neverland
‘i’m too old for this.’ i hear it all the time, even from people younger than myself. the sense that what was once funny, or do-able, or easy now feels used up, jaded, is-that-all-there-is?, ‘i can’t do it anymore’. what are they missing? the up-all-night drinking, waitressing for shitty tips from asshole customers, loving the mirror or, most embarrassing, going for The One after years of disappointment? to hell with it, throw in the towel, fuck this shit. sound familiar? as for me, jowled, eye-bagged and slack-mouthed, i don’t feel it, not yet. even with skin problems, flu shots, stringy hair, hearing loss, lower back pain, hemorrhoids and insomnia, the goal posts are more in focus then ever. i feel like a kid, a 70 year old kid with a squinting eye-on-self and a forgiving (blind?) ambivalence. i laugh at how much older i look in the mirror than i feel. in many ways i haven’t grown up. i don’t have a Real Job (30+ years of waitressing is more fun than money and has no ladder-to-climb future). i don’t shoulder a wife and kids. i don’t own a house. i don’t have a for-real get-in-the-way-of- selfish-routine boyfriend. it’s a relief we can’t see ourselves behaving. we would, i would for sure, be horrified. watching the music videos my friends shot for Old Stag was like staring at a stranger. i LOOK like that?! what the fuck! when i perform or waddle around Doyles or have animated talks at the Behan i imagine that i look what? 45? tops? lithe, no spastic facial contortions, bright eyes, wise wit. Jean Cocteau, during the filming of La Belle et la Bete, ran about, hung sheets, adjusted arms-in-walls-with-candles and observed: ‘we felt like teenagers until we saw ourselves in the mirror and realized that we were old men’. is the surface a lens to the soul? not if you’re really looking, but who is? old folks out for dinner, sparkly-eyed, who need a cane to shuffle across the floor and have a date with the boob tube later, seem to harbor a covert hankering for deep throat or a dirty poem from an imploring suitor or an honest kiss even as they assemble in awkward dignity their minefield of propriety. a friend of mine emails: ‘America is no country for old men’. the crusty, useless, annoying elderly out-to-pasture, no longer jacked-up with rampant hard-ons have run out of turf. ‘i’m too old for this’. and yet, inside, under the surface, are we not all ageless? does our skin, our voice, our walk give us away? did Peter Pan have it right, or Dorian Gray?
This is an excerpt from my book, The Paragraphs — Cutlass Press
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