Queer Elders (Pride pt. XXIII)

Twilight’s Kiss

Swan Song

Greeting and salutations, my dazzling diamond diva dolls. As we make our way through this humid June, covering as much diverse queer cinema as I can find, I wanted to take some time for a community of wonderful, essential people who are too often overlooked and forgotten: queer elders. As I, myself, get older, the term “elderly” or “older” feels increasingly amorphous and difficult to define. When I was a kid, 40 year-olds seemed old, 60 year-olds were ancient, and any age above that was a level of old I couldn’t even comprehend. As I now approach 30…the gauge has shifted significantly. I feel like I’ve aged SO much in my tumultuous twenties that I plan (and pray) that my thirties can be about letting loose and feeling content like I wanted my teens and twenties to be. I hope and think I’ll still feel young at 40, 50, 60, 80—no matter how much my back and knees hurt. I often think of my grandparents, who have all now sadly passed, and I try to remember the things they taught me, either implicitly or intentionally. I wish I could remember every story they told me, but if I close my eyes and really think, I can’t help smiling as I remember all of the glorious lines on their faces, the soft-weathering of their hands, the ageless glimmer in their eyes. I have always loved and respected older people—so much so, that in high school I ended up quitting a volunteer gig at a nursing home because they wanted me to be an admin assistant and not assist the residents. I’ve always related to people older than me, I never wanted to sit at the kids table, I always wanted to gossip and learn from the people who have seen and done it all. Elderly people have experienced so much more life, but can still feel youthful, they can have decades of wisdom but not all the knowledge in the world, and they are a testament to the miraculous, marvelous, pain-and-pleasure-filled privilege of getting to age. And no community of elderly people is perhaps more aware of this privilege than queer elders, as many of them endured oppression, neglect, and the decimation of their friends and family during the AIDS crisis. As unkind and careless as we often are to older people in general, older queer people have had an especially hard time being seen and heard and cared for. In America, alone, there are an estimated 3 million LGBTQ+ adults over 50, though this is predicted to reach 7 million by 2030. Queer elders are twice as likely to live alone, twice as likely to not have children, and in general, are more likely to experience poverty and homelessness due to improper care and outdated, unfair biases in the medical community. We all face more challenges and complications as we age, but queer people in particular—and other marginalized groups—have been forced to advocate for their comfort, their rights, and their very existence, often entirely on their own. And this is to say nothing of the dismal state of senior representation in the media, as it is a rarity for a TV show or film to center upon an older person if they are anything other than a curmudgeonly, old, white man. That’s why I wanted to take the time to shine a light on a couple special pieces of media that focus solely upon older, queer individuals. Their stories matter too, and their perspectives might be more relatable and universal than you’d think.

Let’s begin with a true rarity among this already rare subcategory of queer films, a movie that transports us to the incredibly-modern-yet-still-closed-minded city of Hong Kong, where queer love blossoms regardless—this is Ray Yeung’s 2019 film Twilight’s Kiss (Suk Suk.) I’m obviously not the foremost expert on Chinese culture and sensibilities—though I did take three years of Mandarin (brag)—but there is an interesting attitude surrounding queerness in many Eastern cultures. Where Western flavors of hatred are often loud, proud, and in-our-faces, in places like China, there is a legal ambivalence and a quiet, unspoken, cultural erasure. Twilight’s Kiss displayed this specific form of passive ignorance, as we are introduced to two, aging, closeted men named Pak (Tai Bo) and Hoi (Ben Yuen.) Pak is a devoted taxi cab driver, whom we first meet as he slowly, tenderly washes his cab by hand. Though his family wants him to retire already, Pak enjoys contributing to society, hacky sacking with his fellow cabbies on breaks, and, occasionally, winding up in a park where, it appears, gay men meet up. One day, Pak notices another older gentleman, Hoi, sitting on a bench, smiling brightly back at him. The two strike up a conversation, but Pak is straight to business, and proposes that they go into the public restroom real quick. Hoi suggests, “Why don’t we be friends first?” This, at first, annoys Pak—who has likely only engaged in transient, meaningless sex up until this point—but when the two cross paths again, Pak softens and takes Hoi up on his offer. So the two begin walking and chatting, strolling and talking, about their families, their jobs, their former lovers, about all of the lives they’ve lived. They haven’t even kissed yet, but they are careful to not appear too friendly out in public, and Pak directs Hoi to sit in the back of his cab when he gives him a ride home. At home, Pak nor is his wife are affectionate with one another. They don’t hate each other, but they do not seem particularly interested in each other, either. Pak’s wife is far more concerned with their aging, unmarried daughter and her deadbeat boyfriend than she is with her husband, who is now texting another man in secret. And for Hoi, things are even more complex. He lives with his son, daughter-in-law, and granddaughter, all in very close proximity, and his son is a strict Christian. Though Hoi has some attachment to religion, his son is militant with his Christianity, and seems to look down on his father for not attending church as much as he used to. Pak and Hoi have both lived their lives so deeply steeped in shame, that they know no other way of being. So when the two finally kiss, sleep together, and fully connect with one another, their feelings can hardly be contained. Despite the shame and fear of being found out, Hoi introduces Pak to a thriving, though semi-secret, community of other older, gay men. Hoi takes Pak to a bathhouse and out to dinner, and though Hoi seems far less rigid than Pak, he still fears the potential of being outcasted by his family. Hoi often meets with a group of fellow elderly gay men, and when a younger queer advocate comes to try to recruit speakers to help fund a gay nursing home, Hoi hesitates. It’s all a complicated, delicate line that these two men toe, and even in the Winter of their lives they are unable to fully be themselves. On paper, Twilight’s Kiss sounds like a profound tragedy, and while there is plenty of sadness to this tale, this wasn’t a film completely devoid of hope. There is so much beauty, so much tenderness, and so much understanding offered in the relationship between Pak and Hoi, and to tell their story at all feels more than refreshing, but revolutionary. This film even offers a happier ending than I would have expected, though because it is a somewhat unconventional love story, its conclusion isn’t conventionally happy either. I really enjoyed Twilight’s Kiss, and all of the intimate little details that brought it to life. I loved watching a story that I’ve truly never seen before, and experiencing a perspective that I’ve never seen represented. Our love lives do not have to end as we grow older, exploration does not have to stop after a certain age, we deserve to have as many experiences as possible before our time is up, and this film was life-affirming proof of this. Queer Asian stories are seldom told, and elderly love stories are seldom told, so this film felt really significant and special.

