OPEN POST: Getting Older Can Be Alright!

Like many of you, I was nearly moved to tears when I saw Dick Van Dyke in a music video the other day, and it got me to thinking about how many octogenarians are around and how much we cherish them, like the always lovable, supremely talented Carol Burnett and the forever ageless and stately Catherine Deneuve, to name just two.

But then I thought, "What about regular folk?" That's when Mike Petross and Phil Pugh came to mind. Three years ago, they gobsmacked everyone when they appeared in a Washington Post article entitled, "Black, Gay and Graying Gracefully in Love" by Black journalist Jamal Jordan. At the top of the article, Jamal admitted, "The idea of growing old as a gay man used to terrify me. I simply had no concept of what longevity looked like for gay Black men." Representation is everything, and there simply wasn't much coverage about older gay men, and there was almost none if they were Black. There still isn't.

In the article, Jamal encounters Mike and Phil, then in their late 70s - they first met at their local Detroit church in the 1960s - who had a very simply message to impart:

"'We just want to let young gay people know that they can have something to look forward to when they get old,' Phil said of his 50-year relationship with Mike. 'We’ve seen so many people kill themselves — with liquor, with drugs, with sex — because they thought they didn’t have anything to live for.' 'But here we are!' Mike exclaims suddenly between puffs of his joint, 'Two old Black queens!'"

So, yes, let's celebrate Dick and Carol and Catherine and all the rest of the amazing famous elders, but let's forget our normie elders, too, who, like Phil and Mike, are just as extraordinary and very much worth celebrating. 

Photo Credits: Jamal Jordan for The Washington Post

BTW, looking for Peckerwood's Weekly Lunocracy Post? It's RIGHT HERE.