Hell hath no fury like a man turning 50…at least that was my experi-


ence. When I broke the 50 ceiling, I felt disconnected, upset, and out of any search category on Scruff. I had officially become the age of my parents and it sucked. Middle-age is that peculiar zone beginning around 45 and fading slowly


out around 65ish. Thanks however to progresses in anti-aging medicine, plastic surgery, fitness routines and healthy eating many middle-aged people look far better than those of their parents’ generation. Combine that with all of the advancements in gay rights and cultural acceptance, being middle-aged should be a celebration and time of reaping rewards for we in the LGBT community...shouldn’t it? Bob Bergeron, a popular and attractive gay therapist in New York City,


wrote a book called,The Right Side of Forty: The Complete Guide to Happiness for Gay Men at Midlife and Beyond. The title sounded promising, but Mr. Bergeron’s confidence sounded even better, “I’ve got a concise picture of what being over 40 is about and it’s a great perspective filled with happi- ness, feeling sexy, possessing comfort related to other men and taking good care of ourselves.” Sold! Sadly though, you won’t be able to click on amazon.com to order the


book, because it was never released. You see, Bob Bergeron committed suicide by axphixiation when he put a plastic bag over his head. He was just 48. When his parents found him, they also discovered a suicide note written on the title page of his book. His father remembered it stated, “It’s a lie based on bad information” with an arrow pointed up to the name of the book. Maybe this shouldn’t have been a surprise, because suicide in gay men


has always been a “thing.” A 2002 survey by researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, found that 12 percent of urban gay and bisexual men have attempted suicide in their lifetime, a rate that is three times higher than the overall rate for American adult males—that’s gay men of all ages—things get worse when you cross into the middle-ages. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a report in


2016 that showed suicide rates from 1999 to 2014 increased for middle- aged men by 43 percent. And though rates for middle-aged women are skyrocketing as well, middle-aged men are still dying 3.6 times the rate of the women. This is primarily because men tend to use more lethal means, like guns. (Suicide by gun accounts for more than 60 percent of gun deaths, but that’s another story.) To make matters even worse, this heightened suicide rate appears to be


limited to the United States versus other Western nations and the phenom- enon appears to be limited particularly to white people. Weren’t these the people that were supposed to have it all? What could be the reason? Ugh, where do I begin? First it seems the recession set many people back with financial and job


losses resulting in lost housing, relationships and stability. Declines in health, mental health, and the decreased physical ability to carry out basic tasks, due to chronic pain and other disabilities that follow are another factor. All this, in the only Western nation without a national healthcare system and a party in power intent on stripping Americans of what is left…Well, you get the picture. And that is just the general middle-aged


population. When it comes to gay men and the broader LGBT community, in my opinion, things look worse. Though I don’t have statistics to back me up, middle-aged gay men (as well as others in our community) have all of the above conditions plus a history of growing up in a homophobic world that lead them to believe that they are defective, wrong, and not good enough. Fast forward to today where ageism rules, and men over 50 often say they feel invisible when they venture out into their own community. In a study published in 2005, R.D. Schope found that gay men have more


negative views of how our society views growing older (versus lesbians). Gay men were found to be more ageist, have a greater fear of negative evaluation by others, and give more importance to their own sexual attractiveness. So, when middle-age takes hold and, as Bob Hope once said, “your age starts to show around your middle,” then the currency of youth and beauty evaporates. That’s often when gay men feel the loss of power that youth gave to them without cost. It begs the question: Shouldn’t we just band with our gay brothers to


feel better? Not if they are only going to make the problem worse! In a study published by Andrew Hostetler in 2004, gay men who have more gay community involvement tend to have more concerns about aging. That may be because many younger gay men tend to ignore or even reject older gay men. This creates a world where many middle-aged gay men no longer feel welcome in bars and clubs, don’t get invited to parties and get few if any responses online. The continual rejection can be humiliating and untenable, making isolation seem preferable and suicide even seem plausible. Arthur Schopenhauer once wrote that “As soon as the terrors of life reach the point at which they outweigh the terrors of death, a man will put an end to his life.” All of this gave me pause. Maybe my emotional crap about growing older


wasn’t just a “me” problem…it’s a “we” problem. Times are unexpectedly rough for the average middle-aged gay man and as you can imagine, there is no easy solution. Sure, I can list a gay-specific suicide hotline at the bottom (and I will) but that doesn’t solve the problems lurking in American society in general and gay society in particular. Maybe the first step is just to accept that the deck is stacked against middle-aged gay men in the first place. Many of the white men who may have once enjoyed a modicum of privilege because of race may now feel the rug has been pulled out from under them—which for those who didn’t enjoy such privileges—may not elicit much pity for those who did. I do think there is some comfort in knowing that if you’re middle-aged


and feeling bad, you are certainly not alone. The difficulties you face are not a personal failure. And, that there is no easy solution. Maybe the one comfort that we can feel is that the middle years of angst and transition are not unlike adolescence. Like the pain of adolescence leading to the freedoms and possibilities of young adulthood, the pain of the middle-age years leads to a time in our later years when we start to feel more emotion- ally at peace about life. Unfortunately, for now, it can sometimes suck.


THE TREVOR PROJECT HOTLINE: 866.488.7386


AUGUST 2018 | RAGE monthly


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