Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome to Aging Gayfully. We're about adventure, leisure, travel, being a citizen of the world, traveling to destinations and being a part of the global community as we age and prosper in body, mind and spirit.
[00:00:28] Speaker B: Welcome to Aging Gayfully. I'm Josh.
[00:00:31] Speaker A: And I am Chris. Good day to Josh.
[00:00:35] Speaker B: Good day, sir. I have a question for you right off the bat here.
[00:00:39] Speaker A: Oh my God, it's early in the morning. Goodness.
[00:00:45] Speaker B: Are you ready and willing to sell your bowling trophies so that you can move out of the country?
[00:00:56] Speaker A: You know, I don't know.
While I do want to move, I don't know if I want to sell something that is meaningful to me like that. So I don't know. I'd have to, I'd have to think about that. Why? Why, pray tell, are you asking me this question?
[00:01:14] Speaker B: Well, Greg Luganis.
[00:01:17] Speaker A: Oh, yeah.
[00:01:19] Speaker B: The four time Olympic gold medal winner and one time silver medal winner. 65 year old Greg Louganis.
[00:01:28] Speaker A: So he's just a couple of years younger than me and a couple of years older than you.
[00:01:33] Speaker B: He's in our demographic. He has sold his, his medals, sold his house in California, many of his other possessions, and he is moving to Panama.
[00:01:48] Speaker A: Wow.
I did see a little bit of a headline about that, that he was doing that. I mean, I, I get the concept about, I mean, I'd like to sell everything and, and move to Spain or Portugal because, you know, if I make that move, I don't want to. I just want to, want to take the bare minimum. But was there any other details relating to his move?
[00:02:21] Speaker B: Well, I looked around and the only thing that I'm seeing that he's saying is that he's moving to a new country for a fresh start, to rediscover himself without all the noise of whatever's going on.
I haven't seen anything where he's getting very specific now. I can imagine because he has been an outspoken advocate for LGBTQ rights and also HIV AIDS awareness.
I can imagine that, that, that's no, in no small part why he wants to move, but he's not expressly said anything that I could find. Now, listener, if you can find something that in a little news article tucked somewhere, I'd be happy to hear it.
But he's just saying that he just wants to discover himself or rediscover himself or make a fresh start.
[00:03:15] Speaker A: Well, I certainly get that, but I think the underlying comments here is relating to the signs of the time that we're living in.
And I, I think most, most of us in the gay community are Just a little bit concerned.
[00:03:38] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:03:41] Speaker A: Where this Christian nationalism is going in America.
And, you know, I don't know. Greg Loganis, I don't, you know, I certainly watched him in the Olympics, but seeing, seeing that he's kind of in the same age bracket, I mean, I kind of get it, but a new start, a fresher start.
I don't know. I've been talking about moving to Spain for a few years now, and I've had some people say to me, well, you know, just because you move doesn't change, change anything. I thought, well, I don't know about that. I mean, I, I, I certainly get that you take yourself with you, but going to a new culture, living life differently, there's some excitement to that, especially if you're feeling uneasy about your current state. And I get that. There's days when I feel uneasy, but, you know, each person has to do what they think is best for them.
I saw something getting my bald head, remembering things here.
You know, I saw something recently with a friend on Facebook, and there was announcement, well, moving to Portugal. And I thought, ah, you know, that, that's a, you know, that's another, it's another part of the dream. But, you know, what's the underlying reason these moves are happening? And I think for a lot of folks in the LGBT community, it's somewhat, somewhat to do with the uncertainty of what's going on in the American society.
[00:05:53] Speaker B: Yeah, it becomes difficult when you see that around the world there is a trend towards far right political, authoritarian, authoritarian, fascist, however you want to.
You know, Amanda and I would have long said, why wouldn't it be great to move to the UK but right now they've got, you know, this, this political party called the Reform Party. That is, I, I believe what our Tea Party used to be. Not our Tea Party, the United States Tea Party. And then what that led into, so it starts to become a question of, well, where, where to move.
Where you can escape hate and escape human nature.
Is there anywhere to move?
[00:06:54] Speaker A: You know, I don't, I don't think so.
I mean, there's, there's certainly welcoming communities all throughout the world.
I think the challenge is to find that welcoming community, and you could find a welcoming community right here in the United States.
The challenge, I think, for a lot of people, no matter what side of the orientation fence that you're on, is trying to turn off the noise.
