A Conspicuous Absence
Valerie Taylorās 1988 novel Ripening is a slender volume, the fourth in a series of lesbian pulp novels, which has, by now, fallen largely into obscurity. Nevertheless, it contains what is perhaps one of the most unexpected openings in American literature:
How often does one encounter the phrase āgrandmotherās loverā in print? How often does āloverā in this case designate a woman?The telephone was ringing. Erika dropped her briefcase, turned the key, pushed the door open, and got there before it stopped. āHello? Hello?āāMiss Frohmann? Erika?āāIsabel?ā Erikaās forehead puckered. Iāve been her grandmotherās lover for more than twenty years and she still doesnāt know what to call me. Well, be fair, the kid never heard of me until six months ago and she hasnāt exactly been eager to get acquainted. (Taylor 1988, 1)
Both Isabelās insecurity in her interaction with Erika and the revelation that the womenās relationship has been kept a secret from the granddaughter for all her life point to the obscurity that characterizes Erikaās identity as the āgrandmotherās lover.ā It is an obscurity that has marked older LGBTQ personsā lives in North America and representations of queer aging in North American fiction alike for a long time. Even today, three decades later, the novelās opening resonates with a persistent blind spot in North American culture,1 one that is not limited to grandmothers. How often do we think of grandfathers as having boyfriends, or of trans-persons as grandparents? How often do we encounter representations of older persons as anything other than heterosexual? In the second decade of the twenty-first century growing old, aging, and old age are still principally imagined in heteronormative terms.
This project began in 2010, when two seemingly unrelated subjects clicked together. I first encountered age studies in a graduate course on āGender and Aging in Literature.ā It was this course that made me aware of age as a significant category of identity and meaning-making. I began to take note of (often stereotypical) representations of aging, and specifically old age, in novels, in advertising, in films, on television. For this reason, age was an element to which I paid particular attention when, around the same time, I became interested in queer fiction and queer theory. Whereas I found that, generally, positive representations of aging were greatly outnumbered by what age studies scholar Margaret Gullette (2004) calls the ādecline narrativeā of aging (i.e., narratives that equate aging with loss and decay), I suddenly realized that representations of aging LGBTQ persons seemed to be missing almost altogether from narratives about aging as well as from works of queer fiction. After some research, it became clear that only very few scholars had noted this absence, and even fewer were looking at fiction. One of the few whose research focused on LGBTQ aging was Nancy J. Knauer, a law professor, who explained this particular blind spot as a result of overlapping stereotypes. She pointed out, āIt is easy to do the math. If seniors are perceived to be asexual (or at least no longer sexual), and gay men and lesbians are primarily defined by their sexuality, then seniors, by definition, cannot be gay or lesbianā (2011, 6). At first glance, the same seemed to hold true for fictional representations as well. Yet the more attention I paid to the subject, the more it became apparent that where older LGBTQ characters seemingly remained absent, age and growing older frequently formed central elements of narratives with queer characters. It also gradually became clear that representations of queer aging did existāthey simply did not seem to receive any attention. As so often in history, it turned out that the āuncharted territoryā was not actually unoccupied. A āblind spot,ā after all, merely indicates an inability to perceive whatās there from oneās current vantage point, rather than the absence of something to see.
In her book The Becoming of Age, Pamela Gravagne aptly captures what is perhaps the most significant premise of aging studies in the humanities; the conviction that āthe pictures we paint of growing older and the stories we tell about aging and old age matterā because āthey actually constitute both our understanding and our lived experience of what it means to grow older ā our becoming of ageā (2013, 1). Two main āpicturesā or, perhaps more fittingly, storylines currently dominate North Americanās understanding of aging.2 The decline narrative is one of them, and probably the most ubiquitous way in which North American societies imagine aging into old age. Who is not familiar with laconic sayings such as āOld age aināt no place for sissies,ā and who has not heard or told anecdotes about the various aches and pains of growing older? How often do people of various ages say, āI am getting oldā in reference to something that they experience as a loss of some ability? And while these instances are often amusing and harmless enough, collectively they paint aging as an arduous process, a losing battle against the decline of mental and physical abilities.
More recently, the aging-as-decline narrative has been overtaken by the concept of āsuccessful aging.ā At first glance, the concept provides a positive, invigorating narrative of aging because it is defined by such indicators as continued good health and an active and independent life (Rowe and Kahn 1997; Katz and Calasanti 2015). Any online search for āsuccessful agingā will turn up an array of images showing smiling silver- and white-haired couples riding bicycles, walking along the beach, playing with grandchildren, and so on. What is wrong with this picture? Two things. First, as age studies scholars have observed, responsibility for success is put on the individual, ignoring systemic factors such as gender, race, class, and sexuality as central factors that affect a personās life course and aging. Fuelled by the underlying perpetual threat that one could fail to age successfully, the pressure to ensure that one remains youthful, active, healthy, reinforces anxieties of the decline narrative (Sandberg 2008; Katz and Marshall 2004). Second, and of prime interest to this book, successful aging is exclusively imagined in heteronormative terms, meaning that it ties in with a world view that assumes heterosexuality to be the only normal and natural expression of sexuality. As Barbara Marshall and Linn Sandberg have noted, āheteronormativity and its promises of happiness constitute a powerful narrative that organizes dominant understandings of the good (later) lifeā (2017, 3).
The realization that heterosexuality is a prerequisite for imagining aging as successful explains the conspicuous absence of older LGBTQ persons from discourses and cultural representations of aging in North America, which seems to find no place for queer agingāat least not within the boundaries of successful aging . Growing old might generally be considered a strenuous process, but it is especially so if one ages in ways that challenge or defy the norms of the heteronormative life course. While aging into old age has rarely been the focus of queer theory, queer theorists such as Lee Edelman and J. Jack Halberstam have explored hegemonic temporal norms and have revealed their strong regulatory influence. As age studies scholar Mary Russo has noted, in North America in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, lifetime is presented through the ādominant fiction of chronological aging [which] plots our lives in continually increasing numbersā (1999, 25).3 What seems like a rather obvious fact is indeed worth noting, as it has extensive ramifications. The temporal norms that suffuse our lives establish and police authoritative āblueprintsā or āscriptsā of how individuals imagine their life courses or plan their futures. As Sarah Schulman puts it,
These scripts go by many names. Edelman has coined the term āreproductive futurismā (2004), whereas Tom Boellstorff speaks of the logic of āstraight timeā (2007). Halberstam refers to āheterofuturityā (2011), and Elizabeth Freeman uses the concept of āchrononormativityā (2010). All four terms point to the fact that temporal norms are so deeply embed...[e]ven though many heterosexuals avoid the fate/destiny of romance/marriage/parenthood, it is a well worn and instantly recognizable structure upon which most mainstream representations are based. In other words, most bourgeois straight people already know the storyline their lives are supposed to follow before their lives are even begun. (2012, 83)