Sixty-two-year-old Armistead Maupin, whose partner of two years, Christopher Turner, is in his thirties, tells AfterElton that issues of age are foremost in his mind right now:
“I think it's the central issue of our generation. There are a lot of people out there who are trying to figure out how to be good old gay people — how to do it well, how to be the best you can for your age. In my case that has to do with trying to be the best version of 62 I can imagine. Not to try and recreate something I felt I had 30 years ago. Interestingly enough, my partner, Christopher, runs a personals website for men over 40. I actually met him on the site. I saw this handsome 34-year-old there that made my heart beat faster. I bumped into him in the street a few months later and asked him for a date.”
He has had good advice for the younger generation as well. If you'll remember, he was in the news about a year ago when the “pro-family” groups were raising a stink about one of his quotes on a Starbucks coffee cup: “My only regret about being gay is that I repressed it so long. I surrendered my youth to the people I feared when I could have been out there loving someone. Don't make that mistake yourself. Life's too damn short.”
Maupin is also preparing to deliver another book in the Tales of the City series, Michael Tolliver Lives, in which Tolliver (Mouse) is now a 55-year-old gardener who has survived AIDS.
Armistead Maupin Chronicles His Gay Generation [afterelton]
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