Reflecting on his personal experience, GCN contributor Colin Daly explores the joys of ageing as a gay man.

I remember talking to a chap in the Hirschfeld Centre one evening in 1981, who was telling me that life effectively ended for gay men once they reached 30. That was his opinion anyway, having the patrons of the centre in mind. He was quite downbeat about it and probably even bitter because he himself had turned 30. I didn’t have to worry about it at the time because I was years away from being that old and decrepit. But it undoubtedly made me think.

We all think about our age eventually, but in the gay world, there seems to be a premium placed on youth and beauty that goes beyond that which applies in the straight world. It used to be the case that LGBTQ+ people were perceived as being lonely. Indeed, in the RTÉ piece on the Hirschfeld Centre, made in 1981, the interviewer directly asked Pat, a volunteer, if gay people were lonely. Pat said that the idea of the ‘lonely gay’ was a bit of a stereotype, but he also stated that many gay people simply ignore their sexuality and continue living a heterosexual lifestyle.

Admittedly, this interview was a long time ago, but the concept of gay loneliness hasn’t gone away, especially if you’re young, gay and afraid. This ‘living a lie’ seems to be seen as a sort of panacea for many gay people who feel that they simply cannot ever come out, even these days, decades after this interview. So, in order not to be left alone, they see heterosexual marriage as a solution of sorts – at least to the problem of loneliness.

Another infamous stereotype is that you are forever the ‘odd’ uncle who never married. You always live alone and put up with it because, apparently, ‘old’ LGBTQ+ people are consigned to the dustbin of lonely old aunts and uncles. Better to be considered odd than queer in a world so full of hostility. But is it really?

I can be a bearer of good news. You can live life as an older LGBTQ+ person and have a perfectly fun, even outrageous, gay life with plenty of company of all ages and sexual proclivities. Getting old is not a death sentence for a gay person, and you can even make your own definition of what old means – no, it’s not when you reach 30.

To me, old is a state of mind. Yes, things change physically, but you grow into it. You adapt. You also have experience of the world and a freedom that comes as a natural concomitant to the ageing process- you’ve seen and dealt with most of what life can throw at you before. You can show off the scars. You’ve dealt with it, and now it’s time for some fun.

There is a saying that we, as gay oldies, should always bear in mind when thinking about our younger ‘salad’ days: “Don’t cry because it’s over; smile because it happened.”

It is a privilege to get old and have all that experience to pass on to others. And you can wear whatever you like and look fabulous because that is what we do as LGBTQ+ people. We never lose our passion for music and life and meeting someone new and, particularly, our passion for dancing. All we need to do to explode the myth that old age is kryptonite to LGBTQ+ people is refuse to accept it and get on with living the gay life – or ‘an saol gay’ if you are living in a Gayltacht area.

While the examples I have chosen to illustrate this piece come from 1981, the situation for older people remains much the same today. The fact is that we don’t see time creeping up to ambush us. We feel young inside and very often continue to think ‘young’. And this is a great thing because it keeps us involved with the world.

There are meeting groups and even pubs where the clientele is ‘mature’. This may not be your cup of cocoa and slippers, but it’s there and should be investigated if you’re feeling a bit under the weather because you’ve just celebrated your 50th birthday. Our bodies age and let us down at the most awkward and inappropriate times. But our sparkling wit, honed by years of experience, can generally save the day.

Don’t forget—salad can be a long-lasting main course as well as a starter. Salad days can be like those long-lost summer holidays of our childhood; the sun is up, and the days just go on forever. Put some more lettuce on my plate, please.