De Profundis.

Firstly, hello to Vegas. I'm not entirely sure who you are either but I have my theories.

It's 2:30AM and all is reasonably quiet for the moment in the wretched hell hole that is A&E. I really should try and grab some kip so that I can do some work tomorrow but I'm feeling guilty that the ward SHO and HO are both absent from the mess, suggesting a busyness which I just can't bring myself to help them with. Thus, as a form of penence for my cuntishness, I have decided that I will deny myself the comforts of my bed to sit and type instead.

I have been periodically seized by paroxysms of fear recently at the thought of getting all 'middle aged'. I'm still not entirely sure precisely when 'middle aged' begins but I fear it might be sometime soon. I'm pretty sure when I was 17 I must have thought it started right about now. Once here, however, I've found it more convenient to push the boundry back a little bit...to thirty, say. That only gives me roughly another four years of life before my world begins to slowly crumble around me and I sink into depression and apathy. And what will be the trigger for this change? Simple: the transition of others and my lack thereof.

By transition I mean the movement between different stages in life. Admittedly, these are not set in stone and regression is always a possibility but, by and large, the majority of people seem to move through fairly discernible stages in their lives. So far my friends and I have made our way through a few of them together: we've done infancy; then dependency and education; and now independent and working. The next big transition fro my friends will be into marriage and then children. These are not really possibilities for me (unless I suddenly decide that getting myself a trophy wife and living the lie sounds like a good idea). And there wouldn't even seem to be anything to substitute in its place. So, what will I do? Continue on with the drinking, the clubbing and the cruising till I get a cardiomyopathy and my heart dilates up to become about as effective as an ASDA carrier bag? End up in A&E as a haggard and broken-down wreck? Well, yes, quite probably. What's worse is that as a gay guy gets older and loses his looks, he becomes an object of pitty in a world that venerates youth and beauty beyond all else. In fact, I sometimes feel that being gay might be a bit like having social progeria. 'Slugs', as we fondly call the older gay, can always be found stuck to the wall of any gay bar, hungrily watching in the midst the throng. They are always there, but seldom noticed. Soon I too will be a player no more; just a passive observer of other people's amusements. Sigh. What's the point in that?

No transition, no advancement... just stagnation.