In my gay men’s book group, a group I love, I am easily the senior gent, well, member. Ten or maybe twenty guys meet for an hour and a half to discuss a book we’ve read beforehand. The books are generally gay-themed, fiction and non-fiction, old and recent. This happens the third Tuesday evening of the month, in uptown Manhattan, in a lovely bookstore whose owner has welcomed us for more than a year with the space and time to meet.
Guys in the book group, not just younger but mostly much younger, are admirably non-critical about the difference between their ages and mine—often several decades. I am not isolated in my life, but as a writer and apparently determined bachelor, I live and spend a fair amount of time alone. The book group—which I helped to found—gives me an outlet with smart men who avert bars in favor of books, showing up in numbers likely only in a big city.
While I am retired from teaching for over a decade, the majority of guys in the book club maintain full-time jobs in a variety of professions. Most of my traveling is in the past, but I hear others planning summer getaways to Provincetown or more distant destinations. I confess to feeling a jab of envy, but I remind myself that I once had the time and energy to do what they’re doing, and I took advantage of that. I try as much as I can to share their enthusiasm.
There’s a contrast between their perspectives and mine. For most of the others in the book club it is looking ahead—better job, newer apartment, greater travel. I’ve been lucky enough to survive into the mid-80s, and I spend a good amount of time, without even wishing to, in mentally reviewing jobs, trips, friends, a number of whom are now gone. The future for me is trying to be content with the good life I fortunately have, and putting pen to paper while my brain still allows it.
I was not a great reader as a young person, and I find that this book group compels me to read an assigned work every month. It has made me a better reader, a more inquisitive person, someone interested in a wider range of matters. By now I’ve read a good number of books for the group, and though not liking every one, hearing positive reviews from others has awakened me to the possibility that there were aspects of the book that I missed. I often walk out of the meeting appreciating things about a book I had not noticed, and realizing that there were opinions, different from mine, as valid as mine.
Going out for drinks and food after the group are a decided bonus. I’m glad for those chances to discover things about guys that you don’t find in the meeting.
There’s a lot in my life to remember, many years to look back on. But I’m not ready to stop yet. I hope I can continue with reading, and writing, and the men’s book club. It gives me a commitment and a pleasure.
I try for a balancing act, remembering past events but not closing out today’s life. To take aging seriously, but not overly so. And to be grateful for every new day, every one.
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Stanley Ely writes about many everyday subjects in his new book, “Thinking It Through: Reflections Past Eighty.”