Introduction

At the heart of this chapter are the stories of 11 gay men, aged 43–71, who spoke about adventurous sexual encounters with strangers. It would be an exaggeration to say that they structured their lives around casual sex but, as their stories show, they were willing and able to make time available to maximise opportunities for sexual adventures.

Analysis of the stories revealed two narratives. The first was the effect of age on their ability to satisfy their sexual desire, that is, whether or how an ageing body constrained their sexual activity. The second narrative related to age preference and whether they sought encounters with younger men or older men and their success in doing so. Both narratives included evidence of the effects of ageism and loss, how these are expressed, and, in line with the work of Simpson (2015), how they can be resisted.

This chapter rests on stories appearing across three books that the author has written on gay men's life stories and which focus on age and ageing. The first (Robinson, 2008) concerned three generations of Australian gay men, aged 22–79, and how changing social norms affected the ease with which they could be public about their sexuality. The second considered how age and ageing affected gay men's relationships (Robinson, 2013). Based on material from an international sample of men aged 20–87, it examined long-term relationships, fatherhood, various lived experiences of single men and generational differences regarding gay marriage. The third book (Robinson, 2017) looked at gay men's working lives from the perspective of three generations of gay men from the same international sample, as well as their views and experiences on retirement from paid work and on old age/later life.

The central argument in this chapter is that while ageing gay men do acquire and can call on ‘resources of ageing’ (Heaphy, 2007) to combat gay ageism, these are limited by the constraints imposed by their ageing bodies and how these are understood. In the case of those who continue to include in their lives episodes of sexual adventure, whose stories are examined in this chapter, there is evidence that the effects of physical ageing or illness can impinge on their making full use of resources of ageing.