reflections in golden eyes (put another way: porn saves a sexless night)
this is not a lament. it really isn’t. it’s just that after a certain point, a certain age, we succumb to gravity. we have no choice. all the jogging and lifting and diets in the world lose the battle. evaporating gradually is the end game of a smooth handsome face, tight under chin, lean upper arms, hammock-less under-eyes and fabulous hair. we cut ourselves loose from the possibility of Something Ever Happening With A Future (ie ‘a relationship’) and rationalize the ‘freedom’ of it. our surface Self, the one we mock with false modesty, loses it’s persuasive lure. we let it go. we have to. instead we employ the brutal truth, honesty as a con, our ‘charming’ seduction repertoire transmogrified into the quiet qualities of The Listener. youth (‘the only true aphrodisiac’ — Rene Ricard) stops checking us out and looks to others. I remember my Mom, Jane Kinscherf, trying on wigs to hide the hair that had fallen out after weeks of chemotherapy. ‘God, I look so old!’ her vanity vaguely intact but shrugged off in the end with a laugh. it’s more weird than sad, her old face refusing to recognize itself, hallucinating a younger version through the impressionistic gauze of squinted eyes. inevitably, deep down, we’re pretty sure that we remain that same compelling, fascinating, oddball soul we’ve always been. we still have much to ask, to give, to love and to be funny about. but today, at the onset of our greeting card ‘sunset years’ we reinvent the way we love. it is no longer about the chase, about roping someone in, or having them ‘see’ us. it’s about seeing them in a way that serves their needs and not our own centrifugal neuroses. there’s no preparing for this. no text to teach or thumb through a Romance for Old Dummies. late love has it’s own slow momentum and moral impetus. the beautiful, unreachable, untouchable boy loves us when he feels like it, not as any flattering sexual fantasy, but because he senses understanding in our hooded eyes. ‘this one has traveled the long love road’. Uncle Awareness is The Man (our new vanity). the beloved and the ancient sleep side-by-side, goat man beside shepherd boy undisturbed on some bright Kazantzakis Mediterranean island where beings merge without ownership or showboat passion.
This is an excerpt from my book, The Paragraphs — Cutlass Press
About The Paragraphs and how to order
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