Hush now....don't explain, it's alright to make a joke about me. I make a joke about myself all the time. I do.

I could not believe how years get added into one's age. It surprises me... I  sing a Beatles' tune and one co-worker asks, "Where did you hear that song?" Darn -

It's a song I expect everyone to know. Until I realize my childhood was in the seventies and my co-worker's was in the eighties.I was singing this tune  while his mother was probably pushing him out into the world. There's no way for him to be familiar with this tune.

It's called getting old. I once had an 80 year old patient who just kept saying, "Don't get old, don't....it sucks!" We are all destined to deteriorate and decay. I am contemplating this now as a gay person and  son, my mother was recently released from ICU after having a heart attack. It's amazing how the woman I left ten years ago, my mother who could throw a live pig  into the pen without her straining, could become  this brittle today.

I wanna understand also  my reaction when I heard the news about her getting sick. I was embarrassed when I heard my brothers and sisters sobbing over her hospitalization. I thought  we should be more concerned about her stability, how confident the doctors attending to her were, her cardiac enzymes,  etc - yeah - because I work in ICU - I imagined my mother as a patient rather than my mother. I was basically un-emotional.

I know that in my life, I will hear that inevitable news about my parents departing  for good, as much as I know that I, too,  will be saying  goodbye to the world. Someday. That's one fact I can't deny.  End-life on earth  is inevitable though I hope it does not happen soon. It's ok to die, as far as I am concerned, it's just that....I want my demise to get delayed, preferably executed quickly..... oh I feel so morbid tonight!

I am finally at ease in being gay, I am walking relaxed on the road of gay-ness - I don't exactly know what gay lifestyle is - I am certain it's not like this, typing my night away :) - but I am excited in being led by it. The most important thing about gay life is -  it's a life. You who read me since 1997 would understand what I mean...I remember the days when I wrote gay articles with a defensive tone, some of my gay writing was full of anger and screaming and shouting - and depression especially at the height of AIDS epidemic.

At that time too, outside my Fort Lauderdale apartment, gays were into pride parades and gay freedoms and gay marriages and.... oh - you know what I  mean. There was Andrew Cunanan ...

After all that, I witnessed the rise of a new gay  community here in Fort Lauderdale, the Wilton Manors community, the hottest address for hot and rich and fab gays in South Beach (more or less). I pursued a place there myself but I declined in view of its price and crowded-ness and parking space which seems to contract each passing day. I decided to live a few blocks away from Wilton, but even my area now is being invaded by gays. Which I like, as long as my parking space remains wide and ample.

And as long as I can see a gay person walking his dog. There is something in that picture that gives me joy. I am talking about the freedom to walk one's dog, the freedom to build one's  gay self in the midst of a booming gay community. To walk a dog  and wave at your neighbors who  wave back at you in their porches (together with their friends cooking barbecues and sitting on their  plain silly old rattan chairs under the Florida sun in a lazy afternoon)  is beautiful to me.

Yes indeed, coming from a town where this kind of existence is virtually impossible, in fact this was virtually impossible ten years ago here, in Fort Lauderdale. I'm happy to watch this new community rise here, a community much like any other community where sexual orientation is no longer hidden because it's a given. I am seeing a gay resting community. A relaxed gay community. No need to hurl accusations here, no need to lurk in the dark looking for a quicky, no need to drill holes through walls to watch on someone, no need to stick one's ear to hear whispers in the other side of the room. No one talks of gay parade here because the community itself is a big daily parade, no one talks of freedom or struggles or rights because there are diminishing odds.

I am witnessing the common gay. He is the gay whose concern is his house and his community and the well being of his beloved; his interests are in arts, museums, beauty, intellectual pursuits. He is the total eclipse of the standard commercialized gay I still see around:  the meat and crew-cut and tattoed gay image here in South Beach. An image I hate. Oh you can say anything you want but I hate that image! I cannot accept  big muscles and big dicks and non-stop sex as my only option for a culture. I will never join (whether invited or not) any gathering of gays whose main thrust is to promote physicality. I feel like a dog being walked, instead of gay man walking my dog. You who is about to leave me to my solitary gay world better listen to this first before taking a plunge into more exciting gay sites:  I see old and very gay patients in my hospital, sick and dying, not of AIDS, but of being old and I see the loneliest patients in the world. A lesbian couple were both sick and when I asked if anyone could be called to assist them in their return  home, they looked at each other and burst into tears, no Hon, they said, all we have is each other. I have seen gay patients with AIDS, young good looking men thrown out of houses and of lover's arms, looking at me with wide and frightened eyes, asking without voicing it: Where will I go from here? Who will take care of me?

This is going on while this culture of muscles and big dicks and non-stop sex remains concerned about being sexy and where the next fab party is and where to pick the next score tonight.

Try to think of muscles and big dicks and non-stop sex when you're paralyzed or had a recent stroke or a heart by-pass or a hip replacement. Think of the friends who would come to your place to wash your laundry, cook your food, give you a bath, drive you to the mall and call your doctor if you feel really sick. Who among us would take care of us when we all get old and sick and weak and poor?

I'm glad some of us are still capable of walking our dogs. Who will walk them when we're gone?

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