by walter g. meyer not halfway done A-LISTS
You Do the MATH! When I was asked to write a column previously called “Halfway There,” I had to think
about that. Halfway where? Then it struck me. They meant halfway on the passage from the cradle to the grave. Could the editor of The Rage Monthly actually think I’m (gasp) middle-aged?? If I’m old enough to quote Dan Fogelberg songs, could I really be…? For several years now, store clerks—out of something between good manners
and snideness—have been calling me “sir,” but I had never really thought of myself as middle-aged or my life as half over. So I did the math. Only by the most unrealistically optimistic reading of any actuarial table can I expect to live to double my present age. In twink years, I am already dead. I started figuring the odds. Could I really expect to live again as long as I already have?
Several of my grandfather’s cousins lived to be over 100; some are still alive. But two of my grandparents (including that particular grandfather) died long before I was born,
I’d have to surpass the longevity of any of my grandfather’s cousins to finish what I’ve started. Every time someone suggests a book or movie, I add it to my list. My reading list is already such that at a book a week, I’d need 100 years to read them all (assuming no new books are published in the next century). Netflix allows a maximum of 500 titles in my queue so I have a supplemental list that runs into the hundreds. At a movie every two to three days, it will take me a good 200 years to watch them all (assuming Hollywood stops producing more films). I have a list of places to visit: at one vacation a year…you get the pattern. But more than all of that, I thought of Horace Mann: “Be ashamed to die until you’ve
won some victory for humanity.” I have won some major battles. I’ve written things that inspired people to write me tear-stained emails. I’ve literally saved lives, including my father’s. But those were individual humans, not humanity; I still don’t have my victory.
“Only by the most unrealistically optimistic reading of any actuarial table can I expect to live to double my present age. In twink years, I am already dead.”
having never reached my present age. Cousins younger than me have died in the last year. So consulting an insurance odds chart or my family tree clearly wasn’t going to give me much insight. Then I turned to where so many gay men look for insight and inspiration: Broadway. There is a line in a song in my favorite musical, Pippin (one of my gayer friends was shocked to know that I, the butchest in our circle, the one who would rather watch the Chargers than Cher, had a favorite musical), sung by Irene Ryan (most famous as Granny of “Beverly Hillbillies” fame): “I believe that as long as I refuse to grow old, I can stay young till I die.” This is not just the typical gay man’s over-active Peter Pan-ness. It’s simply that I am
not yet halfway to all of my goals. I once had a talk with my father in which he questioned why anyone would want to live forever. He had led a good life, raised his kids and lived long enough to see the first of his grandchildren married. I told him that I was far from being done with all I have planned for myself. I have already outlined enough books and screenplays that even if I write one a year (assuming I don’t have any new ideas)
By every prognostication—except family value’s prognosticator James Dobson’s—we will have same-sex marriage and a passel of other long-overdue rights in my lifetime. And I shall claim my small part in those victories for humanity. But sadly, I fear there will be many more fights yet to win. But no, dear editor, I’m not halfway there. I’m not halfway done writing or traveling or
reading or watching. I’m not halfway done fighting for equal rights for me and everyone else whose lives are less than full. And I’m not halfway to dying. Not a tenth of the way done living. What I hope will be many years from now, I will not go gently into that night. I’ll go kicking and screaming, regretting that I didn’t pack even more into the measly few years I had, clutching a half-read book in one hand, a half-written book in the other, a map of Peru spread out on the bed, with a movie still playing on my Blu-ray.
Walter G. Meyer is the author of the critically acclaimed gay novel, “Rounding Third.” Although he is “Rounding Third,” he doesn’t consider himself halfway home.
AUGUST 2010 | RAGE monthly 29
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