Not all about sex: perhaps the greatest lie Netflix’s ‘Uncoupled’ is peddling is about friendship in your 40s and 50s

“Trust me. You don’t want to be gay and single in this town. At our age? You’re invisible.”

That’s what a friend tells Michael Lawson, a high-end real estate agent in Manhattan, when Michael discovers that Colin, his partner of 17 years, is suddenly moving out, bag and baggage, no explanations given. And Michael finds himself newly single in his 40s.

Uncoupled, the new series from Netflix, has been called the gay  Sex and the City, unsurprisingly, since one of its creators is Darren Star, who also helmed the latter show. But being about gay men, there’s of course more sex in this city. It’s promising — a gay series that is not about coming out or coming of age or AIDS melancholia. It has an out gay actor, Neil Patrick Harris, as the lead. It’s fun, breezy and easy on the eye. The only closets in it are for clothes. And the anxieties about ageing and desirability are something anybody of any orientation can relate to.

A still from ‘Sex and the City 2’.
| Photo Credit: AP

Unfortunately, the first season never really delivers on its premise. Michael is a wide-eyed babe in the woods as he tries to grapple with everything that’s changed in the dating scene in the 17 years he’s been off the market. While his dating adventures often turn into misadventures, he’s never invisible. Men literally collide into him on the street and want to go to bed with him. No one he is interested in rejects him as too old. His first app-based ‘hook-up’ is with a hot bisexual Italian client. They ping each other on Grindr, the dating app, while riding in the same car. That’s like winning the Grindr lottery.

Never ‘invisible’

And you find yourself thinking — what is this man whining about? He’s white, well-off, lives in a fancy apartment in Manhattan, has devoted friends and a hopping social life. He seems to have no problem attracting handsome men of all ages. Even the dermatologist his father sets him up with is a catch. In the eight episodes of Season 1, Michael is whiny, drunk, needy, upset, cute, obsessive but never “invisible”. (Harris also looks a bit like a leaner younger George W. Bush now but that’s another story.)

I remember an Indian friend who lived in San Francisco saying the day he turned 50 he felt everyone just looked through him when he walked into a gay bar. He said, half-jokingly, he needed to switch to a different bar, one frequented by older gays. It was nicknamed The Glass Coffin!

From the Bengaluru Pride March 2015.
| Photo Credit: Getty Images

The Indian gay scene is newly coming of age. Pride marches and parties pulsate with energy. There are always hundreds of young queer folk who don’t seem to feel any need to conform to the more straitlaced world the way their seniors felt compelled to. Their confidence is electrifying. A 45-plus gay man in Kolkata once told me he is happy that he got to see this side of India, something that felt unimaginable growing up in the shadows of Section 377. But he also said wistfully, “I think I am the in-between generation. I am young enough to see these gay parties but feel too old when I actually go to them.”

Anxiety triggers

In a youth-obsessed culture, ageing has always been anxiety-ridden. One of the more affecting scenes in  Uncoupled is when Michael and Claire, a wealthy older woman who has been unceremoniously dumped by her husband for a much younger woman, find common ground as they fret about ageing and romance. Desirability, more than sex, is the yardstick we tend to use to measure our self-esteem and we fear we will run out of that as we age. Parents, however accepting, worry about what will happen to their queer children as they grow older? Who will look after them? Who will love them? That’s why LGBTQIA+ pioneer Ashok Row Kavi and Dr. Prasad Dhandekar started Mumbai Seenagers, a social group for 55-plus gay men, a few years ago.

Uncoupled will not resolve those anxieties. It may in fact trigger them in those who realise their 40s and 50s look nothing like Michael’s. But the greatest fantasy the series is selling has nothing to do with sex. It’s the group of tight-knit friends, men and women, who surround Michael through thick and thin. There’s always someone to have a drink with. There’s always a shoulder to cry on or a friend to be mad at. There is always a gallery opening or a gay ice-skating night to go to and someone to go with. They have each other as they age, truly long-time companions.

In the end, that is what many of us, gay or straight, might be the most envious about.

The writer is the author of Don’t Let Him Know  (2015).