Bare chest to naked back
skin pressed hard to weary skin
one arm awkwardly squeezed
to the mattress below
the other wrapping him tight
Silence, mostly silence
we turn, reverse position
his arm now wrapping me
in duration proportionate
to the burden of the day
Sometimes hanging on
is simply hanging on
sometimes it is survival
the one reliable embrace
the world can offer
I pass the sign on the way to the upper swimming hole at the Rock River near Newfane, Vermont. The sign doesn’t say it, but optional should be in quotation marks. From this point on I will feel more exposed with clothes on than with them off.
So I strip as soon as my feet touch the gay beach. That only shifts my sense of exposure. Is it really possible to feel more naked in the midst of a crowd of naked men? In my youth we would have called this skinny dipping. Dipping, of course, hardly describes even the secondary purpose for our activity. Although I hold no expectation of a side trip into the woods with a handsome stranger, a palpable energy pervades this place no less than the fresh smell and sound of the water rushing over the rocks on its way to the West River. I feel the little arousals in me prompted by the bodies surrounding me. I compare my own skinny, aging, untanned body to theirs. Does every other gay man hold a gym membership and spend all his days lying naked in the sun? Few, if any, tan lines show. My dermatologist would be appalled even as I am enthralled.
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Retirement decisions still furrow my brow and clench my stomach. How much in savings, assents, and retirement funds will be enough to live through retirement? How much will we need? How will we know that we have enough to take the step into retired living?
Retired friends urge me not to wait. Do it now, they say. Most of them come from a different generation. Their professions provided defined-benefits–some with COLAs. They bought their homes early enough and rode the housing bubble high enough to pay off their homes with significant equity before they retired.
My generation bought homes later and saw equity shrink. Our retirement plans are on the 401k model. They rise and fall with the whims of Wall Street. And despite politicians’ blind faith in “free markets,” I hardly trust Wall Street to give a damn whether I end up dying naked in an alley or dying comfortably in a “mature adult” community. Continue reading