t’s been a week now since beginning my work with LGBT seniors. The work is not hard on one level but very difficult on another. After years of independence the indignities of age seem to strike hard and deep. The men I am working with are in their late 80’s having lived through the times when being openly gay was not an option. Some were pressured into marrying women just to be socially and economically viable. Others stayed single and were workaholics hiding their same sex attractions and redirecting that energy into powerful careers. Now, they are being looked after by someone like me. I am trying to absorb the life experience and insight these men can share with me as I care for them.
One is single the other is still living with his partner. The couple has a twenty year age gap, so as one is entering the last months of his life, the other is still strong and vital. I can see that what once was a Union of minds, passion, sex, and a social gay life has morphed into 2 men who now face the fading dynamics of the relationship. Now one needs 24 hour care to dress, eat, bathe, use the bathroom, and remember what happened the day before. They are now like companions. With advanced age, the gap in years is very significant. How do you prepare to be alone after an intense time of caregiving? Who will take care of the man left behind? In comparison, the single guy wears his isolation with a curmudgeonly vibe with exasperation aimed at the intersectional identity of youth and what he sees as frivolous gay cultural obsessions. This is punctuated by references to what I think is a preoccupation with gay sex for hire. His closeted life was about being sneaky about wanting sex with men, loving men, but being transactional with them. Deeply sexist and polarized in his views, he uses his pronouncements as a mask for his profound sense of loneliness. This is a man with lots of dirty sex secrets.
I know the type having met them before. They steep in their own male toxicity and only gay men who are similar in psychological makeup like to share space with them. They eschew deep reflection, present with an entitled persona, but don’t trust or understand love, and yet they have giggly crushes that sometimes drip out from cracks in their protective walls. What is clear though is a misogynist world view. Any man, no matter how bland, is held in higher esteem than any bitch woman. Forced into marriage, forced to provide and forced to have children, women are resented for the roles society made these men live or be judged for not living well enough. I get it. How dare the world now allow gender fluidity? What would it mean if in your 80’s you choose face the fact that you can see the freedoms you never had access to, and not feel like you suffered for no reason except for being born too early in the century. Very few people can change at age 25 much less 85.
So for me, I find the emotional environment tiring but important to experience. Maybe this kind of care is one of the only places inter generational discussions happen and some cosmic issues get worked on in both parties? Through feeling their pain and frustration I learn more about the obligation I have to honor my own emotional and social life. When I am 85, my caregiver might find me and my life symptomatic of the times I lived. Will I want to be told I did not live up to my potential? Will I shun these judgements, too old and tired to want to explain something they will never understand unless they lived it? So with this in mind, I am trying to listen with my heart, not my language sensitive ears. Trying to be in a space where I encourage and validate the unique moments of overlap I discover when buttoning a button or changing a diaper. I know that these random men are not truly random for me. I don’t accept random.
Each day when I leave, I touch a shoulder or shake a hand and thank them for having spent the day with them. I am absorbing things unconsciously that I know have value, even when I try to be so conscious of the interactions. Managing communication in such a multitude of directions, across historical time, and informed by the dimensions of spirit, while simultaneously cooking soup and finding a lost sock demands a somatic versatility and resilience. This strength training is part of the gift of this work. As I slowly walk into my golden years, it gives me perspective and highlights the choices I still have, and must pay dedicated attention to, so that I continue to grow and change and evolve.
Carlton
December 10th, 2019
