With Gay Marriage, The Gay Spinster is Born
In an age of civil unions and gay marriage, Daniel Warner is rejecting hedge funds and enjoying spinsterhood BY DANIEL WARNER
I’m not married, I’m not in a civil partnership and as far as I’m aware there is no one even on the verge of making a proposal, getting down on one knee or even sending a postcard with some offer of a mutually beneficial arrangement.
My days of romance, wine, wistful gazes and lustful stares are gone. I think I may have left them in a cloakroom in a private members’ club or maybe I didn’t even bother to check them in?
I’ve lost wallets, gloves, sweaters and once even a shoe in a nightclub so if I did lose my potential to be a husband / lifelong partner or ‘significant other’ along the way then it wouldn’t surprise me.
I just hope who ever found my credit card for a lifetime of marital bliss enjoys it. I’ve cancelled all my compatibility pin numbers and now the only credit I give myself is for being alone. Like the great gay anthem from BeyoncĂ© and the other two in Jimmy Choo’s and expensive weaves, I am indeed, an ‘Independent (Wo) Man’.
It takes a huge amount of courage to be single in a modern gay world, especially if you're over the age of attractiveness and relevance that dating apps and websites seem to endorse.
And 35 seems to be the age that if you’re not betrothed then you need to be either seriously rich or extortionately expensive to spend an evening with. I find it hilarious when someone aged 34 has (in capitals) written across their profile ‘NO ONE OVER 35’. Umm, Mr birthday is on his way and he has a HUGE surprise for you! It’s wrapped in tatty old paper and tied with withered ribbon and I can’t wait to see your face when it arrives.
I’m surprised there hasn’t been an embargo on any gay man who’s ever even thought of reaching for the ‘Just For Men’ from getting their awful, wrinkly hands on a smartphone. God knows how they even know how to use a touch screen device? Don’t they still use that thing called a ‘mouse’?
There was a time when ‘bachelors’ of a certain age were automatically deemed to be gay but now with civil partnerships and our continuing fight for equality, even the gays are getting hitched.
We can’t claim the reason we are growing old without a ring on our finger is because we’re out, proud and loving our gay life when everyone else knows it’s because we’ve been left on the shelf, dumped at the altar and never even had a whiff of a bridal bouquet.
I can’t remember if Bridget Jones ever got married? I think she just lost some weight, got a better wardrobe, had an expensive haircut and morphed into a gay man. She did have a flat near to Borough Market (the fashionable foodie center of London) so it’s definitely possible that this really happened. I bet she / he now lives in Clapham in a Victorian terrace with her husband, their Gaydar profile, 0.2 dogs and spends Sunday afternoons cooking organic produce in an Aga.
The single life isn’t a bad life! It’s what all of our great gay ancestors fought for. The right to be free from the constraints of society, to live a bohemian life, to sleep with people indiscriminately and to have fun!
From what I’ve read of gay life in the 70s and 80s it was like doing the supermarket sweep in Selfridges, with so much choice and a buy-now-pay-later mindset everyone got their shopping trolleys worth, but then came the specter of AIDS, the credit got refused and the disco ball stopped spinning. However, fast-forward 30 years and the disco ball is spinning again, it’s just got a wedding cake and an expensive reception on top of it.
I’m not walking the hallways and rooms of my flat like Miss Havisham, even though that would be my outfit of choice at a gay wedding. I’m enjoying my life. I’m not thinking of the one that got away, the one that’s just around the corner or the one with the hedge fund.
I’m happy for all of my gay brothers and sisters that are out there getting hitched, married and banged up abroad, and I mean that last one in the nicest sense. I don’t know what the future holds for me or for all the other gay spinsters out there, but I will say this, next year I am ready for commitment. I’m ready for the long term and I’m ready for an equal partnership full of love, mutual trust and understanding.
So I’m going to buy myself a pitbull.
Daniel Warner is a writer / journalist and can be followed on Twitter and Facebook.
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