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Thomas Gass, a dentist in California, has survived the curse—twice. The curse? Gass is a gay gentleman whose only sexual attraction is to men significantly older than he is.

Gass lost his first companion, 28 years his senior, through the slowly decaying effects of Lou Gehrig’s disease after they had been together for 13 years. After recovering from his grief, he set up love again with a man 18 years older but endured another tragic loss when his second partner died of pancreatic cancer after they had spent 17 years together. Still a relatively fresh man, Gass might wonder whether or not to take a chance on loving an older gentleman again. For him, however, the choice is between an older man or no man at all. Gass and his friends—all of whom had missing older life partners—have labeled their abiding sexual attraction “the curse of entity attracted to older men.”

I began to study lgbtq+ relationships with age disparities while conducting research for my book, Finally Out: Letting Go of Living Straight. Gass and I started to correspond after he and his friends had read and discussed my essay