_ pniiary 31. 2000 » J—
—
CINEM A 2 1
IIIN W II"
22M S IS
No hawks in sight
A P o r tla n d m a n Is fig h tin g ageism , o n e m a n at a tim e
H H H oooo, Mike, what did you do Saturday
fflP night ?”
My friend knows full well what this
i l P 24-year-old did.
“Weeeelll, I had a date.”
“Oh, really? With whom?”
His feigned ignorance only makes the
question more probing. 1 pause a bit before
answering.
“With Nathan.” Nathan, for the record, is a
41-year-old I’ve been seeing on and
off for nearly two years.
“You know,” my friend says as
he puts on his best poker face, “I
read in psychology books that gay
guys in their 20s who couldn’t date
much in their teens arrive on the
dating scene emotionally unpre
pared. They never had
the opportunity to
grow out of their teens.
They project this onto
older men, whom they
see as possessing the
emotional maturity
they lack.”
BY
His language is
m
obtuse, but his point is
crystal-clear to me.
TUMY
Basically, he’s saying 1
should date closer to my age.
He’s not the first person to sug
gest this. In the past, other people
have insinuated the same thing.
Certainly, society at large has sent
me the same message. Virtually all
the messages I receive urge me to
find a nice twenty-something.
After all, people from your age
group are the ones you have the
most in common with, right?
Maybe, but not necessarily. A
glance around my circle of friends
reveals that there are only a hand
ful in their 20s. The remainder are
all thirty- or forty-somethings.
Even my friends in their 20s have
a maturity and intelligence that
belies their age.
They all have an “older” quality to which I
gravitate. However, while people seem to think
it fine to befriend people 15 years your senior,
it’s somehow beyond the pale to date them.
When the subject of older men comes up,
some young gay men rarely make an effort to
conceal their squeamishness. Older guys, on
the other hand, are sometimes disconcerted
holding a simple conversation with me, no
matter how innocent the context. It’s as
though they can’t believe someone under 30
could have any legitimate interest in them. I
can see the question in their expressions and
read the suspicion in their eyes: W hat’s he real
ly after?
Sti what happens when you put a 24-year-
old together with, say, a 40-year-old? Outsiders
make unfortunate assumptions about both par
ties, none of them very flattering. The younger
man is usually seen as weak and emotionally
°eedy. Other older men, seeking to protect
their peers, look down on the young man as
poised to become some sort of financial para
site. The older man, on the other hand, is seen
as a lecherous, predatory creature.
We have plenty of words revealing our atti
tudes about age and mixed-age relationships.
For example, if a young man is a "chicken,” his
older counterpart is a “chicken hawk." While
“daddy” and “son" have bedroom connotations,
“sugar daddy” and “houseboy” are more gener
ic, but the implication of sex roles remains.
“Troll” is not exactly a term of endearment.
Furthermore, attraction to a very young man
makes an older guy a “cradle robber,” or worse
yet could even brand him as a pedophile. Pre
dictably, a cradle robber’s opposite is a “grave
robber.” And, finally, young men can be dis
missed as “twinks.”
Now there’s a word I’ve used a little too lib
erally around some of my friends. While it
bothers me when people criticize the guys I’m
attracted to, it never dawned on me that it
might offend when I used ttvink as, well, a slur.
Another good friend, who likes young men,
has always been supportive of whom I choose
to date. I, on the other hand, blissfully kept
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reiterating to him my romantic disinterest in
twinks until he finally told me how sick he
was of hearing about it. Not exactly the best
way to return my friend’s understanding.
“So what did you guys do?” my friend
innocently asks as he finishes off his mocha.
My instinct is to reflexively say, “Nothing
much.” In the past, I’ve literally made people
shudder just by talking about a very tame
date with an older guy. It’s usually easier not
to go into it. But this time it’s different.
Instead, I relate my story of a relatively quiet,
uneventful Saturday. I tell him about how we
went out for Indian food in Northwest Port
land, then chatted over drinks, and wound up
the evening watching the tail end of the U of
O football game he wanted to see.
As I speak I notice a slight smile steal
over his lips, and I know what it means. It’s a
knowing smile, one which tells me that
inside he’s shaking his head and rolling his
eyes and chuckling, because he knows me
and how some things will never change.
That, and the fact that he just caught me
peeking at the blond, goateed 35-year-old
entering the cafe.
■ MlKE T uray is a member of Portland Gay
Men Writing. To learn more about the group,
call Patrick at (503) 231-8866.
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