Senile,
grey-haired, balding elder seeking relationship with sexy, virile youth.
Me: Arthritic,
ageing and forgetful with varicose veins, piles and a hernia.
You: Confident,
narcissus, articulate and intelligent with a mistrust of authority and a
disdain for paternalistic platitudes. Your pulsating hormones drive you to
copulate preferentially with young bodies and my old carcass will disgust you.
I have nothing
to offer but myself as a living example of the magnificent tenacity of life. A
gnarled old oak simply existing! I have no wisdom to offer other than:
‘indispensable wisdom is un-dispensible’.
You will
generate your own wisdom by learning from your own experience and by developing
a sense of discernment: the capacity to judge the consequences of your actions.
For this there are no prophets, no seers, no gurus, no oracles to guide you.
You will do
what you do to get what you want. You will do what you do to get what you need.
You will do what you do to fit in, to gain approval, to soothe a sense of
having been marginalised, isolated and invalidated. With discernment, however,
you will sense the inevitable direction your path must follow in spite of these
influences.
In the realm of
queerdom, we are one, you and I. The hurt you push on me will cause you pain.
Yet every one of your new learnings will spin a thread of the finest silk to
cocoon all of our tribe. Together we will crysa-lyse the ugly frog-skin of
conformity and cast it from our backs to reveal the satin smooth faerie-wings
of our truest natures.
The Greek
philosopher Socrates said “My friends, why do you care so much about laying up
the greatest amount of money and honour and reputation and so little about
wisdom, truth and the greatest improvement of the soul?” He said this not as a
wise man to the youth of Athens. He did not consider himself wise. He was speaking
to those Athenian elders who proclaimed themselves as wise. His gentle ridicule
of the pompous was a great entertainment to the young men who gathered to
watch old Socrates in action. He was ultimately accused of corrupting the youth
of the State with his ideals, found guilty at trial and was sentenced to a forced suicide death by self administered hemlock poisoning.
So, as
GaySocrates, I say to those elders in our gay community who put great store by
material wealth, social standing and assimilation: Where is your wisdom? Find
and feed your souls!
And to you my
sweet, tender youth I say simply: Be who you are and become who you are meant
to become!
And when I die,
which I surely will, and most probably many years before you, I shall have the
final words of Socrates inscribed on my headstone.
The hour
of departure has arrived and we must go on our ways;
I to die
and you to live.
Which is better?
God only
knows!
