Someone close to me has just discovered his confidence at the age of 77. His joy at its discovery is overwhelming both to him and those around him; but that perhaps is more to do with the unexpectedness of the timing rather than the fact that he's turned over a new leaf.

He has confounded our assumptions about growing old gracefully, but then we were given no clues that he would one day refuse to accept a gentle sleepy decay. He's now grabbing life by the scruff of the neck and shaking it vigorously, living each day, each moment, to the full.

I certainly know I lack confidence at the moment; I know I'm compensating in many different ways. I'm back to being a skinhead; the hard/vulnerable look that says "Fuck Off" and "Take Me" at the same time. It's only a look; I'm still the same underneath. A truly confident me wouldn't perhaps need these tricks to turn people's heads in a bar. As if that mattered. Someone with an inner sense of faith in himself wouldn't depend quite so much on the ambiguity of the big steel-capped size ten docs to hint at a more intense sexuality. And yet, this is what I find myself doing.

Confidence often depends on a run of luck. "Assured expectation" is a hard thing to manufacture when your expectations have been dashed many times, and disappointment and hurt become familiar companions. An actress friend of mine has never been out of work since she left drama school nearly 20 years ago. She's talented, certainly; but she's not got Hollywood looks, as she'd be the first to acknowledge.

As the years have gone by, she's been able to let her insecurities sit on the back burner, and take each job on with relish and confidence, with a willingness to experiment and take risks that for the most part result in critical acclaim and more job offers. She's managed to get on a virtuous circle of risktaking and reward. Her confidence is real, palpable, and not in the least offputting. Her life isn't perfect, but that's not my point. She has faith that things will work out, because they have so far, and why should she doubt that they will in future?

boyfriend role

This faith thing. It beats the hell out of me. Faith in what? In Providence? In Lady Luck? In God, in the Goddess, in the trees, in people? I don't have faith at the moment.

The last guy I "dated" lasted four days before he failed my test. What test is this, I hear you ask? Sometimes I wonder whether my standards are so high that no-one could possibly reach them, that they are the reason I'm so lonely. Maybe; but I think in this case my standards were to do with decency and compassion.

This guy and I hadn't had sex, we'd taken it easy; he'd taken me to meet some of his friends at a party, which was pleasant, and we'd talked a lot on the phone. But then he took me to dinner at a friend's place; five men who, after a few drinks, started on the topic of the beatings they'd all received as children. There were some really scary stories of abuse; and yet all of them said it didn't do them any harm, and young kids these days could do with a good slapping, because they don't know the meaning of the word respect.

My new friend, who'd had been playing the boyfriend role by trying to hold my hand and put his arm on my shoulder on the sofa (on the strength of one snog three days previously) began weighing in with how he beat the crap out of his cat when it vomited on the carpet, because it knew it was doing wrong when it did it. Everyone in the room

nodded.

I felt like a Jew at a Nazi gathering. Irrational, but that's how I felt. I made my excuses and left; he followed me, and genuinely couldn't understand why I was so uncomfortable. He accused me of ingratitude, that he'd taken me to meet his friends, who'd been very pleasant to me and offered me their hospitality, and I was throwing it back in his face.

demented souls

I muttered something about feeling uncomfortable playing the boyfriend role when we hadn't really gotten to know each other at all, and he told me to sort my life out. He accused me of wasting his time; I had answered an ad of his in which he said he was looking for a 1-to-1 relationship. He couldn't quite grasp the idea that it wasn't my desire to form a relationship that was lacking; my decision had something to do with him.

I don't have faith in my capacity to choose lovers. With friends it's very different; but something goes askew when I set my cap at a man. It's a pattern which I would like to break, but I'm not quite sure how. I did make one concrete step towards a faith of sorts last week, though. There's a group called "Kairos in Soho" which has just been set up in the centre of London. It describes itself as a "social and spiritual project serving lesbian and gay communities and friends".

The word "spiritual" is very hard for me to swallow, even though so much of my life and work seems to centre around a spirituality of sorts. Before knocking at the door of this place in Soho, I was pacing up and down, aware of my strong resistance to have anything to do with religion of any sort. Save me from those demented souls with a glassy glint in their eye that says they know the secret to eternal happiness; protect me from those who have shed all doubt and replaced it with an unyielding certainty.

Happily, there was none of that about. 16 men sat around on cushions and talked a little, imagined a little, and massaged each other's heads a little. At the end there was tea and biscuits. That was all. And I thought to myself that I could find room in my life for this sort of meeting, this sort of oasis in the emotional desert that is the London gay scene. n