Equally special, heartbreaking, and tender was tonight’s next film, one that I’ve wanted to see for awhile but avoided due to my aversion to sad cinema: this is Todd Stephens’ 2021 film Swan Song. Not to be confused with the Mahershala Ali film of the same title that came out the same year, Todd Stephens’ Swan Song follows the semi-true story of retired hairdresser Pat Pitsenbarger, the “Liberace of Sandusky, Ohio”, who is tasked with styling an old client for her funeral. The film opens on a glittering stage, where a fabulous older gentleman announces, “Good evening! I’m Mr. Pat, and I’m… that!”, before the present-day Mr. Pat (Udo Kier) awakes in his assisted-living home. Judy Garland’s wide voice belts out “The Man That Got Away” as Pat puts on fresh sweats and Velcro shoes and heads out into the hallway—a bleak path from his bleak room to the bleak common area. Pat daydreams quite a bit, sneaks cigarettes, and sits in wordless conversation with a fellow resident as they gaze out the window. All feels slow, still, and depressingly certain, until an attorney visits Pat to inform him that his former client, Rita Parker Sloan (Linda Evans), has unfortunately passed away. It was specified in her will that Pat do her hair and makeup for her funeral, but Pat has been retired and mad at Rita for many, many years now. The lawyer tries to be encouraging, and shows him a photo of Rita all dolled up, saying, “Perhaps you could recreate this hairstyle?” to which Pat responds, “Split ends and all?” At first, Pat doesn’t have any interest in this gig, even though he’ll be paid handsomely. But after some thinking, and some practice with his wordless fellow resident’s hair, Pat grabs a pack of cigs, slips out the back door, and starts walking back to Sandusky. On his odyssey to the funeral home, Pat encounters several kind country folk who offer to help him, or update him on what he’s missed, but Pat is on a mission: to gather the correct hair care to make Rita look her fabulous self again. Throughout his journey we learn more about Pat, his now deceased lover, his salon that was essentially overtaken by his former employee, Dee Dee Dale (Jennifer Coolidge.) With each encounter and errand, people cannot help being charmed by Pat—even Dee Dee hooks him up with some ancient, nearly-discontinued Vivant mousse. And even though he shoplifts and loiters, everyone seems to want to help Pat, including a retail store owner who gets Pat out of his drab clothes and into a gorgeous mint green suit. He jumps rope with some kids, he visits the grave of his lover, he chats with friends both old and new, alive and dead, having conversations that broke my heart and filled it with joy all at once. It has the authentic kind of poignancy that intertwines its sadness with humor, its reality with fantasy, and many of the funniest lines didn’t feel scripted, but rather something that would actually come out of the mouths of some colorful small town folk. It grapples with the uncomfortable but realistic friction between ideology and reality, particularly in a rural community, where this chic blonde republican nightmare of a diva once employed a talented gay hairdresser, and the two got along swimmingly until they didn’t. I absolutely, positively loved Swan Song, it reminded me of David Lynch’s The Straight Story—but gay—because it humanizes and romanticizes some of the roughest-seeming people and some of the toughest-seeming discussions. It made me laugh, it made me cry, it made me want to hug my friends tighter and tighter. Plus, any film that features drag queens and “Dancing on My Own” by Robyn, is automatically a masterpiece in my eyes. I’m not sure what I expected from this film, which was directed by the creator of Another Gay Movie and Another Gay Sequel, but I didn’t expect it to be so crushingly real. But then I read an interview with director Todd Stephens, who also wrote the coming-of-age queer dramedy Edge of Seventeen, and when he told the story of seeing the real Pat Pitsenbarger, proudly walking around as an out-gay man in Ohio, I wanted to cry all over again! As Todd explains, “(Pat) was really my first exposure to a queer person. I didn’t know that I was queer at the time, but he resonated with me, and I had a fascination with Pat. (He) would walk around in a velvet fedora, smoking a long brown cigarette in these fabulous pantsuits. And he was kind of genderfluid, long before that was a term. I related to him because I felt different, and like I didn’t totally fit in. And he was a role model to me and helped me accept myself. So I really wanted to pay tribute to him and all the small-town florists and interior decorators, and out, loud, and proud folks in the ‘70s and ‘80s that had the courage to be themselves, who I really feel blazed the way.” I think this filmmaker, and Udo Kier with his piercing blue eyes, paid lovely tribute to Pat, and all of the other bold, queer voices that broke down barriers and opened the door for the generations of queer voices that came after them. I braced myself for the inevitable sadness of both of tonight’s films, but none of the sadness was overwhelming or overwrought or unearned. It’s important that stories of older people are humanized, made accessible, and made at all, because growing old is one of the few things we all have in common. I can only hope that as we all age, we evolve, we become more selfless, we have more pride for ourselves and our neighbors, and we let people live the way they deserve to. Well that’s enough sap for one week, but I really appreciate you reading along! I can only hope that I’ll be rambling about movies when I’m older. Ciao!