I Suddenly Hate Aging and It Makes Me Feel Like a Bad Lesbian

This is The Parlour, a place for intimate conversation, a real-time archive, a shared diary passed between a rotating cast of queer characters every week in an attempt to capture a kaleidoscopic view of what it’s like to be a queer person right here, right now.

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Last weekend, I competed in a tennis tournament. In the semi-finals, I encountered an opponent who looked young, very young. She wore a blue tank top emblazoned with the name of the Central Florida high school with one of the best tennis programs in the state. I figured she was a recent grad. I’ve encountered some alumni on the USTA league circuit, strong and confident girls of 19 and 20 who can’t legally drink but sometimes sneak sips of champagne during post-match celebrations. My baby-faced opponent eyed me as we made our way onto our assigned court. We plopped our bags on the benches and mentally prepared to play in the 90-degree heat. I physically prepared, too, doing the little stretches that help prevent cramping and post-match joint pain. She did not stretch. As I tried to do some mental math to figure out her age — surely she was at least 18, as the tournament had separate competition categories for juniors and adults — she broke the ice.

How old are you? she asked, with all the immodesty of a very young person.

32, I said. 33 in a couple weeks actually.

She didn’t hide the shock from her face, but she quickly gave a compliment, something about how she never would have guessed. Still, from the look on her face, I may as well have told her I have one foot in the grave.

I turned the question back on her. How old are you?

Fifteen, she said. Fif. Teen. Yes, she was competing in the juniors category for singles, too. But nothing had stopped her from entering adult women’s singles. (It helps that her dad organizes a lot of the tournaments at these particular facilities.)

My tennis bag, sitting on the bench between us while I stretched and she did not, is older than her.

***I don’t know when I became a vain person, but I swear I used to be better. I used to go out without makeup and knotted hair. I won’t pretend I’ve ever had a perfect relationship to my body and my appearance. The amount of time and mental energy I’ve spent on body and facial hair removal has probably taken years off my life. I think about my mustache way more than anyone on the planet thinks about my mustache.

But my anxiety around aging is somewhat recent and has taken me completely off guard. In my early twenties — hell, in my teens even — I would have gladly pushed a button to make me turn 40. Undergirding this desire was a belief that surely by then I would have a stronger sense of what I desire, of who I am, of how to live the life I’m meant to live. I yearned for the self-knowledge that seemed only possible with age and experience. I had failed at heterosexuality, and I was flailing at queerness. I felt an ambivalence about being the “baby gay,” simultaneously loving the attention and affection I got from older queers and also wishing they’d take me seriously. I wanted to somehow be the baby and also be 40, with a stable and successful career and an even older hot wife.

In 2018, when I was 26, my hair started turning gray. Not all of it, but many silvery strands streaming out from the crown of my head, almost seemingly overnight. I’ve blamed the first Trump presidency and my ex. But it doesn’t take much digging to see it’s probably just genetics; my father has had salt and pepper (heavy on the salt these days, as we like to tease him) hair since he was a young dad. He can pull it off better though; he’s a man.

There I go, reinforcing gendered and patriarchal notions of who gets to age gracefully and who does not. Trust me: I beat myself up over it. When my gray hairs emerged, two close friends were shocked to learn I was so self-conscious about it. But you love older women, they reasoned. I do, it’s true. It’s not even just that I appreciate wrinkles and gray hair on women; I think it’s hot. I just don’t have the same attraction to aging when it comes to myself.

None of what I’m describing is particularly novel. It is easy to romanticize adulthood and age in youth and easy to envy youth as you age. Suddenly stressing about aging on the precipice of turning 33 is woefully cliche. Being a lesbian doesn’t inoculate me from the pressures of beauty standards and patriarchal conceptions of womanhood. But when I stress about gray hairs and aging skin, I do feel like a bad dyke. I feel like I’m setting my own traps to fall into.

***Becoming a competitive athlete in my thirties has not helped. Or, I should say, it has helped in some ways and not in others. My relationship to my body is in many ways the best it has ever been. Strength training unexpectedly made me less likely to slip into disordered eating habits, not more. In many technical aspects, I’m a better tennis player now than I was when I was 15. My shots are cleaner. My serve is more consistent. My mental game is tight.

But, as I’ve joked to many teammates and opponents, I might be able to run to a dropshot like I could as a teen, but the recovery takes three times as long. The 15 year old at the tournament beat me, of course she did. She got to every dropshot I tried on her, dropped me right back, barely broke a sweat the whole time. She didn’t even stretch.

It’s hard not to think of the what ifs as a later-in-life amateur athlete. What if I still had the endurance and agility of a teenager now that my groundstrokes are so good? What if I’d actually committed to strength training and conditioning more when I was a teenage tennis player and hadn’t just coasted by on youthful energy and endurance? What if I could merge the best parts of then and now and become a superhero version of myself?

It’s all very silly, and no amount of wistful yearning for my youthful skin or joints does any good or changes the reality of my tennis game, which hey, is pretty fucking good. I may have lost to the girl younger than half my age, but I gave her a good match. I lost the first set 1-6 but came back to finish the second set 4-6. I’ll take those five games. And I’ll take her compliments on my playing style. She expected fluffy, high, no-pace balls. She expected, in other words, for me to play like I’m old.

Between sets, my opponent slathered thick sunblock on her face. Sorry this stuff makes me look like a ghost, she said. I just don’t want to look old.

Fifteen years old and already worried about aging. I stopped myself before I could reply, Olivia Rodrigo’s voice suddenly playing in my head: If someone tells me one more time “Enjoy your youth,” I’m gonna cry.

I hate that she has been made to feel this way. I know I’m part of the problem. I also hate when people react to my own vanity and anxieties around aging like I’m a helpless victim. I want two contradictory things to be true at once: to be comfortable with aging and to not be judged for my discomfort about aging.

In tennis, I’ve found a way to live inside the contradictions, at least a little bit. I want the endurance and recovery time of a young person, but I also know how to push myself without breaking my body. Stretching doesn’t make me feel old; it makes me feel strong. And hey, I’m queer. If there’s one discomfort I’m used to dealing with, it’s the strange strain of wanting something you cannot have.

In two days, I’ll turn 33. My tennis bag, a gift from my parents on my 15th birthday, will turn 18. The shoulder strap is broken, and it’s frayed and faded in spots. I’m endeared to it, the same way I’m endeared to age in others. It still does what it’s supposed to do. It’s cool because it’s old. The brand doesn’t even exist anymore. I wish I could show myself the same affection.

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