Wednesday, April 04, 2007

NO FATS, FEMS, or FREAKS...

My problem with the language of gay personal ads (though only different in degree from my problems with personal ads in general) goes back over thirty years. At the time it seemed bitterly amusing that nobody seemed to want "fats, fems, or freaks."

Now it just seems
ugly. And I am now part of the ugliness.

I got a note in response to my posting about the miracle of my Chinese "readership." It invited me to visit NYC where, I was told, you practically trip over Asian queens doing Naomi Campbell on every street corner. Without thinking, I replied: "Asian yes, queens no."

Oh.

There you have it. Nobody less straight-acting than me (which lines right up with "nobody older than me," which pretty much describes most on-line profiles). Now, I have worked hard over the last couple of years to really come to terms with the fact that I owe many of the changes that have happened in society since I got one foot back in the closet door to the very population I would prefer to think had nothing to do with me: drag queens, effeminate guys, or God forbid, the transgendered. Stonewall was not a working man's bar after all [OK, so maybe it was, but certainly not in the usual sense.]

You know what I mean.


It does offend me that nobody is willing to look at anyone more than a few years older -- how anyone is going to find anybody when the criterion is that everybody has to find someone younger, is beyond me... People who are clearly in their sixties advertise themselves as my age. Now, the sensible thing for me to do would be to pretend to be 45 instead of 55 [rounding up, guys, rounding up]. But that sticks in my craw. And the fact is that we all are some combination of masculine and feminine traits, or we would not be so obsessive about denying it. What is the whole cult of body as muscle mass about?

"Hey, I'm
male. I can pass for straight. I'm not like those other wimps."

Here's my problem. I am those other wimps. And I am as much a part of the problem as anyone, because anyone with a serious chest and shoulders makes me weak in the knees. I know you are all dead tired of hearing about the Inner Girl, but that's what she likes. And the Silver Fox has told me that I need an exercise program. So that covers fems and fats.

Now, I would guess that anyone on more than one medication from the Great Psycho-pharmacy in the sky probably counts as a "freak" on one level or another, especially if you include my very hesitant list toward leather...

So now, I'm off the
A list completely.

What a surprise.


And I thought that other people were the "elderly frights."

Hmmmmm.
.

2 comments:

  1. Troll,
    Alas, I know how you feel. My friend Jack consoled me with these words, and I hope they give you comfort, too:
    "None of us is as nelly as he thinks, none of us is as fat as he thinks, and you can be as young as you can make people think you are."
    I don't know about that last part, but the other two points are definitely true in my book.
    All my best,
    Bigg

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  2. TG:

    Someone I once worked with in the theater said that he was so nelly he should wear a doily on his head.

    And he was. The great advantage of people like W***** is that they make the rest of feel butch in comparison.

    But we're not fooling anyone but ourselves.

    T

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