How, you know, what is, what is real versus what is embellished.
And that's hard to decipher right now.
[00:07:52] Speaker B: Well, it's particularly hard since now you don't know if the video that you're seeing is a real person or a generated person.
[00:08:00] Speaker A: AI has a lot to.
AI and social media have a lot to do with.
With this.
But I think that's.
It comes back to how society has changed. And I think you look back over history, that old adage, you know, history does repeat itself, and oftentimes we're not paying attention and we're seeing. Right. The obvious of what's happening in front of us.
Well, they're not going to do that. Well, I don't know. The National Guards in Los Angeles. I think they're going to Chicago or in D.C. i mean, I was fairly young in the, in the 60s when that, that the riots were going on. The fear. I remember my parents being very fearful at that time and how that transferred into us as kids. Oh, we need to go to. We need to go down to the Rasceller. You know, that was.
I love that word, Rasceller. Well, you know, it was the basement. There's no basements in Florida, by the way.
[00:09:17] Speaker B: No, I've never heard that word before.
[00:09:18] Speaker A: So you never heard the. Yeah, that's right. Because you're a native.
That's right, you're a native.
So.
But I don't know. I.
I get why people want to do it, but does it change the.
Does that comfort of moving change how you're feeling about the situation that we're currently in?
I don't, you know, I don't know. I guess that's the.
That's kind of for each person to decide what's best for them.
[00:10:01] Speaker B: Yeah. And I also worry about the trend for people who have the resources and ability to move out of an area, leaving the people who don't have the ability and resources to stay in that area.
You know, a lot of times I hear people write off the state of Florida and say, oh, you know, let's just cut Florida off. Excuse me?
Let's just cut Florida off like an appendix and just, you know, to hell with Florida and everyone needs to get out of Florida. Well, if all the people who have some sort of ability to affect change in a society, especially if they were to band together as a group, if all of them had the means to move out of a place and all they left were the people in that place who didn't have the ability or resources to defend themselves, then you are abandoning your brothers and sisters and others in a situation that would be a lot worse than if you stayed and tried to support and Tried to help and tried to fight.
[00:11:08] Speaker A: You know, we, we are aligned in our thoughts there.
But, you know, the.
I, I think the, the difference is, how do I want to say this?
People get to the point where they have to fend for themselves.
And that balance of what's right for me versus what's right for the community is challenging.
And, you know, you're using Florida as a landscape.
Florida has changed quite a bit in the last 20 some odd years.
[00:11:51] Speaker B: Oh, yes.
[00:11:52] Speaker A: It's not, you know, there's.
If you draw a line around Orlando, maybe a little south of Orlando, I mean, the, The, The. The demographics, the makeup, it's like almost two different states.
And it's.
At least from my experience, it's not as friendly as it. As it used to be.
[00:12:15] Speaker B: No, it's interesting because we'd like to go to St. Petersburg a lot. It's a wonderful community. It's beautiful. It's right there on the water.
It has a lot of what seems to me as a visitor, as a tourist, a lot of progressive ideas.
Very, very large stretch of the, the city, in fact, a street, and it escapes me what it's called, with a lot of shops and boutiques and restaurants that are owned by people. Yeah, very walkable. But. But what I'm saying is this stretch of street, large stretch of street, very LGBTQ saturated businesses in, in all that, very lovely. And I worry about a place like that because I do feel like that is a, an enclave that pretty soon, you know, the. They're going to start to look at St. Petersburg and say, okay, now we need to start erasing some of the, the rainbow sidewalks here as well.
[00:13:23] Speaker A: Well, that's going on all across Florida. That's.
[00:13:25] Speaker B: Yeah, this is what I'm saying.
[00:13:27] Speaker A: It just happened in Gainesville, in, In Fort Lauderdale.
[00:13:30] Speaker B: Yeah, it just happened here in Gainesville where there was a, A, A crosswalk that they had them remove and paint over because it was a rainbow. And somehow that's dangerous for traffic, which, by the way, I saw a statistic that said that, that actually, crosswalks like that tend to reduce accidents for whatever reason. Maybe people are paying more attention because the road in front of them is different or something. But this bullshit that we're doing this for safety reasons. Get out of here.
Get out of here. At least. At least show enough creativity to come up with.
With an explanation that works, that makes a little bit more sense.
