My Gay World: Becoming a Daddy

Guest commentary by: Kurt Vestor
Photos of Rich, Nick, and Kyle: Unzipped Premium

In a youth-obsessed culture like the gay community, age is everything. From the covers of local gay rags to the ads for neighborhood dentists, if the queers can use a hot young stud in the photo, they will. Hell, even at Gay.com they look for these sexy images to illustrate their stories because they know that hot pics get you to click.

Aging never really bothered me—I've always looked young for my age and always liked being with older guys— but I've recently started getting hit on by younger guys.

Guys who insist on calling me, "Daddy."

So I'm getting older and other people are noticing. No big deal, right?

Aging may be a fact of life and we all have to deal with it, but when you look at the social norms of the gay community juxtaposed against those of mainstream society, it makes me question a lot of things in my life:

Should I still worry about having a six-pack?

Is it wrong to still want to screw guys 24/7 or should I have settled down by now?

Am I pervy if I'm attracted to those guys in their early 20s, or should I just focus on men my own age?

What does it mean if I get off on being called a "Daddy?"

When I first came out the social stereotype said that gay guys party in their 20s, move to the older "leathery" parts of town in their 30s, and (in those days) were dead by 40. Obviously that last part changed dramatically with the introduction of HIV cocktail therapies, and now men are defining what it means to be gay and older, but they still continue to face the expectation that their social lives end after they hit a certain age—especially if they don't have faces or bodies that match the models in this posting.

Gay men are often accused of having a Peter Pan syndrome where they don't want to grow up. Fair enough. There are also plenty of young queens who call older gay men "trolls," and I'll admit to having been one of those queens back in the day (though for me it was always more about the older man's lecherous behavior than it was his looks).

But here's the thing: I don't have to live by any group's expectations— be they gay or straight. I refuse to spend my senior years in a home eating mushed-up food and going to bingo games (unless a fabulous drag queen is hosting the event). If a young stud finds me attractive, I'm more than willing to show him a trick (or 10) that I've learned over the years. If there's a bar or party my friends and I want to attend, we should have the right to go and enjoy looking at all the hot young shank. And if some young queens call me an old troll, I'll be more than happy to get up in their faces and let them see how brilliant getting older can be.

I know growing older isn't going to be as easy as I'm making it sound right now, but I came out years ago, and I refuse to go back into the closet just because I've started aging.

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