Leaderboard

Today’s entry is brought to you by the Number 55. 55. Fifty-Five. Half-a-Benjamin-plus-five. Forty-five shy of a century - which is really what gets to the point. Today is my birthday, marking my 55th tour ‘round the Sun. Before any of you reflexively say ‘Happy birthday’, let me save you the trouble - I haven’t had one of those sine number 40, when I acquired a sense of Time, and I now positively dread them since 2014 when I nearly stopped having them. It’s not as simple as a concern about the naked ageism in sexual attraction among gay men - in some ways, that’s unavoidable. The science explains that sexual attraction relies heavily on visual cues that signal sexual readiness, reproductive viability, and robust ability to provide and defend. This is all back-of-the-brain stuff humans have been conditioned to over 50,000 years of selecting successful reproductive partners. The fact that these couplings aren’t going to be reproductive doesn’t matter; the same mechanism are in use. As a result, we like abs. We like muscle tone and taut skin. We gravitate toward hair that isn’t white, and isn’t sparse. These characteristics signal youth, vigor, strength, and sexual virility, and therefore advantage those that have them with extra attractiveness. Which is to say, they principally advantage the young. Not always, of course, and not for everyone. There are plenty of other factors. But where possessing a trait may advantage one man, possessing the opposite may not just not advantage another man, it may actively disadvantage him. Sagging physique, wrinkled skin, grey hair - Time is not kind, and while its effects may be forestalled for a while, it will not be denied. I have a couple of pretty decent profile pics of my ass. I rather like them. So do other people. But they were taken three years ago, and I believe in Truth In Advertising, so I think I’m going to need to replace them soon. I doubt my ass will look as good now. It probably feels better to a Top now than it did three years ago, because I’ve honed my technique, but you can’t see that. “Age is just a number,” some of you say. “You’re as young as you feel.” (I feel ancient.) “Fifty is the new Thirty.” (That would make all the 30-year-olds jailbait.) Sorry, not buying any of that. No matter how we try to whitewash it, there’s a reason there’s a general sense that maturing is a death sentence in terms of the gay lifestyle. It doesn’t matter that I get fucked plenty, or that a subset of men may be attracted to older men - that doesn’t change the fact that I’m now too old to put on certain types of slutty clothes and hang out in certain places; my body simply cannot pull it off. I would look ridiculous, sad, and possibly deranged. But all of that isn’t the big reason 55 is a kick in the teeth now. I suppose every person reaches a point sooner or later, if he lives long enough, where he suddenly realizes that there are only so many birthdays left, and he can count them so easily it startles him. Some men may not hit this reckoning until their 70s - my father has been like that. He turns 80 this year. My father, unlike me, does not have AIDS. For me, the reckoning started in 2014, when I survived the effects of the disease that was once an absolute death sentence. Now, a twentysomething who starts ART early before his immune system is destroyed can enjoy practically a normal lifespan. I wasn’t twentysomething. I didn’t start ART until my immune system was practically erased. I will not be getting that normal life expectancy. How many years I’ll loose, science can’t say yet, studies suggest on the order of 7-9. That points to an age of around 70 when ErosWired Has Left The Building. That means that as of today I can count my coming birthdays on the fingers of three hands, and not all of them will be healthy years, thanks to HIV. In a few years, who knows? Science may find a way to beat the Enemy Virus, and I might get an extension. For now, though, I can’t escape a sense of the inevitable approach if Mortality. Being rejected by a hott muscletwink because you’ve got a little silver in your temples or the crows have stamped their feet around your eyes can give you a taste of it - but at some point you can’t get the taste out of your mouth and you feel like a Dead Man Walking. Yesterday evening I was cleaning the kitchen and I stopped at an apple on the counter. It had been there, uneaten, a good long while. It wasn’t rotten, but it was soft, and the skin had wrinkled and become spotty. I paused for a moment, and looked at it. Then I tossed it. Just sayin’.