So, you know, places like St. Pete that I think are lovely and very accepting and affirming. You know, I worry for them in the state of Florida, you know, as we're talking about how Florida is changing rapidly.
[00:14:25] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Well, I, I think the.
That concern goes across the board.
I don't know. I. There's.
There's so much change going on rapidly that you just kind of tend to wonder where all this is going and who's.
I never really thought about this until the last year or so, but when is somebody going to get hurt?
I mean, that's kind of the fear, and that's fear gay people have lived with most of their life, and then all of a sudden there's a permission that you, you know, it's okay.
Well, you know, it's not okay to hurt anybody.
Yeah, that's kind of how. That's kind of how I'm feeling about things.
So. I get why Greg Louganis would want to do that on a variety of reasons, and it could not even be related to current events, but I'd be willing to bet my non winning billion dollar Powerball ticket that I didn't cash in last, but I'd be willing to bet that that's part of it, so.
[00:16:11] Speaker B: Absolutely. Absolutely.
[00:16:13] Speaker A: Just so you know, Josh, if I had gotten the 2 billion, I still would have signed on to record this podcast today with you.
[00:16:21] Speaker B: Oh, your generosity knows no bounds.
[00:16:24] Speaker A: I just wanted, I, I want you to. I want to affirm you that. That I wouldn't have. I wouldn't have blown you off today on this podcast, so. But.
[00:16:34] Speaker B: Well, yeah, because if you'd have won last night, it's not like the lottery office is open right now. Now, if this recording were on Monday, that's a different story.
[00:16:43] Speaker A: Yeah. I might be in Panama by then, so.
[00:16:46] Speaker B: Which, by the way, is Panama.
How are they doing on LGBTQ rights? I did not know that they were.
I'm not here. Listen. Any Panamanians listening right now or the government of Panama? I am not here to. I'm not trying to off. I'm just.
[00:17:04] Speaker A: We just want to know.
[00:17:04] Speaker B: I just want to know. I just want to know, you know, our, our thing.
If it weren't the uk, our thing was, well, maybe we just go up to Canada, because we wouldn't even have to. We could drive to Canada and take all of our stuff. But now that I understand that Canada is going to become the 51st state, you know, maybe that's not going to be what we're going to do.
[00:17:26] Speaker A: That will never happen.
That's just bluster.
Canada will join the European Union before they become a 51st state. And I have Canadian roots. I could all as I would have to do would. You know, my father was born in Canada. My grandparents were born in Canada. I have the lineage. But if I was to go to Canada, I would.
In fact, I just had a friend that moved to Canada, her and her husband.
[00:17:55] Speaker B: Really? Whereabouts in Canada? That's interesting.
[00:17:58] Speaker A: A little bit north of Vancouver.
[00:18:01] Speaker B: Oh, oh, okay.
Guess what?
[00:18:08] Speaker A: Road trip.
[00:18:09] Speaker B: No, I was born in Vancouver.
[00:18:12] Speaker A: I thought you were born in South Florida.
[00:18:14] Speaker B: No, I lived most of my, most my growing up and into my 30s in South Florida, but I was born in Vancouver, Canada.
[00:18:23] Speaker A: So you're, you're.
What the hell.
[00:18:30] Speaker B: What'S your question? Is there, Was that a question?
[00:18:34] Speaker A: Yeah, well, it's like, well yeah, I mean now you, it's like what the hell? Why aren't you just like packing up and going?
[00:18:39] Speaker B: Well, I've got family here. See that's the thing. You know, we're talking about community and we're talking about things that.
Yeah, so I've got that.
[00:18:50] Speaker A: How did I miss that? Maybe that's why we connect so well, because we have the same roots.
[00:18:56] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't know. Now, now let's be clear. I was born in Canada to American parents who were fleeing the draft. So I'm not going to say I have roots in Canada, it's just that that's where, where you know, I happened to be plopped out onto the cement as I was in Canada.
Um, but you know, where you're born is where you're born. So I do have a Canadian birth certificate and I'm sure that if I paid a few thousand dollars to some law firm, they could sort out the citizenship for me easily.
Well, it's the few thousand dollars part.
[00:19:33] Speaker A: It'S the two thousand dollar part that's the problem. But no, I, I looked into it and in fact one of my brother asked me a couple of months ago, he said, well, if you were going to, if you were going to pick up and move here in North America, where would you go? And I said, well I would most likely go west, but I'd also take a real close look at British Columbia. Yeah, yeah. You know, I know it's quite expensive but.
