Gino, this really hit home for me. I came out when I was 48 and I thought that coming out was the hard part. It was actually everything that came after it - trying to find who I was after a lifetime of living for other people. I lost myself in that somehow. I didn't even know what authentic me looked like. I'm slowly learning, but it's hard when you don't fit the "ideal gay" stereotype. Thank you for writing this.
Coming out at 48 is already a lot, Dan. The after part sounds like it was a second reckoning. It makes sense that “authentic me” doesn’t arrive fully formed on cue. Learning slowly still counts, especially when the available gay template pretends there’s only one correct version.
Hey Gino, Your insights are always comforting to me because see gay men as whole, complex individuals. Thank you.
I believe our LBGT Centers could also do a better job of providing spaces and programming for the gay men you’re describing. From my perspective, as an aging circuit boy (I’m 61), I find no alternative gatherings or ongoing programming for gay men at LA’s LGBT Center and it saddens me profoundly. All the attention and resources seem to be directed toward the non-gay and non-lesbian communities.
I feel like our own community has turned its back on us.
I also think many gay men are quietly looking for spaces that aren’t built around crisis, nightlife, or dating. There’s a real gap there, especially as we get older, and I don’t think you’re alone in feeling it. ☺️
I’m always a bit overwhelmed by the insights in your writing. It almost always resonates and I experience that ‘click’ when someone puts into words something that’s always been a vague concept in your own mind but there’s always an element of sadness as well. At 75, looking back over all the time and energy wasted trying to ‘get it right’ and never even coming close..it’s a kind of mourning. Mostly for the ‘essence/essential’ me that was always there but never made it to full realization. I wish I could come back in another 20-30 years and hear how life has unfolded for all you now in your ‘middle years’. How will the knowledge you have now carry you forward…
Seventy-five gives you a long view, and sometimes that view includes recognizing how much energy went into trying to become acceptable instead of simply becoming yourself. I also hear the tenderness in wondering how this knowledge will carry younger men forward. For me, it’s hoping they have fewer years of having to audition for lives that were never really theirs.
I went from being "too gay" for my family and church community growing up - hence the covering up who I was and creating an illusion of straightness - to being "not gay enough" after I came out at 48. While i have a longing to hangout with my people, it became too conflicting. I wasn’t accustomed to meeting in bars with go go dancers wearing briefs (or nothing) dancing on the bar and I stayed away from the apps because i wanted more than fleeting hookups.
Now, my community looks very straight (my husband and i are the only gay ones) and consists of people beautiful in every sense except appearance. And I'm happy with that. I belong. I have people i can depend on. And none of us measure ourselves against narrow, arbitary standards.
I don't think I had thought of the visible gay man as a product. And it lands concretely. It's inarguable. I'd always thought of it as gay and gravitating toward what the rest of society is willing to allow them to inhabit (like in the documentary, The Celluloid Closet). And I think that has changed.
If I'm being honest, I've always taken Umbridge at those gay men who were born with genetic advantages, square jaws and all that. They can be so cruel and elitist.
But now, I have decades of making my own belonging. Like the menu described who are into gardening and Formula One. That last one surprised me a bit lol.
Really thought-provoking article as usual. Hope you're having a good day, Gino. 😊💕
Once you see the visible gay man as a product, you begin to see the engineering. It’s still bruising, obviously, because the “square jaw committee” has not always been known for its community spirit.
Decades of making your own belonging counts for a lot, Leo. Gardening, Formula One, people you can depend on, no daily audition for gay approval … that sounds like a very sane place to land. ☺️
The phrase “rewards aspiration and scarcity” sure leapt out at me. That’s a powerful notion to be aware of when others’ lives on those platforms make us feel any level of less-than.
Thanks very much for this. Always appreciate your wisdom and insight.
That’s the trap, Ray. The platform keeps showing lives arranged to feel desirable and just out of reach, then we start treating our ordinary life like it’s somehow failed the brief. And thank you. I appreciate the way you noticed the machinery underneath it.
