Open Forum Friday: The Age Thing

I’ve seen them online as long as there’s been an online to cruise—those guys with handles like lookin4yung or boilovindaddy. You have, too. You know exactly what those profiles are going to say even before they read them. Successful older gentleman looking for younger companionship. My birth certificate might say I’m a certain age, but I sure don’t feel it! YOU: Should be under 25, slim/swimmer’s build to muscular, no overweight. VGL only.

And of course, they’re accompanied by a photo of a gray-haired chubby guy with unkempt facial hair, and bad teeth. In his pill-covered cardigan, he’s got an appearance roughly as stimulating as that creepy elderly uncle of yours who drinks too much at family holiday gatherings and farts secretly into the den sofa.

I look at these profiles and think to myself: Sad. Ever since I’ve been in my twenties myself, I’ve always told myself I wouldn’t be one of those men. I didn’t think there was ever a chance of it happening, for one thing. When I started having sex, all the guys were older than me. (When you’re thirteen, everyone’s older than you.) In my college and grad school days, I was every sugar daddy’s boy. In my mid-twenties I was still chasing after men in their forties and fifties. It wasn’t until my mid-twenties that I really even chose to have sex with other guys my age—and frankly, they never scored that well on my post-coital report cards.

The moment I turned thirty, something curious happened. I became invisible to a vast percentage of the gay population. Older guys who liked getting banged by young stuff overlooked me when that first digit changed from a 2 to a 3. And younger guys didn’t even seem to see me. I remember on several occasions accompanying grad students in my department at the time out to a club or bar, and noticing that when their peers would come over to chat and introduce themselves, they’d shake hands and introduce themselves to all the other twenty-odd-year-olds, and completely skip over me. It didn’t even seem a deliberate omission; it really was as if I was invisible, a ghost, a phantom occupying no space, over whom their eyes could glide without notice.

At the time, it was a bit of a shocker. I thought to myself that if I’d ever wanted to make it with younger guys, well, that time had passed.

And then I hit my forties.

There’s something about a man of moderate good looks in his forties that has proven to be irresistible to a lot of guys in their late teens and early twenties. I honestly can’t explain it. One of my favorite young correspondents recently commented that he was in a ‘daddy phase’—and maybe that’s simply what it is. I’m not going to question the phenomenon. I’m just going to revel in it.

The problem is that I when I think about how many pretty young things who’ve slipped between my sheets since I turned forty, I think I might as well stop trimming my nose hairs and get out that pill-covered cardigan. Because I suddenly feel like that guy. You know. The creepy one. I feel like I should be assuring people reading my profile that I don’t look forty-seven, and that what is age but a number, anyway?

Look at the facts. A boy half my age has been occupying most of my time of late; he sleeps over half the time. Scruffy was even younger. Most of the guys with whom I hook up online are under the age of twenty-one. If I strip down and show off on a web cam, most of the guys cheering me weren’t even born when Marisa Tomei won the Academy Award.

The only saving grace, I think—and trust me, I cling to it—is that I’ve never been one of those you must be 25 or under! chappies. I take ‘em as they come, pretty much, and still like a variety in my sexual diet. Older men I find very attractive. Younger guys (and when you’re forty-seven, everyone’s younger than you) I also enjoy meeting. I have great encounters with men around my own age, for the first time in my life. It’s not that I can’t afford to be picky. I’ve just learned that discrimination based on specious criteria is silly.

Secretly, though, when I go out at night with Spencer to a restaurant where other gay couples are eating, I see them look at us and size us up. And though on a certain level I think they’re admiring Spencer and then regarding me with envy and thinking, Lucky dog, part of me worries if mentally they’re consigning me to that corner of the sofa with the creepy, farting uncle who paws the boys and is a general embarrassment to all.

So in this edition of the open forum, I ask my readers: what’s your opinion on the issue of age difference? Do younger men have a daddy phase? Are older guys automatically creepy because they have a parade of younger studs in their bedroom? Or in these free-for-all days, am I being super-sensitive about it?

I’m honestly curious to hear your opinions.