And we all have. I've always had this dreams of wandering and being a nomad like I was when I was bowling 40 some odd years ago. I miss that.
[00:20:26] Speaker B: You say that and I imagine you're just wandering on a sidewalk. Who's, who's that bald guy just walking up and down this sidewalk?
[00:20:33] Speaker A: Someone. Someone.
[00:20:33] Speaker B: See if he's okay.
[00:20:34] Speaker A: Yeah, you Know, it's funny again, in my conversation with my brother, we're talking about a friend of his who lost his wife.
And of course, I know these folks from 50, 60 some odd years ago, but we were talking about one of the things that he's doing is to walk every day. And he's become obsessed by walking, you know, 30,000 steps a day. And I said, you know, I had said, you know, I'd love to walk 30,000 steps a day, but it'd have to be in Barcelona or Madrid or Rome or, you know, I can't walk 30,000 steps around my condo. It's like boring. But, but I could see doing that for sure.
[00:21:29] Speaker B: Sure. Sure.
Well, we'll see. We'll see. If, if things come to a point where the smaller part of our family says, okay, it's time for us to hike up to Canada, but you know, we have roots here, and I've got two adult sons who live here that I'm not anxious to move away from, so we will just see. And part of the, the point that, that I was making earlier is that, and that you, that you made as well is that community is so important and community can take you through, in fact, might be the only thing that can take you through living.
[00:22:08] Speaker A: I agree. I mean, that's, it's, you know, community is really what binds people together.
And, you know, we have the really the three pillars of life. You know, we've got our family, our community, whether it's a church or whatever, that part of that community that you're, you're with and you're, and your work environment.
You know, those are kind of three pillars that really need to be. Well, I shouldn't just say, I shouldn't say need. I said those are the, those are the pillars in life that we look for support.
And if one of those is out of balance, then, you know, you're out of balance. And that's, you know, for, for LGBT people, you know, being a part of a community in the, in the, in the, in the strictest sense, the LGBT community, there's a, you know, there's kind of an understanding there even know there's different personalities, different experiences, but there's that innate p. There's an innate knowledge that we all share.
And I, that's why it's so important to be connected with a supporting community.
As I see a lot of debates about, well, let's take an example of service driven industries. Well, they don't want to, well, you know, they don't want to serve an LGBT client. Well, you know, why would I want to go to somebody that didn't want to.
Want to serve me?
I mean, there's kind of, like, two sides of the coin there.
I would rather know up front whether or not somebody wants to work with me or they have a prejudice. I rather get that up front out in the open now, rather than digging into whatever type of business, professional relationship.
There's a couple of professional relationships that are about to evolve in my life, and I. I'm gonna be right up front and ask them, are you comfortable working with LGBT seniors? Because I don't. I don't want to go through the hassle of wondering.
And that's kind of what brings this full circle to this conversation about Greg Louganis is I've never really felt like I've had to ask that question to.
In professional settings until this past year.
[00:25:13] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:25:16] Speaker A: And if you're. And if they're honest enough and say, well, no, I'm really not comfortable, then, you know, then we kind of part as friends. Because at least you've been upfront and honest instead of dragging something on.
[00:25:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:25:32] Speaker A: I don't know. Maybe I'm weird, but I have a nice community here with you on aging Gayfully, so.
[00:25:41] Speaker B: Well, we want to hear from the folks listening. We want the community out there to also let us know what you're going through and. And how you're dealing with it. And if you're going to move to a country, what country would you move to?
How can folks get in touch with us?
[00:25:56] Speaker A: They can email us at Yes, I am@aging gayfully.com that's. Yes, I am@aging gayfully.com and you can subscribe right here on YouTube to get updates on content that Josh and I are creating. And I've got some. We've got some new content about to hit the airwaves about golden men and two very prominent LGBT authors that we're working with. And, you know, we're just living the dream.
[00:26:33] Speaker B: Oh, yes.
Living the dream every now and again. Waking up with the night terrors. But it's okay.
[00:26:40] Speaker A: It's okay. It's okay.
[00:26:43] Speaker B: All right, Chris, until next time.
You take it easy and you be safe, and you get. You get your steps in.
[00:26:49] Speaker A: Get my step soon.
Got it. Good seeing you, Josh.
[00:26:53] Speaker B: All right, bye, Sa.
