As I think about Marge, and the man on the street mistaking me for someone her age, I realize that it isn’t the fear of looking like an older person, but of becoming an older person, that roils inside. To grow old and gay seems like a free fall. I’m afraid of losing my community, my sense of self and, quite frankly, my livelihood.
The truth is, I’ve lived a nontraditional life — I’ve filled it with chosen family, I’ve parented a teenager from my community who’s in no position to care for me down the line, I’ve held many illogical jobs to survive as a writer. (The good thing about queerness is that it breaks the bonds of expectation; you’re already doing something astonishing, which allows you to live your life in other ways beyond the picket fence.) But it’s not so good for long-term planning.
There are almost no studies on aging queers, and the few that exist look pretty terrible. We have significantly less savings than our straight counterparts, and we’re 20 percent less likely to gain access to government services like housing assistance, meal programs, senior centers and so on. We’re less likely to have health insurance, less likely to go to doctors. We face more medical conditions; more of us live alone. And on and on.
Maybe my partner and I will be able to slip into one of the few L.G.B.T.Q.-specific retirement communities, though I doubt we’ll be able to afford it (ahem, writer’s salary). And besides, as far as I can tell, there are only 10. I can’t imagine too many older lesbians are actually tooling around on golf carts, but maybe they’ve all packed off for the desert; I can’t tell.
Like I said, I don’t see too many of them around. Perhaps there isn’t the critical mass of visible older queerness because, simply, older queers didn’t have the same opportunity to live in an obvious way in their youth. With more homophobic laws and culture, they were more often forced into the closet, and so they stayed that way. My generation is the first to expect equal treatment, or something like it, as we age.
Cris Beam
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