Youth often finds itself a casualty of unawareness. In some instances, where there might be gratitude for preadult ignorance, being poor isn’t fun, at any age.  I grew up privileged.  Some may find it more difficult to embrace having nothing, after having grown up without financial worries.  Finding yourself without savings as a senior citizen, however, really blows.  Had I planned appropriately, I would have a substantial amount of funds in the bank.  Maybe not to live a life of luxury: I forfeited that option a while back and don’t admonish myself for it.  Certainly not for the money I spent on travel.  In my case, youth was not wasted on the young. But I definitely acknowledge regret on the significant and irresponsible dollars wasted on clothes.

One of the great delusions of being a New York City boy is casually seeing that the rich, middle class and poor live part of their lives in similarity. From clubs and bars to transportation and restaurants, they often “regular” a good deal of the same spaces.

As someone who doesn’t cook and doesn’t pretend to be a foodie, I don’t feel neglected when I can’t take advantage of the high-end eateries that populate the 5 boroughs.  At home I store different cheeses, tuna (white albacore only), pretzels and apple/cranberry juice.  There is no fruit, let alone anything green, to be found in my kitchen. I do like to gorge on edamame — with sea salt — when I go out for sushi. Even when I partake in eating fish prepared in an Asian style, I usually only dine on raw yellow tail on rice or cooked eel served on hot rocks (with my adolescent-like, finicky palette, I’m surprised by that appreciation).  As an aside, I do like a bagel slathered with cream cheese and a thin layer of lox.  Paint me as a cultural Jew — or a stereo-typical Manhattan citizen.

***

In the eyes of bartenders and waiters, I am often mistaken for someone who has money — an apparition sometimes labeled on authors who have been published. I am not John Grisham. I’m presuming that illusion is based upon my tipping with an overgenerous hand.  Having worked in the service industry, I choose to compensate well above the appropriate percentage. Now I live in tee shirts and jeans. That casualness does not give me away.  Here, that’s an acceptable costume.  Even though I grade myself as being too old to be wearing tight, short sleeve shirts, I’m too stubborn (and broke) to begin replacing my wardrobe with larger sizes, even when I want to.  I may not quite look my years, but it still seems wrong.  It’s not that I am a suit and tie kind of guy, nor do I believe someone needs to “dress their age,” but I do think you should wear what looks well on you.  And snug tee shirts no longer accentuate what had once been my svelte, muscular body. Back then it may have been seen as overcompensating, but in the past I didn’t care. In gay bars, my pecs got me a lot of attention.  Now, I do care.  Even professional tennis players, young men with bodies I envy, wear loose fitting clothing.

In catching up with one of my close friends with whom I hadn’t communicated in a couple of years, he had sent an email saying he too is in denial about aging.  The foundation of our friendship was cemented the summer after we graduated high school.  We are as different as two men can be with the unpredictable love between us being a family-like gauge for our lifelong friendship.  When he and his first serious relationship with a woman ended, his mother was overtly afraid I was going to swoop in and take advantage.  As if having a broken heart makes a straight man turn gay.

***

He and I laughed in irony at accepting that the majority of our lives is in the past, yet we constantly forget that we’re in our sixties!  Mirrors have become the enemy.  For him, having adult children probably forces the truth to the front burner.  Mine began by overhearing a conversation held by two young gay men.  They called me an old man. I really wasn’t hurt or offended.  When I was 21, I thought 30 was over the hill.

Some stereotypes, whether we like it or not, are accurate.  I am not someone who was invisibly gay when in junior and high school.  I may not have had sexual relations with men until my second year at university, but I was flamboyant and feminine as a young man.  Yet the boys I befriended in school who have stayed in my life all are straight.  I have always found it more difficult to establish substantial relationships with men versus women.  I believe there is no way that these straight guys who were just kids trying to navigate their way through adolescence didn’t have to explain or defend their connection with me.  That’s not anything that has been discussed, but having been called a fag every day of my junior and high school days, I know these boys had to qualify our friendships to others.

This was the 1970s.  Back then, I almost always had a girlfriend on my arm.  I’m presuming the parents were relieved that their daughters were dating me.  Right or wrong, they probably were thrilled not to have to worry about their babies getting knocked up by someone who they defined as obvious.  Considering I had sex with women from the time I was 16 until I came out, that is a terribly short-sighted comfort.

Accepting stupidity and prejudice, if we hadn’t been raised to believe “gay is wrong,” a lot of women might not have been victims of closeted gay guys who were afraid to deal with their truth.  We were raised not to act “affected” (a word my mother used a lot).  Clearly this is a guy issue.  In fact, a good deal of women that I know who live straight lives had some kind of sexual experience with other females without it influencing their identity.  There is a pressure on men from parents and society to be manly, whatever that means.  For many boys, it is their genuine nature, no matter their sexual preferences. I’m not saying it’s easier being a girl, but the pressure to be masculine for boys is drilled into our heads from childhood.  God forbid we fail at that.

Maybe it’s different for boys of the generations that came later.  I hope so.

And just to clear something up that will seem obvious to some, if I never have sex with another man again, I am still gay.  Contrary to some Russian literature I’ve read over the years, it is not the act that makes you gay.  It is who you are.  If you have a problem with that, then perhaps you should check yourself in the metaphorical mirror.