GAY and getting older!

Well 39 isn't so bad!  I remember when I was 29 I used to just tell people I was 30, that way when I actually turned 30 it wouldn't be such a big deal.  Well as I predicted when I turned 30 it was no big deal....HOWEVER...turning 31 was like getting slapped in the face with a laminated AARP members card!!  I felt so old, and then things just started to play in my mind.  I started thinking of my life up to this point...and when I say "life", I mean from the point when I came out till now.

I came out when I was 21 and that seems like a lifetime ago, and I think back to the person I was then and I wonder what ever happened to that person?  I remember hanging out with my first gay friends Sam and John and my first best gay friend Joray, man those were the days!  We used to be such little trouble makers at the saint!  It was all in good fun though!  I remember when I first came out, I felt that I had to be out EVERY NIGHT because I always felt that if I missed one night, I was missing something, or worse...that the man of my dreams was going to go out the one night I stayed home!!   I know all gay men can relate in some fashion to not wanting to miss a single night out at the clubs when you first come out.

Here was my "weekly schedule"

• Monday:  Stayed in!
• Tuesday: Went to Sparx to watch the hot oil wrestling, and as soon as that was over Joray and I hauled ass to the saint to watch Newcomer/amateur night!
• Wednesday: Tycoon Flats for Margaritas (after Melrose Place of course), then went to the Saint!
• Thursday: Stayed in!
• Friday: Saint (back then the Bonham totally was dead on Fridays)
• Saturday:  The Bonham was the place to be! 
• Sunday: Olmos Park (holy shit remember how much fun that was cruising up and down in the car and playing volleyball) then went to the Saint for the Super Sunday Show to watch Shady Lady roll for dollars!  

Whew I am exhausted just typing that!  HELL now at 39 I can barely muster up the strength to go out one night in a span of months!!  LOL!

As time went on...and I got older, my crowd kind of changed.  I eventually lost touch with Sam and John, but remained very good friends with Joray even to this day!  A few years later I moved to Florida, and that's where the real transformation took place.  I left San Antonio as a very naive and wholesome kid and came back as someone totally different.  Different in the sense that while I was over there a lot of firsts took place.  I smoked my first cigarette, smoked my first joint (which I hated and made me paranoid beyond belief!!...Never smoke a joint and then go to Disney World, that's all I'm saying), actually stayed out and drank with friends, and for the first time in my life I experienced the high you get on the dance floor, and I don't mean from the music either!  You circuit fuckers know what I'm talking about too!  I came back a different person,someone who had begun to experience life and EVERYTHING it had to offer, both good and bad.  I wasn't ashamed of who had become, it was just kind of sad in a way because that innocent and naive person was long gone, and I saw things and people differently, no longer through rose colored glasses.

Now....The few times I go out a tear, I see all the same faces that were once new faces (along with mine) and I see how we have all aged. Some of us have aged well, and some of us have not.  I often wonder what has become of some of the people I knew way back in the day?  So many of them have moved on out of San Antonio to chase that ever elusive glamorous "Gay Life" and I wonder how they are doing.  They remind me of those people on the television show "The Walking Dead", always looking for their salvation, and never really finding it  Going from city to city looking for the beautiful people, desperately wanting to be one of them and find the hot boyfriend, but never quite fitting in or finding that guy.  I always thought, I mean if your ugly gay ass ain't cutting it here in San Antonio, you sure as hell aren't gonna find what your looking for in beautiful Miami!  Por Favor! 

I remember when I came out there were all these men in their 30's and I thought to myself  "GROSS their OLD, Stay home already!!"...Well now it's my turn and as I walk aground the club there is a new crop of gays running around with their friends (that they think will be their friends forever) causing trouble much like I did when I was their age, and I wonder if they see me and think..."GROSS HOW OLD!!"  I guess everything comes full circle in life and every gay has his day!  It's been a sweet life, peppered with some great times with some of the most wonderful friends along the way.  Now that I am well into my 30's I wonder what turning 40 will be like!?

 

Live life!