Hurrah.

It's a delicate balance-- staying with a decade you feel comfortable with and keeping up with some of the newer stuff. I know one fellow, and I think he's a type you might only meet in Boston, who is probably not much older than I am; he dresses and acts as though he had been left behind from some Noel Coward comedy from the 30s or 40s. Very High Church Camp Quean. It's not an unattractive pose, it's just that I really don't know how to behave with someone so wildly dated.

Years ago, I worked with a sweet quean-- we called him Miss Ralph-- who came of age in the 1950s and had pretty much stayed there. One day, Miss Ralph was out visiting a mutual friend at the hospital where he worked. The two of them took a lunch break in the hospital canteen and were carrying on like pre-Stonewall queans on bennies. Next to them was a table of young black women, one of whom, after they had finished lunch, came over to Miss Ralph and actually said to him: "Girl, you so 50s!" My friend did not take this as a compliment. At least these models can pass the test of age-appropriate behavior.

Not true for all kinds. My friend David has always regarded as one of the saddest sight in gay life the near-50 guy, shirt off, still swinging his disco chain and other accessories, at the club amidst the bevy of gym bunnies. And just this week, a close friend asked to buy the new book on crystal meth in the gay community, Tweakers. He told me a friend of his had just been killed by use of the drug. I asked how old was his late friend. "54." I was taken aback. "He partied hard with the 20-somethings."

Why, I wondered. Even the cardio-vascular systems of 20-somethings can't take the tina. Something was wrong with this picture, but I'm so far from the storm that I didn't even know that meth was-- once again-- a problem in the community until I read about it somewhere.

My friend Charley Shively once noted that there seems to be only six stories in our community, at least on the macro level, and substance-abuse is one of them, ever constant, up there with movie addiction. ("I couldn't believe it! They knew every line in All About Eve!")

My late friend Andy Kopkind said that for gay men, their 30s were the hardest decade. Maybe for him. Andy was born in the 1930s and he got arrested in a men's room in the mid-60s. (His employer, Time magazine, told him to see a psychiatrist.) My 30s and 40s were the best years of my life (so far, who knows, as my 60s and 70s may just turn out to be fabulous and I might win a Gay Genius Grant, if that game ever gets going). But it's different for each. Some guys are unhappy no matter what; they may even enjoy it. Others morph from decade to decade without missing a trend or failing to know everything about the freshest face on that silly new TV show ("Ursula Up-To-Date"). I have a loop running in my head that's full of references to the culture from, say, Watergate to Iran-Contra; all else is trailers or reruns, which I don't watch.

Author Profile:  Mitzel
	Mitzel was a founding member of the Fag Rag collective, and has been a Guide columnist since 1986. He manages Calamus Books near Boston's South Station.
	Email:	mitzel@calamusbooks.com
	Website:	calamusbooks.com