3rd Act Realness

How Queer Eldering Morphs Queer Identity & Triggered the Creation of “minis.”

EXTRA! EXTRA! Yes, I can be extra, but that’s not what I’m here to talk about. 

I’ve written a book called minis. It’s a collection of short stories, flash fiction, reflections and verse that capture the sometimes jagged truth of growing up and living life queer, working class and dysfunctional in America. 

The WTF of Time

I have lived a life! So far, it’s not over yet. I’ve lived longer than many well-known personalities who passed before reaching age 59: Steve McQueen (the actor, not the director), Grace Kelly, Andy Warhol, Clark Gable, Jackie Robinson, Muppet master Jim Henson, Napoleon Bonaparte & Vladimir Lenin, among others. Unfortunately (or fortunately, depending on my mood), I come from a family whose members live well into their 80s and 90s. According to them, I’m just about to hit adult puberty.

We tend to think about living longer as an accomplishment. But is it, really? Or is it just a matter of genes, DNA, and happenstance?

Whatever it is, I’ve entered a period of my life that Jane Fonda famously calls her “Third Act,” and that I think of as my “Expiration Date Era.” Yes, it’s true: if you are lucky enough to reach my age, and still rely on the attention and validation of others to make you feel good about yourself, you may be in for a disappointing surprise: the kids (and by kids I mean anyone under 50) are just not that into you anymore. For most people who spent time dating or hooking up as an adult, this development can be jarring.

It’s a lot like what my aunt once told my mom, right before my mom was about to give birth to me: “It’s the worst pain you’ll ever experience in your entire life. But don’t worry, you forget it.” In other words, as with most curve balls that are thrown at us throughout life, after the initial shock and confusion of realizing we’re in a new normal, we adjust our position, we adapt, we move forward in spite of it, we persevere. And soon, we forget about the pain of the initial shock. 

The passing of time in this life is nothing short of a complete mind fuck! I had no way of truly understanding this until I experienced it myself, but I really did wake up one day at the seasoned age of 59 and think, “WTF happened?!”

I can remember being a child, adolescent, and teenager — when the days seemed to last forever. Time moved so slowly that having to wait a week or, heaven forbid, a month for something to happen seemed interminable. Time sped up a little when I was in my twenties because there seemed to be so much that needed accomplishing and so little time to do it in. Time trotted along at a healthy pace throughout my thirties and forties: I worked a lot, I worked out a lot, I relaxed a lot, and I had fun a lot. Looking back, it all seems very efficiently run and well organized, but I know from living through it that it was most definitely NOT that! There have been many left turns, detours, and bumps in the road.

Now, on the verge of my 60s, I have recurring moments when I remember where I’m at on the timeline of my life. These moments throw me off kilter. I’ll be inside a memory, feeling it, reliving it, feeling so close I can touch it. But then I’ll realize that the memory is from 1986, or 1992, or 1979. And suddenly, the event within the memory retreats into the past, speeding back along the timeline, still tethered to me by a thread, but far beyond my reach, years having occurred between then and now. In those moments, all the time that’s occurred since the event that lives in my memory feels like something I’ve lost. It feels as if it’s gone.

minis.: Fragments Finding Form

Like the rest of my biggest writing projects, minis. floated out in the ether for years. I’ve always had a knack for writing short pieces that created space you could breathe in, even when it was just a one-pager. As their numbers grew, the minis. concept took shape. These fragments of fiction were each self-contained in their short forms, but they also belonged to something larger that hadn’t yet been created. They waited patiently for a center of gravity to pull them together, and this year, it finally happened. 

After moving to PA in 2016, I did some sporadic writing here and there, first on a blog I created during the pandemic, and then on Medium. I was in the process of writing my second novel, but I hadn’t done any heavy lifting on it since before I’d moved here. I’d spent the last 20 years or so in pursuit of my capitalist dream, having been taught (and believing wholeheartedly) that the path to happiness and fulfillment was marriage, a well-paying job, and home ownership. Achieving that dream and maintaining it kept me preoccupied for the second half of my capitalist dream phase. 

But I came to realize how meaningless it is when all you’re doing it for is to have the things. You know, those things you can point to and declare, “See? I’m living the dream! And to prove it, here’s Exhibit A, Exhibit B,” etc. After realizing my mistake, I remained trapped for a few years more, then extricated myself from the trap I had, of my own free will, built and set. It took some adjusting, but I got out alive and managed, after some more years of an identity reset in PA, to come into the more fully realized version of who I am.

