Start by showing up… even if only virtually
In a queer women’s Facebook group I belong to, someone recently posted the following question:
How does a ‘baby gay’, say in their thirties, go about meeting people in that age bracket, or even older, when they’re shy about approaching people? Especially during lockdown?
All the advice, please!
Now, I’m pretty sure they were talking about “meeting” and “approaching people” with romantic or sexual intent. But even though my intent this year has been far from either, the question got me thinking about how I have met and developed strong friendships with other queer women during COVID, even though I’m extremely shy. Maybe my experience could be useful to women looking for love? I think it might, especially since every great romantic relationship I’ve ever had grew out of being part of my community and/or through the friendships made there.
So let’s rewind a bit, to pre-COVID times.
First of all, there’s no way anyone could ever call me a ‘baby gay’, whether the term is used in reference to age or experience. I’m both older and I’ve been out in every way possible longer than I was ever closeted. But being “shy about approaching people” definitely applies to me, both when it comes to dating and making friends, and after my last relationship ended almost three years ago, I found myself feeling very alone when it turned out “our” friends had actually been “hers”. (A hard lesson but lesson learned.)
So what was a shy-but-totally-out, freshly-single, ‘elder gay’ to do? Why, go hang out with the straight people, of course.
After about six months of feeling isolated, with no clue how to rebuild any kind of social circle or community, I joined a Meetup group dedicated to Happy Hour. It was almost all straight people — I met just one other gay person — but since I had zero interest in dating anyway, it was perfect for me. Happy Hour meant I could show up for a drink or two, chat as much or as little as I wanted, and get the heck out. I don’t have the energy to hide from anyone, so I was very open about being gay and no one batted an eye. (I know I’m lucky, living in a very open city.) Anyway, I ended up having a lot of fun and making some good friends. They were hetero through and through but I did my best not to hold it against them.
After about a year of hanging out almost exclusively with the straights, I began to crave the company of my people. I have some old friends, gay men (or The Gay Boys, as we call them), I see once or twice a month (when COVID allows), but I was starting to miss being part of a community of women. I’d also started thinking that perhaps dating again might eventually be a possibility, somewhere down the road. And around a couple of corners. But for that to happen, I was going to need to start expanding the dating pool.
I went back to Meetup and looked for groups for queer folk but found they were too far away from me, or they had arbitrary age restrictions (ageist much?), or they had exclusionary membership rules I found too hard to swallow. (Or they spelled women with a y. Sorry, no.) So I started a new Meetup group myself, one open to gay, lesbian, queer, bi, enbie, trans, and ? folk, with no age restriction other than being of legal drinking age. Because, you know… Happy Hour.
This was pre-COVID, so I’d organize an event once a month or so. We’d go for drinks, dinner, brunch, a games night, a movie, a hike, or whatever people suggested. It was slow going at first — all kinds of people signed up for the group almost immediately but getting them to turn up in person was another story. But every month, I’d show up — even when I was discouraged and didn’t want to, and even when almost no one else did, I showed up. Eventually, patience paid off. People started showing up and they were showing up regularly.
Then COVID hit and it all had to stop. Or did it? I’m a shy introvert who works from home even in non-COVID times, but the beginning days of lockdown were totally surreal. It was hard being at home 24/7, even for me. So at the end of March, I decided to take a chance and give the Virtual Happy Hour thing a try. And again, people showed up. It still surprises me but they continue to show up to this day — we’ve been meeting on Zoom every Saturday night since March. When restrictions eased a bit in the summer, we also had a few socially-distanced picnics in the park and a couple of Happy Hour hangouts on the patio of a local gay bar, but since September, we’ve been back on Zoom exclusively.
The Meetup group is a little over 125 people strong, and a few will drift in for a Zoom or two once in a while and then drift away, but there’s a core group of nine women (including me) who have shown up nearly every week for nine months, without fail. And it’s a diverse group — we have regulars ranging in age from their 20s to 60+, including folks who are coupled, single, lesbian, bi, queer, trans, enbie… you name it. Some of us have been out forever, others less so, and one woman just came out to her family recently.
And we talk about everything. The latest COVID news, coming out, relationships, the US election — we even did an election night Zoom. We talk about books, TV and movies, cooking, family, good hiking trails, foraging for mushrooms, Dr. Bonnie. We talk about what we’ll do post-COVID (there will be much hugging involved, apparently, which sounds good even to this non-hugger). And we have all the squishy conversations about all the things — sex, race, gender, identity, feminism, politics, even the joys of the butch/femme and top/bottom dynamic, though people tend to shy away from anything that looks like a ‘label’ or that smells like a ‘binary’ these days. And then we’ll grab another beer or glass of wine and talk about that.
Have I met anyone I’d be interested in dating? Nope. But even though we were little more than acquaintances nine months ago, I now consider this core group of women my closest friends, and the larger group, the ones who drift in and out, is my community. And who knows? Maybe one day, someone will start showing up who might spark something. Hey, I might be an elder gay but I’m not dead, yet.
Even though, “If you build it, they will come,” is a misquote, I’ve always thought it was a nice idea in theory. Yet I’ve also thought it was an over-simplification and maybe even a bit naive. But this experience has taught me that it can sometimes be true — but only if you show up first. I had to show up for myself, by stepping outside my comfort zone to both build it in the first place and to persevere when it appeared no one was coming. And later, when they did come, I had to show up, and continue showing up during a pandemic, for them.
And the greatest gift in the whole thing is the fact that they keep showing up for me, too.