Ryan Gosling... or Justin Bieber?

Originally published on P.S. I Love You

A gleeful smile curled up and spread across my friend’s face.

Good.

It’s good to know skinny people get back pains, too.

As I whimpered in agony while sitting down during to lunch with my mentor, the Wolfman, he had a similar response. There was a quiet satisfaction in his demeanor as he said, You’re getting older, Eddie.

(Or maybe he just said, You’re getting old.)

My people (gay men of a certain age) — we celebrate, with restrained, sophisticated glee, the advancement in age of our peers. It’s bonding. Not everyone makes it to our age. This is a sacred ritual we carry on in the name of kinship, to bring us closer. Like chimpanzees grooming their closest companions for fleas and ticks.

This past Sunday, I got a $110 parking ticket at the base of Twin Peaks. I was there for Muscle Mary’s birthday, a mask-covered gathering to watch the sun set over San Francisco. (Beware: the city of San Francisco is strapped for cash. They’re issuing tickets everywhere — with no signs, zilch! — to warn you.)

But, as I texted Mary, it was all worth it to be there with you as you become another year older.

She thanked me profusely in her voice message.

I’ll always be catching up to you, darling. Where are you having your next birthday — the mortuary?

My latest celebration of age advancement has to do with frequent urination.

It’s all about the hydraulics. Recently, my wondrous wand has run afoul of OSHA safety regulations. It’s an aging elevator, stalling more than usual while struggling to carry lighter loads. Some days I feel like I’m a union foreman, directing a work crew wearing coarse leather gloves, to pull steel cables up by hand. When urine has to be lifted at three in the morning (followed by another at 3:30, then at 3:45 — with another, oftentimes, just before sunrise), there is an art to operating heavy machinery after deep, delicious sleep. Ryan Gosling is waiting for me. I cannot, must not, fully wake up.

But peeing requires focus. I have to prop one eye open, if just for a millimeter. Enough for me focus on the image to will an understanding:

You can do it.

I believe in you.

At my annual checkup the other day, my physician suggested a prostate exam. I wasn’t expecting such a drastic course of action; I regretted bringing it up. I wasn’t prepared, emotionally or physically. Mostly physically. Moments later, my handsome, bearded doctor slipped on a latex glove, squirted a gob of clear gel onto his finger, and fingered me. I couldn’t read his expression (we both had our masks on.) He didn’t go very deep, and he did it for all of a few seconds.

He tossed the latex glove into the waste basket. He handed me a box of tissues. I was still in shock. How should I feel as I wiped my butt?

Relief. The tissue sample came back clear.

I’m prescribing you Flomax, he said. It may cause dizziness, so take it at night.

As I made my way to the pharmacy, I thought about my Ryan. Will this be the moment when I lose him? Will this be my Demi-Moore-post-Ashton-Kutcher? But then again, Ryan does prefer his lovers on the more mature side.

Alas — a teachable moment, then. With lots of intense cuddling, cradled inside his arms and chest (while facing those nipples!), to be enveloped by the golden glow of the sun, setting in early autumn; a glorious and magnificent vessel radiating toasted cinnamon raisin bread lovingly baked by Aphrodite herself. Ryan would kiss me. Longingly. Intensely. He would reassure me, hug me tighter. And vow to love me, forever and ever.

The pharmacist came over as the clerk handed me the prescription.

Are you familiar with the use and effects of this new medication? she asked.

It was a reckoning. A challenge. I was being put to the test.

Honesty gushed out of me. I will be upfront about my changes with Ryan. Our story has pushed us to this moment: the audience, holding its breath; the Ferris wheel — jammed.

My doctor said I have an enlarged prostate? He assured me that I don’t have prostate cancer. He doesn’t even want me to think about it. But I might have to worry about fainting when peeing?

The pharmacist was satisfied. She returned to her filling other prescriptions.

On Game of Thrones, the Red Woman held it together (no one clocked her ancientness) until mere moments before she turned to dust and swirled into thin air. It was a fabulous death, but it stung. The people in my family live really long lives.

Suddenly, I experience a literary flash-forward moment. I see my ending. I am the last one at the party. I am sitting on the steps of a soiree that ended some time ago, and the lights have been shut off. I am the one stuck behind, whose ride home never came.

I look back at my life, having said goodbye, eventually, to Ryan. After him came Justin Bieber, who finally matured under my loving tutelage. But I outlasted him as well. The one with me at the end … well, he’s currently a zygote and I don’t have his name yet.

As I sat on the darkened steps, I was humming to myself.

Celebrate good times — come on!