A GAY GUY AND A GAY ELDER ADOPT EACH OTHER

[gayprojectforum]

Hi Project,

it was nice to meet you, I discovered an aspect of the gay world that I didn’t even suspect and I liked the non-ideological setting of your Project.

 

I’m here to tell you about something that is happening to me now and that last year I would have considered absolutely impossible.

 

I’m an old man and, for better or for worse, I lived my life. For me, the word gay is more a matter of principle related to membership and sharing than anything else. I have so many health problems that the idea of sex doesn’t even touch me, and this has been happening for years now. And here I come to the point.

 

If sexuality identifies with sexual relations, well, I would say that the time of the end-of-season discounts has already ended, in practice sex in that sense, by now, is a memory and I wouldn’t even regret it. If instead the word sexuality mainly (in practice exclusively) means affectivity, then I can say I'm still gay, because the company of men and guys, or rather I would say of gay men and gay guys, is still a pleasant thing for me, even if sex, in the specific sense of the word, has little or nothing to do with it. What I like is the fact that there is a common ground, that they understand the meaning of my life and my choices because they are basically similar to theirs.

 

I read your articles on intergenerational relationships, which, I must say, are very interesting, even if I don’t recognize myself in the things you describe because I think I've never fallen in love with people much younger than me and frankly I didn’t even believe that a serious emotional relationship could be created without concrete sexual implications.

 

Then a few months ago I accidentally met a guy of 19, yes, you understood well, 50 less than mine, I also struggle to remember exactly how and when we met, but it happened in ordinary life, because I never attend gay clubs or places like that. With that guy I talked for a quarter of an hour at most, but there was an incredible feeling, before leaving he asked me the number of my cell phone, I was reluctant to give it to him, but then I gave it to him, and frankly I thought that for him it was a matter of pure courtesy, but it was not so.

 

Since then we have been on the phone every day. He told me so many things about his life and I had no reason to think that they were not true, then he slowly told me that he was gay and that I was the first person to whom he confided such things. Of course I told him clearly that I was gay too. Then he told me that he fell in love with one of his teachers and at this point I was afraid he might fall in love with me, but such a thing didn’t seem absolutely realistic to me. I went to reread your articles on intergenerational relationships and asked myself a thousand questions. But it was obvious that the guy was in love with his teacher, I, for him, represented essentially a chance for relief.

 

Our daily phone calls lasted for months now, they are very serious, we never talk about sex but almost always about the future, about prospects for study and work. He no longer has his parents, both died several years ago, when he was very young, and he grew up in the family of a brother of his father, who already had his own children.

 

In short, I think we should add another category to gay relationships, that of "father-son relationships by mutual choice".

 

Talking with this guy has given a new meaning to my life, has allowed me not to close myself in my melancholy and to still serve something. I think our relationship is important to him too. He is a very affectionate and also very determined guy. Not having had a family in the classic sense of the term has also made him free from the heavy conditioning that a gay guy interested in mature men can suffer in the years of adolescence and early youth.

 

The fact that I am gay, for him, is very reassuring. We talk every day about the stories he is experiencing now, stories that seem to me very similar, apart from the age target, to those that I lived many years ago. He asks me about my life and I tell him how things went. He almost remains incredulous to hear about the isolation of gay guys 50 years ago. Sometimes we talk about history and politics and I see that he has that freedom instinct typical of gays. There is only one discourse that absolutely he doesn’t want to hear from me and it is the one about old age (mine) and death. He’s continually looking for affective reassurance. Between us we have created a very nice relationship, which now doesn’t make me problems as in the earliest times, because I realize that my presence is family-like and doesn’t interfere in any way with his sexual life.

 

The generational gap, understood as communication difficulties, doesn’t even exist between us, except on something that I will talk about later. A true family bond has been created which is very beautiful and almost incredible. Next year he will be at the university! We talked about it a lot, even if my memories of the university date back to the Stone Age. He’s oriented towards scientific studies but is still uncertain among Physics, Astronomy and Mathematics.

 

There is only one field where I cannot stand him (of course, just to say) and it's his crazy passion for technology. He continually urges me to get a smartphone leaving aside my 10 year old cellphone and tells me amazing things about applications that I will never know how to download, and even less how to use. Apart from this "technological" side where I feel the generational gap, for the rest there is no problem.

 

I would say that our relationship has created a real gay family, not in the sense of a gay couple, but a relationship between a gay father and a gay son. I know that no one ever imagines a "gay family" in the sense of "father-son" family and yet it is precisely what happens to us. I know very well that I will never be his boyfriend, but this seems absolutely obvious and natural to me. I don’t feel any sexual attraction towards him and I think that he doesn’t feel at all such feelings for me. We love each other in another way, but I think that somehow we are still a family.