I love alliteration. You know, the "Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers" sort of thing. So it’s no surprise that I enjoy reading Monday Morning Musings with John, a single sheet production that’s written and distributed in our condo by a retired neighbor who enjoys sharing his thoughts on life periodically. As a lover of alliteration, however, I can’t help but wish that John would change his name to Milt or Mack or Mark. Then instead of 3Ms, Monday Morning Musings, we’d have 4Ms. And if you wanted to toss in a bit of German for an international flavor the paper might become Monday Morning Musings mit Mark. I like that.

The one that arrived on my doorstep a few days ago was an "Oh, for the good old days," lament not uncommon for those of us with gray hair. John had been to Plant City, Florida, the winter strawberry capital of the world, and found that strawberries are now big and red and beautiful, but relatively tasteless. The ones he remembered from childhood were small and delicious and sweet.

Likewise, he continued, "…navel oranges are not what they used to be!…even fortune cookies are not what they used to be." What I liked best was John’s observation that "even insults are not what they used to be." As proof of this assertion he offered Mark Twain’s quip that, "I didn’t attend his funeral but I sent a note saying that I approved of it." And Abraham Lincoln’s famous put-down, "He can compress the most words into the smallest idea of any man I know"—an appropriate observation as we endure two years of Presidential primaries.

John concluded his musings with, "Even Florida is not what it used to be. Neither am I."

While I share John’s sense of sadness at the loss of the flavor of the strawberries of the past—and I’d add to his list the taste of old fashioned beefsteak tomatoes ripened on the vine and apple cider that’s fresh pressed, not filtered, pasteurized and prettified—I’m really quite glad Florida’s not what it used to be. Delaware’s not what it used to be; I’m not what I used to be.

All of us at times wish selectively for aspects of the good old days that we recall with warmth and nostalgia, but do I really want to bang around the Everglades in hip boots dodging alligators? Do I really want to cross the Chesapeake on a ferry so that I can sit outside my Methodist camp meeting cottage in Rehoboth sipping iced tea? Do I really want to return to the days when gays and lesbians were in the closet —and the door was locked?

Florida is not what it used to be; it’s better.

Delaware is not what it used to be; it’s better.

I’m not what I used to be. But even with two artificial knees, a lousy hip and a coronary stent that’s non-functioning—I’m better.

I reached adolescence in the forties when even the New York Times, the paper with "all the news that’s fit to print" never referred to homosexuality. In their Sunday Book Review, which I read zealously in the hope of gaining some smidgen of self understanding, internationally known homosexual authors, such as Andre Gide or Gunter Grass, were referred to in terms of perversion and deviance. I hoped and prayed that those vile terms didn’t apply to me—but I wasn’t sure. Like most other gay men of that era, I masqueraded as straight—super straight in order to avoid suspicion. The overriding fear of my teens, my twenties, my thirties was that if my friends and family really knew who I was deep inside, they’d reject me. Society in those years was primed to reject gays and lesbians and I was part of that society with my own strong streak of internalized homophobia.

It wasn’t until Anita Bryant in 1977 mounted her infamous bigoted Save Our Children campaign in Miami-Dade that I forced my closet door open and began to acknowledge who I am—first to myself (the hardest "coming out") and eventually to family and friends. Do I want to return to those closeted days for the sake of sweeter strawberries? Hell no!

I think it must be hard for gays who have come of age post-Stonewall to understand, or even imagine, what life was like for the members of our "perverted and deviant" clan before a few drag queens in New York said, "Enough! We’re not taking this police brutality shit any longer." But those of us who are gay and gray remember those years acutely.

By the same token it’s hard for me to believe the progress that’s occurred post-Stonewall. I have to pinch myself at times to believe that I’m an out gay senior with lots of out gay senior friends (and some non-gay, non-senior as well) living in a community that is not only accepting of gays but courting gays to visit and settle—discretionary income, you know. Furthermore, I regularly send e-mails and letters to politicos in support of gay marriage, gay immigration and equal rights for gays and lesbians.

The good old days? John’s right; the strawberries aren’t what they used to be. Most of them taste like cardboard. But do I want to go back? No way, not me!