I’m 33 and my husband is 77 – this is why I only sleep with older men

Daniel Felsenthal (right) with his husband Jeff. Photograph: Chris Buck/The Guardian

You can usually tell a person’s age by the state of their hands. I stared at the pair across from me, folded on the scratched wood bar beside the lemon wedges and cocktail napkins. They were rough-hewn, liver-spotted, with wrinkles that cross-hatched a sparse thicket of hair. It was another night of yearning at a gay bar and I was contemplating going home with the man beside me because his hands kept a score (“I’m 65!” they screamed) that belied everything he’d done to hide the decades behind him. His face looked middle-aged, no doubt thanks to a skin-care routine that cost more each month than my whole wardrobe; his body was toned from years spent in the gym; and his hair was buzzed on the side and longer on the top, which was fashionable in New York back then. Everyone in cosmopolitan western cities tries to look young. But I only slept with men who looked old.

Back then I was 24, but the guys I wanted were at least in their mid-50s. Now I’m 33, and my lovers are almost always senior citizens. My husband is 77. “You have daddy issues,” a college friend I no longer see told me blithely a year or so after graduation, as though this cliche was newer and wiser when it emerged from his mouth. Now it’s a wonder no one tries to diagnose me with “grandaddy issues”.