Sociology (sort of)

Free-flowing Ruminations:

it amazes me that the amount of attitude someone has is directly proportional to their age, at least in my community. Somewhere bewteen 25 and "gay death (30)," the attitude magnifies. Even those in their early 30s still cling desperately to the attitude of youth. I notice that with age, attitude tends to mellow. Usually, anyway. I'm happy to be way past the gay death, and have lived to tell the tale. And god knows I have serious attitude. But it's not towards people who are older than me, or a different color than me... it's usually reserved for those that are, quite frankly, ignorant, uneducated, and unenlightened.

At the S&M bar ("stand & model), the dance club, and the prep bars, the attitude was usually rampant among the younger crowd. The older guys were usually nicer to hang with. Cattiness and bitchiness was usually seen as a twisted badge of honor. It's one thing to have catty thoughts, it's another to share them... especially with the person they are about. I usually found the shit-kickin', two-steppin crowd to be substantially sweeter (with a few exceptions), far more approachable and friendly.

If you're not young, pretty, HIV negative, white, tall, blonde/blue, sporty, etc etc etc, you were somehow anathema. It's really sad how the community so freely ostracized it's own. Some of my best friends in the community were older, had HIV, were the ones who weren't so sporty... were everything that people wanted to snipe at. I learned the most from those friends, and they were (and still are) some of the best life mentors I have. Thank god for the older gays. I hope to be that kind of gay man. Older, and caring for my community, despite people's faults.

With us at each other's throats, it's no wonder the straight community does nothing but hold us down. We are just all bitchy queens, picking on each other for sport.

Sad.