You have just described my life. I'm 66, and while I came out in 1982. I've never felt queer enough to be gay. If anything, it's become worse and worse these past twenty years as we gay men have become more and more assimilated into the mainstream, and thanks to social media the mainstream media has become more and more inescapable. I can't even read the gay press any more; so much of it is just Hollywood celebrity gossip relayed by interchangeable bitchy-queen (excuse my language) Michael Musto knockoffs. And the worst of it is, that's what we're supposed to celebrate as our identity; if you find Madonna kind of a bore, you're betraying the tribe and you might as well be MAGA. It's as though being a gay man came with all those petty cultural rules that have nothing to do with men loving men, which you have to follow in order to be considered authentic.
I agree, Brian. Loving men should not require a subscription to celebrity gossip let alone permanent fluency in bitchy one-liners. The Michael Musto knockoff line made me laugh 🤭
I say this a lot but I hate that Grindr, Twitter, and Instagram were my ways in to the gay world. The false picture that was sold to me is still taking me years to destroy. I thought I could finally construct what it means to be gay for myself now that I‘m past the worst times, but man it‘s hard.
Above all, the self-hatred and shame that we already feel because of the environment we grew up in is exacerbated by the curated gay feed making love—from others and especially, ourselves—feel impossible to receive. Hell, I feel that way all too often, even though I know for a fact that it‘s a distorted thought.
Thanks for this letter, Gino.
P.S. Where are these gay men you talk about who like true crime docs, long walks, and making out in gardens? I‘d kill to meet one of you. (Just be a top lol)
I hate that those were your entry points too. They hand you a map before you’ve had any real chance to find yourself, and then you spend years trying to unlearn a picture you never chose.
The true crime, long walks, garden make-out men do exist. The top requirement may narrow the search results slightly, naturally.
Gino, this really hit home for me. I came out when I was 48 and I thought that coming out was the hard part. It was actually everything that came after it - trying to find who I was after a lifetime of living for other people. I lost myself in that somehow. I didn't even know what authentic me looked like. I'm slowly learning, but it's hard when you don't fit the "ideal gay" stereotype. Thank you for writing this.
Coming out at 48 is already a lot, Dan. The after part sounds like it was a second reckoning. It makes sense that “authentic me” doesn’t arrive fully formed on cue. Learning slowly still counts, especially when the available gay template pretends there’s only one correct version.
Hey Gino, Your insights are always comforting to me because see gay men as whole, complex individuals. Thank you.
I believe our LBGT Centers could also do a better job of providing spaces and programming for the gay men you’re describing. From my perspective, as an aging circuit boy (I’m 61), I find no alternative gatherings or ongoing programming for gay men at LA’s LGBT Center and it saddens me profoundly. All the attention and resources seem to be directed toward the non-gay and non-lesbian communities.
I feel like our own community has turned its back on us.
Thanks Mike. I appreciate that.
I also think many gay men are quietly looking for spaces that aren’t built around crisis, nightlife, or dating. There’s a real gap there, especially as we get older, and I don’t think you’re alone in feeling it. ☺️
I’m always a bit overwhelmed by the insights in your writing. It almost always resonates and I experience that ‘click’ when someone puts into words something that’s always been a vague concept in your own mind but there’s always an element of sadness as well. At 75, looking back over all the time and energy wasted trying to ‘get it right’ and never even coming close..it’s a kind of mourning. Mostly for the ‘essence/essential’ me that was always there but never made it to full realization. I wish I could come back in another 20-30 years and hear how life has unfolded for all you now in your ‘middle years’. How will the knowledge you have now carry you forward…
Seventy-five gives you a long view, and sometimes that view includes recognizing how much energy went into trying to become acceptable instead of simply becoming yourself. I also hear the tenderness in wondering how this knowledge will carry younger men forward. For me, it’s hoping they have fewer years of having to audition for lives that were never really theirs.
