Age

 I was banging away on a lovely young man… Christ, that’s a bit of a harsh start, wasn’t it? Especially if you’re new to this particular brand of filthcasts… Let me start again in a slightly classier tone… I was making sweet, sweet fuck with a young man the other day… He was young, actually. Only 20. I’m not bragging, it’s actually important to the story I’m telling. Anyway. He was a bit young for me, to be honest. Sweet enough, very handsome, and just as self-absorbed as every other 20-year old I’ve met. Although half the time we were out on our one date he was looking at his phone. Checking Snapchat and Instagram stories and all those other things The Kids do nowadays. To be honest, I suppose I should be grateful he didn’t describe anything as ‘lit’ or ‘wig’, because I’m still not 100% sure I know how to use those words.

Christ, I’m showing my age.

Anyway. We were doing the sex. Which was nice, since at least he put his phone down for that bit, and things were going well, we were enjoying each other’s company, and all the other things that go with it, and then, just as things got to the final act, just as the sexytime rollercoaster gets to the top of the last big hill and started to pick up speed on the way all the way down, he said some words.

Some bad words. Possibly the worst words a mid-30s guy can hear while in bed with a 20-year old. In fact, he didn’t say them. He shouted them. In that way that young people do when they’re all wrapped up in the moment and haven’t yet learned that housemates are a thing and don’t necessarily need to know what we’re doing, although I’m sure they could guess. Anyway. He managed to ruin it for me. This gorgeous, pert, firm, sexy and really quite bendy young man. Right at the point of no return, he yelled “Fuck me daddy”.

Daddy.

And yes, I’m 35, and therefore since I was 15 when he was born, it is biologically possible that someone my age could be his dad but still.

Daddy.

Part of the problem is that I’m a very visually-minded person. I did not need thoughts of his dad or anyone else’s going through my head at that exact moment in time.

I mean, really.

I get that lots of younger gays nowadays like an older man. But I’ve never put myself in that category before. Surely 35 doesn’t count as an ‘older man’? I mean, mentally I’m still a teenager. I still feel pretty young and in my prime… I mean, I’m always tired and grumpy, but that’s not age, that’s just because I never seem to get enough sleep and I’m always a bit achey and ohgod.

Part of the thing here is that when we were twenty, it wasn’t really a done thing to be into anyone older. Which now looks stupidly short-sighted, but anyone over 25 who would try and hit on any of my friends (not on me, I was the weird hairy one everyone was a little bit afraid of) would be considered a predatory old man…

There also weren’t many gay men older than us around at the time. I was born in 1983, and while I doubt any of us realised it at the time, there’s a good reason why pretty much the whole generation of gays above just wasn’t there.

But as things have progressed and maybe as the gays my age have slowly got older and filled that gap for the younger ones (if you’ll excuse the image of me filling younger gaps) as a community we’ve started to relax a little around the idea of age gaps. Certainly as younger queers have come along, they’ve started to realise that there’s nothing to be gained from writing off everyone more than 5 years their senior.

I don’t mind the idea of one day being a daddy. A DILF. Just… Not today. Not for another twenty years or so, when I can grow a beard and have a twinkle in my eye and noooo that’s Santa, that’s worse.

I like to think I’m ageing well, getting better over time. More George Clooney than Macaulay Culkin. Although that said, Clooney has always been stunningly handsome, even when he was younger. That bastard.

Yeah, I think I’m ageing well. Especially when I go back to my home town and see people I went to school with in the street, except they’re all swollen and grey and pushing pushchairs or being dragged about by stroppy kids… Any time I want to feel young, I can just Facebook stalk people from my old school. It’s a game I like to call “Look Who’s Sagging”.

I kind of get it, though. I mean, when you’re young and energetic, staying healthy and fit is quite easy because you have the time, but then you get married, and what’s the point of getting married if you still have to try and look your best all the time? Once they’re officially shackled to you, you can just let yourself go and get as fat as you like. Squirt a couple of kids out while you’re still physically able to smash genitals together and bob’s your uncle. They’re stuck with you for the rest of your lives and the whole relationship becomes a race to see who can get fattest and die first.

Next to them I look bloody radiant. You’d think that living in London, the pollution, stress, lack of sleep and huge amounts of alcohol would be murder on your skin, and maybe it is. But nothing ages you faster than being married with three kids by the time you turn 25. 

Jesus Christ. 

Not that I don’t want kids one day; I think I’d make a fantastic dad. The proper kind, not the sexy kind, oh god, this is getting worse. But I don’t want to be a da… A Parent yet. I can barely keep myself alive. I consider a Calippo one of my five a day.

By which I mean I eat five Calippos a day.

It’s amazing to me to think that at my age, my parents not only owned a house, but had two kids aged 10 and 8, in a world before the internet. Couldn’t just plonk us down in front of an iPad and leave us to it. Back then they’d make us go and Play Outside. Which I hated. I’d sit on the doorstep huddled in my coat and pretend to shiver. Lick some street urchin character in a Dickens novel, in the hope that they’d notice my suffering and let me back in. This never worked, usually because the sun was shining and everyone else was in shorts and t-shirts, but still.

One of the reasons I don’t let boys stay over much, apart from the fact that they’ll snore or twitch or talk in their sleep or want some of the bedclothes or something, one of the other reasons is that my skincare regime currently has five steps before bed, and another seven when I wake up in the morning. I’m not ready for anyone else to see me go through all of that, and at this point I’m worried that if I have a night where I don’t complete all the steps, use all the anti-ageing products and generally Mumm-raa myself, then all this deterioration I’ve been avoiding with age-defying creams will jump on me all at once. They might wake up the next morning and I’ll just be dust. I can’t take that chance.

I remember reading on some porn site somewhere the comments under a video – I love doing that, if you’ve never had the pleasure I thoroughly recommend it. It’s a window into the minds of some thoroughly weird people. There was this one comment on one video that was obviously posted by someone who had evidently never had sex, and most probably wasn’t yet legally allowed to, that read “No-one fucks like a 20-year old.” And I have to agree with whichever 15-year-old managed to find a way around their parent’s porn blocker. It’s not good, but it’s true. All that awkwardness, that clumsy energy, all that not really knowing what they’re doing, or what they like and what they don’t… There’s been times when it’s just been plain awful, and yet they’re pretending they’re enjoying it, or they simply don’t know any better. I remember once some poor sod was grunting and moaning away like some bad porn actor. I don’t know if he caught me pulling a face at his unconvincing grunts or something but he jumped to the wrong conclusion and was like “Uh, yeah, oh, that’s so good! Are you gonna come?” and then got stroppy when I replied “Pffft… Hopefully.” I mean, he asked.

Which is fine, y’know, all of our techniques, and tastes change as we get older, and hopefully we get better at it as we go, too. Maybe this ageing thing isn’t so bad, after all. With time comes experience and if someone asked me if I wanted to be young again, I’d say “Fuck you, I’m still young” but also that while I wouldn’t mind having a 20-year old body again, I’d quite like to keep the experiences and knowledge I’ve gained as I’ve matured.

Like my old personal trainer used to say of when I was working out, “Watching you is like watching my grandparents having sex. It’s slow, and it’s definitely not pretty, but the technique is bang on.