Once upon a time...

I've spent the past week in a kind of culture shock feeling of weirdness, triggered by spending the weekend with an LGBT birthright group.  We were invited to bring our family and be kind of Israeli gay role models of sorts.  Expecting to find ourselves somehow mirrored by this group of 20 somethings, we were instead confronted by how the world we came out into has disappeared.  Nearly all the women in the group had long hair.  Anyone who looked much like Alen had transitioned to being male.  We saw scars from "top surgery" for the first time (at the pool).  Rather than finding ourselves mirrored, I found myself fighting to understand what I saw, searching in vain for the world I came out into in 1987, the community I thought I belonged to.

It took quite a few emails with a young friend in Boston, and a conversation today with a gay man my age to get back my sense of humor and to remember that Romanovsky and Phillips already described this phenomenon in their song, "Once upon a time..."

Best of all, my old brain remembers all the lyrics (more or less):

Once upon a time when life was simple and serene
My roommate was a lesbian and I a happy queen
I lived to go out dancing in my tightest fitting jeans
While she read the well of loneliness and lexus magazine

But now I go to pot lucks where the food is rather bleak
And I've joined a new support group that meets every other week
While she lives to go out dancing with her hair done up in curls
It's getting hard to tell the boys from the girls

Once upon a time when life was easy to predict
Sex was something I could get and I could get it quick
I'd look at all the men and know that I could take my pick
While she frowned upon my lifestyle with each and every trick

But now my sex adventures while still fun are rather tame
While she's discovered Joann Loulan and she'll never be the same
Cuz she dates a lot of women and she buys erotic toys
It's getting hard to tell the girls from the boys

Once upon a time when life was crystal clear
Each of us had favorite music that we loved to hear
I'd go dancing to sylvester down in key west every year
While she went to music festivals and worshipped holly near

But now our taste in music has completely turned around
And instead of going to michigan she goes to provincetown
While I play alix dobkin on my walkman now and then
It's getting hard to tell the women from the men

Times they change, fashions rearrange themselves
If you don't stay on top, you find yourself
Parked on a shelf

Once upon a time when life was black and white
I used to do the drag shows to be famous for a night
While she drank her beer without a glass and shopped for Mrs. Right
I'd cruise the local customers just asking for a light

But now she is the only one who steps out in a dress
While I've been wearing all her flannel shirts and sandals I confess
Now she smokes Virginia Slims instead of lucky strikes
It's getting hard to tell the boys from girls, hard to tell the men from women, hard to tell the faggots from the dykes.

Now if all of this should seem to show that everyone's gone mad
It's only part and parcel of a somewhat larger fad
Look no further than the glint of gold in many a straight boys ear
It's getting hard to tell the breeders from the queers.

Thanks to Romanovsky and Phillips and to my friends for reminding me I'm just getting old, and this happens every few years.  I don't know if I'm parked on a shelf yet, but I apparently need to heed their advice to "stay on top".