shame and secrecy.
I believe my report reflects on an old tradition in ethnographic writing: narrating a captivating account from the field and its interpretation in terms relevant to broader issues in the anthropological repertoire. My discussion is not intended to introduce yet another convincing proof of the faults of the positivist approach in ethnographic research. We have long since lost the “innocence” of the founders of anthropology. “Have your data right … shut your mouth and open your ears”—these were the farewell warnings and blessings my supervisor, the late Max Gluckman, offered novices on their way to the field. These methodological prescriptions have become part of our professional folklore and the stuff of nostalgia for a lost golden age and its promise of “reliable” ethnographic testimonies. We are convinced there is no “true report” from the field in the legal or scientific meanings of the term.
The case that instigated this thesis serves as a mirror image of the constraints that might hinder the efforts to gain “true” observations and “valid” reports in research conducted by ethnographers who are committed to a rigorous fieldwork methodology.4 However, unlike earlier critiques of the theoretically misconstrued, ethnocentric, or distorted colonialist perception of the native’s behavior, my discourse exposes the human condition of the subjects of the research, and sometimes of the researchers themselves, which might handicap the ethnographer’s mission designed to realize the Malinowskian vision.
In this light, a symposium I attended at the packed annual AAA meeting grand ballroom session, in the late 1980s, dedicated to the Mead-Freeman controversy, seems now a grotesque show. It needed a dead tribal chief and a vengeful maverick to expose the poor quality of field research and the lack of good supervision that might have forestalled a presumably shabby ethnographic work. My supervisors at Manchester, avowed fieldworkers and propagators of the “extended case-method,” never inquired about my field experiences or asked to see my field notes. They were ignorant about my field site, the language, and the local culture, as Franz Boas was equally nescient about Samoa half a century earlier. Yet they could evince some unkind reactions when they felt that the novice anthropologist was displaying personal weaknesses adjusting to his/her designated field site. The “human condition” in its various manifestations was not part of the constraints condoned by the propagators of that research project.
For better or worse, we continue to rely on the anthropologist’s personal integrity, dedication, and creative ethnographic imagination. Despite the doubts often expressed about the quintessential position of fieldwork in the craft of anthropology,5 I assume that the method will stay with us as a major identifying disciplinary marker for many years to come.6 A growing awareness of our subjects’ sensitivities, as well as of our own role in their social and moral world, might enhance the authority of ethnographic work—more particularly when anthropologists move away from the “classic” field sites in Third World countries.
In conclusion, I gained this “educational” revelation through the agency of a close friend who also took on the role of a master teacher in my entry into the field of gay life. As mentioned earlier, Jeff and Martin moved to Florida in 2010; although we call each other occasionally, we may never meet again. I feel like Victor Turner, among my models for ethnographic writings, on the day he parted from Mochuna. We anthropologists owe so much of our professional gains and our emotional well-being to the natives, in an African village or in metropolitan New York, who open their hearts and unlock the gates to let us penetrate their personal and social worlds.
CHAPTER 3
The Regretless Seniors
I begin my presentation of the organizations I observed at the Center with the SAGE group (Senior Action in Gay Environment). They appeared on the list of the daily activities I saw at the reception desk when I first entered the building and began my regular observations at that site. The participants defined themselves as the younger membership cohort of that organization, so I thought I would not appear conspicuous in any way among them.1 They received me very warmly and, as it turned out, were the subject of the first paper I wrote about my work at the Center. I introduce them first in this volume because the discourse they carried on at the meetings seemed to encapsulate some of the major issues of gay men’s life that came to occupy my project in its later phase. I believe that had I left my notes on that group as data for analysis by somebody else, he or she might not have concluded that they represented people who defined themselves as “seniors.” The stories, complaints, and experiences related by the participants could often be told and listened to in the company of their “juniors” in gay men’s society.
Studies of older gay men have yielded contradictory results. Some, like Lee (1989), supported the traditional assumption that having lost their physical attractiveness in a youth-oriented gay society, their lives are characterized by isolation and invisibility. But others, Berger’s (1996 [1982]) in particular, found that older gay men are no less adjusted than older heterosexuals. Furthermore, his respondents reported a level of sexual activity that belied the stereotype of the sexless life of older gay men. But whatever their major perspective, all studies emphasized the importance of involvement in close social networks and organizations for successful aging in gay society (e.g., Simon and Gagnon 1969; Berger 1996 [1982]; Slusher, Mayer, and Dunkle 1996). The expansion of gay and lesbian institutions in recent years has brought with it the development of organizations specializing in the needs of older lesbians and gay men in the urban environment in particular. Among the first and most successful of these is SAGE.
The Circle’s Meetings
The SAGE group met every week; regular participants rarely missed a meeting. The fact that they were always held in the same homey room contributed to the feeling of familiarity. I was not the only new attendee at my first SAGE meeting. All present introduced themselves, and the newcomers explained their reasons for joining the group. I presented myself as an Israeli anthropologist on sabbatical who was interested in gay life and mentioned my book on the gay synagogue. This information did not prompt any questions or comments, so I never again raised the subject. While members were sometimes interested in my experiences as an Israeli, they never inquired about my occupational life. I felt that emphasizing my professional interests would detract from the feeling of comradeship.
As indicated in Chapter 2, the anthropologist conducting research in a Western urban setting resides on a different ethical plateau and may find himself/herself acting somewhat clandestinely. Much later, during a stay in New York in 1999, I was more explicit to the group about my research intentions. Again, this disclosure prompted no demurral on their part. Only one participant, Peter (among the few blacks and who is also encountered in Chapters 2 and 10) approached me after the meeting and showed interest in my work. I was a full participant in the group meetings, in discussions and “sharings,” but avoided revealing intimate details of my life. More than once it was suggested that I take the role of facilitator, but I was careful not to take any leading position. When I returned after a six-month absence, I was welcomed by the old-timers and immediately felt comfortable regardless of the many new faces.
A meeting usually drew about fifteen to twenty members, among whom I gradually identified a core of six to eight men who knew each other well (during my visits in 1999 attendance expanded to nearly thirty participants). Most of the core had been attending for over a year—some for several years. A few, however, had joined the group only shortly before my arrival and soon became regulars. Most attendees were in their late forties to early sixties; only a few infrequent visitors were much younger or older. All were “single,” though many had been involved in longstanding relationships that had ended in death, or more often “divorce.” Almost all regulars were college educated. Most were—or had been before retirement—successfully employed in a wide range
