ASSISTANCE (UK) FOR SUICIDAL THOUGHTS
The Story That Stopped Me Cold
“He killed himself over that very theme. When he had to start paying for sex, it hit him hard.”
A few minutes into her interview with In the Key of Q, Rita de Los Angeles offers this devastating aside about her business partner who died by suicide ten years ago. She mentions it almost in passing—providing context for a discussion about ageism in queer communities—but the statement lands with the quiet force of an unexploded bomb.
The business partner was ten years older than Rita, making him fifty-five at the time—the same age Rita is now. He took his own life because reaching an age where he felt sexually invisible in gay spaces “hit him hard.”
While we don’t know the full complexity of factors that contributed to this tragedy, the brevity and matter-of-factness with which Rita shares this story suggests its familiarity—not just as a personal loss, but as a recognizable pattern.
The Cost of Conditional Visibility
What does it mean that within some gay male spaces, becoming sexually invisible can feel like becoming wholly invisible—a loss profound enough to contribute to suicidal despair?
The answer requires confronting uncomfortable truths about how gay male culture—which emerged in part as a liberation from restrictive heterosexual norms—has sometimes recreated its own rigid hierarchies of desirability and worth. When sexual currency becomes intertwined with social currency, aging can trigger not just a private grief but a public diminishment.
Age limits permeate gay digital spaces with an explicitness rarely seen elsewhere. Dating app profiles boldly declare “No one over 30” or “Under 25 only.” Even profiles created by older men sometimes specify they’re only interested in younger partners. We mask this ageism through terms like “preferences” or “types,” but its cumulative impact creates a culture where aging is framed not as a natural process but as a form of failure.
The Paradox of the Scene
For many gay men who came of age before widespread acceptance, “the scene” represented not just a dating pool but a surrogate family and community. While straight people could age into roles as husbands, fathers, uncles—finding new forms of social value beyond sexual desirability—gay men of certain generations often found their social worth inextricably tied to their position within a youth-oriented scene.
The paradox is brutal: the very community that once offered salvation from heterosexual exclusion can eventually reproduce its own forms of exclusion. Men who survived the AIDS crisis, who fought for gay rights, who built the infrastructure of queer communities, can find themselves gradually pushed to the margins of spaces they helped create.
Rita’s statement again comes back to me: “When he had to start paying for sex, it hit him hard.”
The phrase reveals another layer of this complex dynamic. The issue wasn’t simply the commercial transaction itself—it was what it represented: a fundamental shift in how he was perceived, a forced acknowledgment that what had once been freely offered now came with a price tag.
Beyond the Urban Gay Hierarchy
Rita’s current context offers an interesting counterpoint. At fifty-five, she performs Country music in rural German venues rather than positioning herself within urban queer scenes:
“I definitely feel self-conscious being fifty-five and being, let’s say, on a gay stage instead of the stage I’m doing now, playing for people who love Country music and it’s mostly in rural areas.”
This suggests something important: that the intensity of ageism might vary significantly between different queer contexts and subcultures. The problem isn’t inherent to queer spaces broadly but emerges most acutely in scenes where physical appearance and sexual currency become the primary measures of social worth.
“When I’m performing, I get people of all age groups like what I’m doing and it’s really great because I get to be with young people, people my age and older,” Rita notes. “I just don’t know that I would be embraced on a big stage if I was trying to be like, I don’t know, Katy Perry at fifty-five.”
This distinction—between contexts where aging is treated as a natural process versus those where it’s framed as a fundamental diminishment—suggests alternative possibilities for establishing queer community beyond the youth-fixated hierarchy of the traditional scene. Curiously in this example, inspired by a rural mostly heterosexual community.
The Cruel Economy of Desire
What made Rita’s business partner’s experience so devastating wasn’t I imagine merely rejection—it was the fundamental shift in how his personhood was valued. The need to pay for what had once been freely exchanged marked a transition from being seen as inherently desirable to being positioned as a supplicant, someone who had to compensate for the perceived deficiency of age.
This transformation reflects a particularly cruel economy of desire that can develop in contexts where sexual worth becomes the primary social currency. In such environments, aging isn’t just a personal experience but a public demotion—a visible slide down a clearly demarcated hierarchy.
When this hierarchy becomes internalized, the consequences can be devastating. What begins as external rejection can evolve into self-rejection: the belief that one’s aging body represents not just a changed appearance but a diminished self.
The Binary Trap of “Daddy” Culture
Some might point to the existence of “daddy” culture as evidence that older gay men can still find desirability and acceptance. But this framing creates its own binary trap: you can be young and desirable, or you can be older and fetishised for your age, with little room for existence outside these categories.
As Dan Hall notes in the interview: “You have to wear a mask. And instead of just turning up and going, I’m Dan and I’m fifty-two. It’s like we’re not allowed [to be ourselves].”
This observation highlights how the “daddy” category, while seemingly inclusive of older men, often functions as another form of objectification rather than genuine acceptance of aging. Men who don’t fit or don’t want to perform the specific aesthetic and behavioral expectations of this role find themselves caught in a double bind: too old for one category, not performing “daddy” correctly for another.
The Silent Epidemic
While hard statistics are difficult to come by, research suggests that middle-aged and older gay men may face higher suicide risks than their heterosexual counterparts. A 2017 study in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine found that LGB adults aged 45-64 reported the highest rate of suicide thoughts of any age group, suggesting that midlife can be a particularly vulnerable period.
What makes Rita’s casual mention of her business partner’s suicide so bleak is precisely its lack of sensationalism—the way it emerges not as a shocking anomaly but as a recognisable consequence of a familiar cultural pattern.
How many other gay men have we lost to this silent epidemic? How many deaths have been attributed to individual mental health struggles without acknowledging the structural ageism that may have contributed to their despair?
What might queer spaces look like if they were organized around shared interests, creativity, political engagement, or community service rather than aesthetic sorting? How might our understanding of queer community evolve if we viewed our elders not as cautionary tales but as bearers of cultural memory and wisdom?
A Different Kind of Scene
As queer communities continue to evolve, we face a choice about what kinds of spaces we want to create and sustain. The hyper-competitive sexual marketplace model of the traditional scene isn’t the only option. Alternatives exist and are emerging that offer different frameworks for belonging. Especially now we have an aging generation who – thanks to retroviral drugs – are not dying prematurely from damaged immune systems brought on by the HIV virus.
Rita found her space performing Country music in unexpected venues, building connection through artistic expression rather than sexual currency. Others have created queer book clubs, hiking groups, political organisations, or community gardens that offer belonging based on shared interests and values.
These alternatives don’t deny the importance of sexual and romantic connection. Rather, they suggest that such connections can flourish more healthily when embedded within broader forms of community that don’t collapse all social worth into sexual desirability.
What might gay male communities look like if they were designed to sustain members through the entire life course rather than catering primarily to a narrow window of youth? How might we create spaces where aging is viewed not as a tragedy but as a natural process bringing its own forms of beauty, insight, and connection?
The answers to these questions won’t erase the loss of Rita’s business partner or countless others who have suffered under the weight of ageist exclusion. But they might help us build queer futures where fewer men feel that aging means being priced out of community and connection—where paying for touch doesn’t feel like the only option when youth fades.
And of course, any bi or heterosexual woman reading this will shout at the screen, “Welcome to our club”.
In a community birthed from the radical premise that love and desire could challenge oppressive norms, surely we can imagine and create better models of belonging than a marketplace where human worth depreciates with age.
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