I've read several articles recently about the "sad plight" of gay seniors.
Oh, what a pathetic, lonely, forgotten bunch of losers we are. Apparently, young gays don't want us in the bars because we're past our sell-by date and we ugly the place up. I laughed a lot when I read that article, as I have no desire to hang out in bars with young people, talking young-people things and listening to young people's music. In fact, I would rather have my eyeballs pierced than spend an evening in a gay bar with young people. Everything they say I've heard before, everything they do I've seen before, I've taken all the drugs they're taking, had all the sex they're havingbeen there, done that. BORING!!!
Do I really want to be in Hydrate listening to remixes of Adele, Rihanna and Pitbull, or Diplo, Calvin Harris and David Guetta? No, I don't. I don't even know who those people are. I had to ask my friend DJ Harry T for those names. Thank you, DJ Harry T. I have no interest in socializing with young people at all.
I've just hit 65 and my well-being just disappeared into a black hole in space called Medicare. Medicare is like a maze with no exit and no entry. It's more complex than a Rubik's cube. Don't get me wrong: I'm grateful to have Medicare. However, it took every ounce of my patience to unravel the rules and regulations. I would love to meet the person who wrote the Medicare manuals, instructions, etc. because I want to kill that individual. I want to kill that person slowly and painfully, starting with light slapping around the face and ending with me holding his or her head underwater until the bubbles stop.
There are only two cures for old age in gay men: 1 ) death or 2 ) a move to Palm Springs. I chose the latter. Of course, some older gay men move to Fort Lauderdale, in that inflamed pustulant running sore called Florida, where leaving your child to fry in a locked car is de rigueur and you can hire a hit man in any Walmart parking lot.
In Palm Springs, nearly everyone is of a certain age. I don't have to explain who Judy Garland is, who Anita Bryant was, and everyone knows of Sylvester, the Cockettes, and a time when condoms were only used to stop pregnancy.
I surround myself with people who have lived a long life and have stories to tell. Last night I spent the evening with a famous author and friend of Michael Jackson and Zsa Zsa Gabor; the man who bought Liberace's house; a local radio personality who used to sing with Bob Hope and is directing a production of Sordid Lives; a cosmetics manufacturer who just bought a house and the top of a mountain it stands on; and an 84-year-old drag queen.
Over the weekend, I'll be seeing Liberace's wigmaker, who also made Elizabeth Taylor's wigs in Cleopatra and other Hollywood movies, and I'm going to the art gallery of a Broadway dancer who once toured with Lena Horne and whose husband was in the Stonewall Riots. Hopefully, I may also have coffee with a man who marched with Martin Luther King and another who dated one of Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention. I've also just found out a neighbor who I say hi to every morning is a musician who works with Quincy Jones, and a friend of a friend was Grace Jones' personal assistant for 15 years. I love people with stories to tell.
So don't panic, young people. You can all breath a sigh of reliefI won't be dragging my revolting wrinkled-up old carcass into your line of tweaked-up vision anytime soon. I'll be here in Palm Springs, in a house built as an homage to the movie Casablanca and whose previous owner danced with Ginger Rogers, and I'll be sitting in the sunshine by the pool, drinking orange juice and spending my twilight years being lonely, miserable and waiting to dienot!!