While treading water in the deep end of the pandemic, I set up a dedicated writing space in my apartment so I could dive back into the novel I’d started in L.A. But something wasn’t right. I couldn’t reconnect with it. I could refine what I’d already written, but the characters weren’t talking to me yet. The story wasn’t traveling through me the way it had before. I feared I’d lost my knack for doing what I love best: writing good stuff. Could I even finish this beast? Did I still have it in me? Were the characters still going to gift me with their voices and tell their stories through me?

My struggle discouraged me, but not for very long. I decided to get the minis. concept out of the proverbial drawer I’d stuffed it in, dust it off, and bring it to life. 

minis. is the perfect stopgap. I’d written enough flash fiction pieces, short stories and verse to fill roughly half of what I thought minis. should be. I also had the beginnings, in some cases just sketches of ideas or story concepts, for additional pieces I intended to write. I also knew that tackling works on a smaller scale would provide me the chance to get back into the alchemy of writing without the pressure that comes with trying to pull off writing a full-length novel successfully. 

So, uh…why is minis. a big deal? Good question!

It’s a big deal because it’s a brazenly queer, unfiltered, and deeply human exploration of queer identity, as lived against the backdrop of late stage capitalism. It illustrates not just the subversive queer act of living, loving and thriving with humor and dignity, in spite of the hateful homophobia always aimed at us, but also the art of rewriting the rules of survival in a world that’s designed to defeat you. 

minis. breaks the mainstream queer storytelling mold with sharp wit and an unflinching eye, while challenging conventional respectability by keeping things unfiltered and unsanitized. Life isn’t always respectable (or sanitary), and stories about it don’t always need to be, either. minis. delivers an emotionally charged experience that is equal parts nostalgic, funny, harrowing, and absurd. Yes, there are some sharp edges. But they’re navigated with grit, humor, and a firm resolve to keep moving forward.

Becoming My Own Archive

Experiencing an entire adult life with a brain that, in some respects, stopped developing with me at the age of about 15 does have its perks: an unfailing optimism, a belief that people are good at heart, no true sense that anything catastrophic will ever really happen to me, and a convenient inability to think of any good reason to curtail my consumption of ice cream, Swedish Fish, or bacon. 

They keep happening, though, those moments that compel me to ask, “WTF happened?!!” Well, my life happened. And I’ve been fully engaged with it most of the time. I have no idea how much of it remains to be lived, as far as a time frame goes. One thing I do know, however, is that I’ll be here for the rest of it. 

The time between the moments when my memories first occurred as real-time incidents and where I stand now isn’t lost or gone. It only feels that way because I’ve been here for so long. I’m at a point on my timeline that I’ve always feared: the point where I become objectively “old.” None of my younger incarnations looked forward to this point on the timeline. Now that I’m here, though, my younger incarnations are with me. I’m the result of them, strangely enough, and they’re happy to be here, eagerly along for the ride. They inform everything I say and do. They’ve been incorporated into — and continue to live through — the self I am now. And we’re all moving forward together. 

Despite what we’re taught over the course of our lives, by capitalism, by media, by the powers that be who have, until very recently, controlled the narrative, being this age isn’t frightening at all. It’s not supposed to be. It’s only frightening if you live in a culture that discards its elders and fails to appreciate the lived experience and value they hold. Even though I’m living in such a culture, it’s also a culture that is in its death throes and is about to be replaced by something much better; something heart-centered, organic and humane. 

Queer eldering has different meanings, depending on who you’re talking to, but to me it means this: owning every path on which you traveled, embracing every version of yourself, and threading them into something defiantly, effectively whole. I might have to wait for this better world, and I might have to put some more work in to help make it happen, but that’s okay. I’ve got my entire team with me. We work together seamlessly. We’re a well oiled machine of good will and experience.

Why worry about the past or the future when this moment is the only one we’re actually living in? What’s important isn’t that you crushed it once, back in your 20s, 30s or 40s. What’s important is how you bring it all together, full circle, and make the endgame unforgettable. By bringing all you’ve ever been into the present, and embracing everything that you’ve become.

Why not make this moment, and the subsequent moments that will make up the rest of our time here, kick ass? I can’t think of any reasons not to, because there aren’t any. There are only reasons to kick as much ass as we possibly can before we leave.

This moment, right now, is our starting point for the rest of it. Why not work with what we’ve got? Something tells me we’ll be surprised by how far it takes us.