CAMPOut: Hitting the Speed Limit

And when you write a first person column, incorporating the amusing antics of others, you have to tell on yourself sometimes, too.

So the truth is, I’m older than I ever imagined I’d be. I bought my first home in 1975, and I can remember staring in disbelief at the mortgage paper noting loan payoff in 2004. It seemed unimaginably distant.

Since then, of course, I got rid of both that house and that spouse. However, it is now perilously close to 2004, and there will be WaWa’s on Mars by the time I pay off my current digs.

I’m in the pharmacy now more than the liquor store, and have a slew of minor age-related ailments (okay, maybe they’re Jalapeno and stress related) but I still feel a lot younger than my driver’s license admits. Am I deluded or, as some magazines suggest, is 55 the new 35?

Okay, 45???

Within the past few months, as my birthday approached, I found myself doing things unbecoming a woman my age and I liked it.

For instance, America Online has a roster of sounds you can adopt to announce your online presence. If you instant message, your signature sound accompanies your comment.

My adopted son-the-comedian told me about this stuff and helped me select my audio John Hancock. We auditioned a symphony of instruments ending up with the most disgusting of barnyard calls. He’d type "hi" with a bleat and I’d answer with a burp. He’d boing and I’d bray.

We’d gotten to the protracted electronic flatulence when I was laughing too hard to continue. I told him we had to stop because my stomach hurt, but I’d forgotten to change the sound and my message came with a loud fart. I collapsed in hysterics over the keys. Is this any way for a woman who would have gray hair if she didn’t dye it to behave?????

One night a party of six sat at my dining room table playing Trivial Pursuit, and having more fun than I can ever remember overhearing when my parents had dinner guests. The only way we were reminded of our age was from the questions in my two-decade old edition of the game.

"What presidential assassin is due for parole in 1986?" (Yipes! Is he out?????)

"What’s the capitol of West Germany?" (um, where IS West Germany???")

"What is the Soviet Union’s ruling political body called?" (Defunct?)

Ashamed as we were to admit it, we did know that the answer to "What musician’s license plate is ‘A1ANA2’ ?" was Lawrence Welk. But hey, we were quick to remind ourselves that we also knew who Christina Aguilera was. (We’ll, some of us knew…)

But the question that most amused us was "What U.S. President declared ‘the White House had no involvement whatever in this particular incident?’"

Geez, what president didn’t? From Iran-Contragate to Zipper-gate and now State of the Uniongate, that card’s not outdated.

On the weekend of my birthday, while my spouse and houseguests opted for sleep, my son and I headed for the new dance club AM, in the old AMES store on Route One. It was very clever (not to mention cost effective) just to lop off the ES for their sign. Of course, if money were no object they could have added an FL to the existing sign and made a great statement.

For the record, I loved the place. It’s big enough so you can actually find a corner to sit and talk, where the music doesn’t overpower human speech; there are plenty of places to sit; the dance floor is huge; and bars are all over the place.

Of course, I could see all this because we got there at 11 p.m., long before the club crowd finished dinner and dancing in town. The place was starting to fill up by 12:30 when Jacob’s Last Stand was perilously close to over.

But it was my June journey to the DC Pride festival that really told the tale. Subtitled "How Old People Go to Pride," the day started with checklists. My friend Joan and I made sure we had sweaters for a chill, water for our medications, sunscreen to slather ourselves with the Elmer’s Glue-like SPF45 and inhalers for going to dinner in a DC restaurant without the benefit of Ruth Ann’s smoking ban.

We left Rehoboth twice, departing with glorious abandon, but turning around three miles up Route One because we couldn’t remember if we’d let the dogs back into the house or pressed the button to put the garage door down. We had, but if that wasn’t me channeling my grandmother, nothing was.

Once we got to the DC ‘burbs we hopped the Metro into the City. My son told me which stop to get off, but we still worried we wouldn’t know how to find the festival. No need. Exiting the train, we were swept up in a roiling sea of young, pierced, tattooed, baby-carrying gay people flowing toward the fest.

Carried by the tide, we arrived at the street fair to find the most incredible diversity of people —diversity within diversity. Unlike our Rehoboth baby-boomer crowd, or the occasional event with a variety of ages represented, this diversity was truly diverse.

It was a multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-age mix with as many little old ladies like us as there were gaybies, trannies, drag queens, drag kings, dykes on bikes, leathermen, gay families, etc. We had plenty of time to watch the crowd as we sat on the sidelines, resting our feet and popping Prevacid.

We did, of course, rush through dinner at that smoky Dupont Circle bar (puff twice on that inhaler) so we could get back on the Metro and back to our cars and back to Rehoboth without turning into pumpkins.

But my most age-related revelation came last Saturday at the Stonewall Democrats Fundraiser, where Congressman Barney Frank spoke to the crowd with hilarious yet very moving stories.

As we stood under the trees in the vast backyard of a home along Silver Lake, Barney Frank reminded the nearly 300 people gathered there that although gay rights have come a long way in twenty or thirty years, we shouldn’t be expected to feel grateful; we should fight for and expect full equality. He told a story of a soldier shot in the neck during World War I, who was told he was lucky to have survived. Yes, he said, but I’m not as lucky as those people who have never been shot in the neck.

Amen. This incipient geezer wants freedom from discrimination and recognition of her long-term relationship (inheritance rights, medical power of attorney, pensions, partner insurance) and all those other things married couples who have never been shot in the neck take for granted.

I don’t give a hoot whether they call it marriage or not, but I want equality before I’m too old to dance at my civil union. In the meantime, I hear that DJ Shark will be at AM this weekend doing an early night party for the gals. I think I can keep these old eyes open for that one.