Wayne Besen - Author, Activist, Columnist, Public Speaker

Monday, April 28, 2008

Caught Between the Wild Party and the Wedding Party

(Weekly Column)

When I first came out in 1988, if two young gay people met, the reaction often was, "You too! I thought I was alone." As my twenty-year high school reunion approaches, I witnessed an identical response in a seminal New York Times Magazine cover story. At a coffee shop in Boston, two gay men, Aaron and George, met for the first time.

"I thought I was the only one."
"Me too!"

What differed was that these two young men were relieved to meet because they were legally divorced and had not met peers who had experienced similar situations. While we have a long journey towards full equality ahead of us, it is a dramatically different world than the one I came out in.

In fact, more than 700 gay men 29 or younger have married in Massachusetts through last June, the latest date for which statistics are available. While Massachusetts is still the only state that allows same-sex marriages, gay men who are my age, 37, never dreamt these unions would occur in our lifetime.

Indeed, much of our social culture was built around men cheating on their wives. The rest stops, parks and bathhouses were all geared toward the "quickie." If a gay man did not get home in time for dinner with his family, he'd find that his goose was cooked. The double lives and hypocrisy forced on gay men by a repressive society took an awesome psychological toll.

The gay bars in the 1970s-90's were geared for men in their 30's-50's who were often living a belated adolescence. Anyone who has seen a half-naked 50-year-old man at a circuit dance party twirling a glow stick with a pacifier in his mouth knows what I am talking about.

I sometimes hardly recognize the gay community's social scene. When I first came out, many gay bars had a back room, which was a dark crevice where men furtively had sex. Today, a dark room likely means a gay couples' row house den with mood lighting. Contemporary gay bars have largely gone from seedy to chic and - for better or worse - often attracting many straight people.

An older friend of mine who visited Boston half-jokingly complained, "There's something morally wrong with a city where it's easier to marry a boyfriend than find a gay bar."

His observation was spot on. Boston Globe writer Robert David Sullivan told National Public Radio this week that he noticed the number of gay bars in Boston had been cut in half in recent years.

Massachusetts is not the only place the gay social scene has been transformed. Fortune Magazine named gay bars as one of the 10 businesses it thinks is facing extinction. It joined a list of has-beens that includes record stores and crop dusting. Additionally, overt street cruising is out of fashion and demure glances have largely replaced outright ogling.

The decline in the public sex culture and gay bars can be attributed, in part, to the rise of the Internet. However, a larger trend, captured by the Times magazine article, is at work. A good portion of men in their mid 20's have been out of the closet for more than a decade. (They were barely in) Having had a normal adolescence, they are already burnt out on gay bars and ready to start families.

A couple of weeks ago, I visited Washington and met up with the friends I used to party with in the mid to late 90's. Today, they are all in long-term relationships and in bed by the time they used to wake up from their disco naps.

The changes in the gay social scene have happened so fast that they are sometimes difficult to comprehend. It's as if someone slipped a roofie into the GLBT community's mimosa and while we slept Rudy Giuliani swooped down in drag and cleaned up our Times Square.

Sometimes, I fondly reminisce about the good old days. Then, I recall that that the endless party was a product of our oppression. The storied "days" were actually really late nights - and as I get older, I want to be up on Sunday morning in time to watch "Meet the Press."

Caught between the wild party and wedding party generations, the rapid pace of change can seem unsettling, yet reassuring.

"Am I the only one who feels this way?"

"You, too! Thank, God."

9 Comments:

Fantastic perspective, Wayne. I wish every person who tosses gay stereotypes of “wild living” and adolescent behavior in our faces could read this article and take a moment to understand where those behaviors originated, and realize that the more society allows us to “mainstream” ourselves, the more we are likely to come to resemble “mainstream” society.
posted by Lorian, at 4/29/2008 1:15 PM

Great article, Wayne!

If you look at the gay clubs, it's mostly young newly-out people, or recently-divorced and newly-out middle aged men. And losers who think parading around with "A&F" on your chest makes you somebody special.

I'd hope a majority of gay men experience the clubs and gay strip for a year or two, and then get burned out on it. I was almost 21 when I "came out", had my fun for a year or so, and nowadays, you'd have to drag me kicking and screaming to the clubs to get me to go LOL. It's just not my scene, there's much better things to do.

Thanks to the internet, gay people are "coming out" at a younger age, can experience the fun stuff while they're young adults, and by their mid 20's are ready to settle down and have something better out of life - just like their straight counterparts.

It used to be gay men in their 30's-40's were doing the same kind of partying that straight kids in their late teens/early 20's were doing in college. Now it's starting to even out a little more.

Maybe the gay community is "growing up", after all. In a few years, those activists screeching "the gay community needs to grow up" can finally SHUT up.
posted by S., at 4/29/2008 1:32 PM

I think gay bars are still important, but they now serve new and different functions than they did in the past.

