Okay, so I will be 70 years old next month. Seventy. Seven tee. How is that possible? This was not part of my plan, but is creeping decrepitude really part of anybody's plan? Winston Churchill left office the day I was born, a bit of trivia which sounds like ancient history these days. I am exactly as old as Disneyland and McDonald's. Eisenhower was president and I'm sure there are plenty of Americans now who have never heard of him. Baby boomers are generally defined as having been born between 1945 and 1965 which puts me smack dab in the middle of that demographic bulge. The plague years of the AIDS crisis, Y2K, Elton John's wandering hairline: I've seen it all.
This is most certainly not going to be one of those tirades people make about how "I still feel young inside" because I don't. I am old and I am okay with that. I used to be fearless (foolishly so) and with a great deal more energy; now I am stodgy, cynical, and oh-so cranky. I refuse to apologize for any of it, I have earned it all. If I choose to be irritated by The Youth of Today (and the vantage point of my advanced years allows me to realize The Youth of Today are always irritating, regardless of what day today is) that is my privilege.
Social media is littered with tales of my contemporaries who foolishly try to emulate the actors in commercials from all sorts of snake oil selling that "age is just a state of mind" bullshit. Denial is not going to protect you from being old. Age is your back hurting and all the cartilage in your joints shot to hell and the energy level of an unwound clock and trying to take up hang gliding is not going to change that. I genuinely have a friend who will get up before dawn to go cross country skiing and I think "What the fuck is wrong with you? Just calm down, bitch." And then I have to go lay down because his example exhausts me. You can struggle against the tide all you want, but when you have to fill in your birth date online and you need to scroll and scroll down through the years to get to yours, it just reminds you, there is no fighting the march of time.
Youth in all its taut-skinned glory:
Bitch, did I know I'm a teeny bit older than you?
ReplyDeleteRemember the scene in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane when Jane looks in the mirror and sees "Baby" Baby Jane for a minute & then Hag-O-Vision interrupts that regularly scheduled program and Bette screams in horror at what the glass is reflecting?
Me. At least 3 times a day.
I try to never look in mirrors these days for fear that I will see Baby Jane looking back.
DeleteI'm not as old as you yet, but I agree - no-one, not even Cher, can actually "Turn Back Time". I often look in my mirror and see Statler and/or Waldorf from The Muppet Show... Jx
ReplyDeletePS Aiden Shaw in a Pierre et Gilles "camp glamour world"? Yes please! [NB He looks a bit like a Renaissance Greek God nowadays - like this one.]
Aiden Shaw having survived a career as a superior class rentboy AND heroin addiction only to turn out looking so gorgeous these days irritates me no end.
DeleteHe has good features and genes. Plus he is only 58.
DeleteWhere does the time go? I find breathing in a brown bag followed by blowing a nice cock after makes everything look rosy again.
ReplyDeleteIf I got down on my knees to go to town on somebody's weiner, they would have to help pawpaw back up and that would just be too sad.
DeleteI understand the go-go boys of San Francisco don't see creeping decrepitude when they look at you. They see a horny daddy!
ReplyDeleteAnonymous, too
That is so sweet of you, but I am pretty sure they actually see the possibility of sodomy ending in a coronary, and who wants that?
DeleteThe go-go boys would have a coronary? Damn, you're good!
DeleteAnon, too
I was 77 last Saturday. My husband would have been 77 today.
ReplyDeleteYou will always be “chicken” to me.
My husband would also have been 77 this year. 1948 was a big year.
DeleteThe Shaw pic is giving me claw machine vibes. How fun would it be to win that prize? -AP
ReplyDeleteMr Peenee the song I'm Alive by Johnny Thunder will lift your spirits guaranteed :)
ReplyDelete-CA jock
ps: by the way, nice selection of vintage jocks
I was listening to a Blondie song the other day called Die Young Stay Pretty, at 48 I think I've left it a tad too late.
ReplyDelete