I went from being "too gay" for my family and church community growing up - hence the covering up who I was and creating an illusion of straightness - to being "not gay enough" after I came out at 48. While i have a longing to hangout with my people, it became too conflicting. I wasn’t accustomed to meeting in bars with go go dancers wearing briefs (or nothing) dancing on the bar and I stayed away from the apps because i wanted more than fleeting hookups.
Now, my community looks very straight (my husband and i are the only gay ones) and consists of people beautiful in every sense except appearance. And I'm happy with that. I belong. I have people i can depend on. And none of us measure ourselves against narrow, arbitary standards.
What you’ve built sounds quietly solid, David. People you can depend on, no constant measuring, no performance audits. That counts for a lot.
I don't think I had thought of the visible gay man as a product. And it lands concretely. It's inarguable. I'd always thought of it as gay and gravitating toward what the rest of society is willing to allow them to inhabit (like in the documentary, The Celluloid Closet). And I think that has changed.
If I'm being honest, I've always taken Umbridge at those gay men who were born with genetic advantages, square jaws and all that. They can be so cruel and elitist.
But now, I have decades of making my own belonging. Like the menu described who are into gardening and Formula One. That last one surprised me a bit lol.
Really thought-provoking article as usual. Hope you're having a good day, Gino. 😊💕
Once you see the visible gay man as a product, you begin to see the engineering. It’s still bruising, obviously, because the “square jaw committee” has not always been known for its community spirit.
Decades of making your own belonging counts for a lot, Leo. Gardening, Formula One, people you can depend on, no daily audition for gay approval … that sounds like a very sane place to land. ☺️
The phrase “rewards aspiration and scarcity” sure leapt out at me. That’s a powerful notion to be aware of when others’ lives on those platforms make us feel any level of less-than.
Thanks very much for this. Always appreciate your wisdom and insight.
That’s the trap, Ray. The platform keeps showing lives arranged to feel desirable and just out of reach, then we start treating our ordinary life like it’s somehow failed the brief. And thank you. I appreciate the way you noticed the machinery underneath it.
You have just described my life. I'm 66, and while I came out in 1982. I've never felt queer enough to be gay. If anything, it's become worse and worse these past twenty years as we gay men have become more and more assimilated into the mainstream, and thanks to social media the mainstream media has become more and more inescapable. I can't even read the gay press any more; so much of it is just Hollywood celebrity gossip relayed by interchangeable bitchy-queen (excuse my language) Michael Musto knockoffs. And the worst of it is, that's what we're supposed to celebrate as our identity; if you find Madonna kind of a bore, you're betraying the tribe and you might as well be MAGA. It's as though being a gay man came with all those petty cultural rules that have nothing to do with men loving men, which you have to follow in order to be considered authentic.
I agree, Brian. Loving men should not require a subscription to celebrity gossip let alone permanent fluency in bitchy one-liners. The Michael Musto knockoff line made me laugh 🤭
I say this a lot but I hate that Grindr, Twitter, and Instagram were my ways in to the gay world. The false picture that was sold to me is still taking me years to destroy. I thought I could finally construct what it means to be gay for myself now that I‘m past the worst times, but man it‘s hard.
Above all, the self-hatred and shame that we already feel because of the environment we grew up in is exacerbated by the curated gay feed making love—from others and especially, ourselves—feel impossible to receive. Hell, I feel that way all too often, even though I know for a fact that it‘s a distorted thought.
Thanks for this letter, Gino.
P.S. Where are these gay men you talk about who like true crime docs, long walks, and making out in gardens? I‘d kill to meet one of you. (Just be a top lol)
I hate that those were your entry points too. They hand you a map before you’ve had any real chance to find yourself, and then you spend years trying to unlearn a picture you never chose.
The true crime, long walks, garden make-out men do exist. The top requirement may narrow the search results slightly, naturally.