A gay bar that recently closed, sadly, was the Shamrock in Madison. It's true I started going there when I first came out to party and get laid (well try to), but after I got older and wiser and settled down into monogamy, I didn't stop going to the bar, rather its meaning and importance for me changed. It became a place to meet friends, and to celebrate with the local gay hockey and rugby teams, both of which my husband played on; or to have mixers with coworkers or fellow grad students at happy hour. I also still enjoy going to a more traditional gay dance club, especially if there will be a drag show, which I always find highly entertaining.

I do get frustrated there aren't more gay bars in my city. I live the married live, but that doesn't mean I'm straight. Gay people will always be unique, and complete assimilation into a perceived "mainstream" is unrealistic, probably impossible. Gay bars and clubs, and other queer-focused venues, will always have an importance that should not be ignored. I think we should make sure they stay around, and while we're at it, continue to expand on their functions and meanings. Owners of gay bars would be wise to, for example, sponsor their local gay sports teams or otherwise address and embrace the local community as many non-gay bars do.
posted by Anonymous, at 4/30/2008 4:12 AM

Being 61 I obviously came out in a world quite different from you DAMNED KIDS!!!! I can recall a time when gays and lesbians seldom dared to be seen in a public place outside of the gayborhoods, that we had so carefuly constructed for ourselves as safe spaces. They were a lot of fun back in the day. And I'm not talking about wild hedonism. Going to bars and clubs simply to hang out was wonderful. Tons of people had areat time without drinking or drugging themsleves into unconsciousness -- as the "historical record" would lead one to believe. Then AIDS came along and kiled off 3/4s of my nearest and dearest. That's the biggest change -- we've lost so many links to the past it's not funy. But then this cultre doesn't care about the past -- only an endless present.
posted by DavidEhrenstein, at 4/30/2008 10:31 AM

David, as much as I share a great deal of your experience (though not all, since my friends were not as horribly affected by the onslaught of AIDS as yours were), still the stereotypes of "gay people live only for the pleasure of the current moment" are the very sorts of ideas we need to combat, not reinforce.

The fact is, those who judge our community on the basis of gay men who spend their time clubbing and partying, and having promiscuous sex, are commiting the "rational" equivalent of judging the entirety of heterosexual society on the basis of the behavior exhibited by "Frat Boys" in universities everywhere. A 20-year-old kid living on beer and pizza, molesting every co-ed he can get his hands on, staying up until all hours partying with his buddies, no more represents the average heterosexual person than does a young gay man, newly out and living in a "party-scene" represent ME or any other "average" gay person.

When people become aware that I am gay, they often have to about-face their preconceptions about "who gay people are" to include people like me, a suburban house-wife, mother of two, member of the symphony, etc.
posted by Lorian, at 4/30/2008 12:18 PM

There are tons of straight people who live only for the pleasure of the moment. And to all those young gay marrieds in Mass. we can point to a very long list of straight marriages that have crashed and burned.

Marriage is a legal contract. What the couples so conracted do with it is up to them. But there is nothing intrinically "moral" about it.
posted by DavidEhrenstein, at 4/30/2008 3:32 PM

I am so glad for the greater social acceptance of gays because it means a more open lifestyle with greater choices for meeting others and socializing. Gone are the days when bars were the best places to meet others. Now there are church events, boating clubs, gardening clubs, running clubs etc.. in which to meet and socialize openly with others. This has made the gay community a much healthier and happier place.

I, too, enjoy waking up on Sundays for the news (paper or tv) and enjoy conversation with my neighbors.
posted by Anonymous, at 5/02/2008 1:33 PM

Talk about living for the pleasure of the moment - weren't there some post in another article on this blogsite where some guys were talking about sexual pleasure and almost advocating not using rational sense when it came to the spreading of disease (HIV is hard to contact if you have sex with an infectred person, VD can be cured with a shot so who cares) type of comments? Doesn't that sound like the same old gay story? I was sort of shocked to see that thinking still exists.
posted by Anonymous, at 5/03/2008 11:32 PM

AIDS, the Internet, and Drugs have had a tremendous impact on the world. Gay Marriage is just part of the puzzle.
I remember when I went to my first gay bar in 1987. It took several trips before I got the courage to enter. I was told that there used to be several more bars, but AIDS came and they closed down along with the backrooms, adult bookstores, bathhouses, and cruisy areas were now being patrolled. So, gay men used bars to congregate. Social drugs such as pot and ectasy were popular.
As AIDS drugs became better and the Internet became more developed and popular, men moved away from the bars. Now, Crystal Meth and Viagra are popular recreational drugs and guys meet each other online. Men stay in the closet and don't deal with the anxiety of going to that first bar. They have profiles on sex sites which don't show their face, their accurate age, and other assorted lies.
Yes, there has been advancement in gay rights and gay social status, but I believe your article is only the representation of a few select people and not gays as a whole.
posted by Anonymous, at 5/21/2008 11:01 PM