Intergenerational love does happen. But not often. Most often it is a hebephile preying on the vulnerability of an emotionally needy youth.
The recent documentary film Chris & Don: A Love Story chronicles the famous relationship between the writer Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy, an artist, that lasted from 1953 until Isherwood's death in 1996. They met on a California beach when Isherwood was 48 and Bachardy 18.
Then there were W. H. Auden, the poet, and Chester Kallman, also a poet. They met when Auden was 32 and Kallman was 18. Their relationship continued until Auden's death in 1973. Kallman, with whom he collaborated on opera libretti, died just two years later.
Among other contemporary successful May-December relationships was that of the artist Paul Cadmus, who had a 35-year partnership with the much younger Jon Anderson, a model and artist, ending only with Cadmus' death in 1999 at age 95.
In ancient Greece, of course, such relationships were not uncommon, most famously that between the Emperor Hadrian and the youth Antinous. The youth died under unknown circumstances in the Nile River and Hadrian went into deep mourning and died not many years afterward.
These relationships were, of course, exceptional. There are others less well-known between partners separated by decades. And it is quite common for older straight men to acquire 'arm candy,' very young women whose motivation might not be entirely amorous. Now, too, as recent court cases have shown, women are seducing barely postpubescent boys. But there continues to be some opprobrium attached to older women who marry younger men.
There is a difference between pedophilia, an attraction to children, and hebephilia, an attraction to youth, named after Hebe, the cupbearer to the gods in Greek mythology. In the scandal involving Roman Catholic priests, the men in their cassocks and fear-of-God authority who prey on both boys and girl are mostly pedophiles.
Hebephiles seek out emotionally vulnerable youths who often are conflicted about their sexual identity. These youths look for the affection of adult men because of their own needs and are shattered when they are used and dumped. They are emotionally shackled and cannot flee because of the power imbalance. For the hebephiles, their attachment to their 'boy toy' of the moment often is transient and they soon seek other tender young flesh under the guise of love and mentoring. However, the enslavement is sometimes so complete that the youth cannot leave the man and goes missing from his family for years.
I write from experience. When I was 15, one of my father's World War II Army friends, 'Tubbs,' moved to our southern town. He lived in a rented room and was lonely for company he could not find at the American Legion. My parents thought it was very nice of him to invite me to go to dinner with him on occasion. Then one day after I had been swimming with him he lured me to his dreary, sweltering room and molested me. I fled. I ran home and told my father, whose response was, 'I didn't know he was like that.' And that was it. I went to my room and cried alone and he never told my mother. Thanks, Dad.
Then when I was 17 a church organist, Earl, took a fancy to my comely blond youth. He, too, was an Army veteran, age 36. I was deeply attached to him and my parents thought this was very nice because, after all, he was a church organist. After a few months, he dumped me for a 15-year-old.
I was an insecure college freshman when yet another mid-30s Army veteran, Jim, picked me up in the library; then after getting what he wanted, he dumped me. A nicer man, a mid-30s Ph.D. student, then seduced me. The carnal part did not last long because I was not comfortable with it. But we remained lifelong friends until his death at age 94.
In retrospect, I seem to have been a dirty-old-man magnet. That is a curse I would not wish on any adolescent.
In my long-ago youth, 'coming out' had quite a different meaning from its current usage. In those days it was assumed that young gay men had their first sexual experiences with older men who 'brought them out.' It was not imagined that such experiences were painful and left distrust and deep emotional scars. And they had nothing to do with 'coming out,' the deliberate announcing of one's gayness to parents and the world. I survived pretty much intact, depending on whom you ask. Others are not so lucky.
