AGING GRACEFULLY
I’m Becoming an Angry Old Man
I was accepting once you know
I walked through the supermarket with my wife, and we passed a teenager whose pants were basically around his knees.
My wife found it funny, but it enraged me.
“Pull yer fuckin pants up, would ya?” I said just loud enough so he could hear.
“We don’t need to see the outline of yer tiny cock through yer see-thru y-fronts, thanks very much.”
A few others heard as well as the teenager. They all spun me some dirty looks like I was in the wrong. Those suburban fuckers.
The teenager looked fearful.
My wife gave it the usual “Calm down, Frank.”
And of course, I immediately felt guilty and apologised to the kid. Later we saw him in the frozen foods section, and his pants were up around his waist like a normal person.
“Job done”, I said to my wife, dusting invisible dirt off my hands.
But then I thought,
You judgemental old cunt. Were you not once a teenager trying desperately to be judged well by others by making crude fashion choices?
I remember being young and telling old fellas to fuck right off when they told us to sew up our jeans or get our hair cut or whatever.
Yet here I am.
Sure, I’m only 45, and I see other 45-year-olds jogging, flashing their new teeth and driving Audis, having picnics with their three kids, and working in real jobs and…
Well, that’s just not me, is it? I’m a deranged milk addict, football-obsessed writer who wears Adidas tracksuits and shouts at teenagers in the street.
Teenagers are not the only ones to bear the brunt of my newfound wrath.
We live in a rather crude suburb of Melbourne, which you might say is home to a good 1% of Melbournes’ junkie population.
Are we allowed to say junkie still? Can someone please confirm this? I’d hate to get cancelled by a group of naive junkie loving vegans.
Anyway, I don’t know if it is the rise of crystal meth as Melbourne’s drug of choice, but all the junkies look the same. The twenty-year-olds look fifty, and the fifty-year-olds look a hundred and twenty.
They have no teeth, they have the same weird faces, the same tracksuits, and they all walk the same.
What is worse is that the drug dealers all look like drug dealers.
There’s a guy in big trainers with sunglasses, a baseball cap and a gold chain, smoking a cigarette with a fucking bum bag of all things. (That’s a fanny pack to you Americans).
I was trying to get out of the car at the intersection to go and have a word with him, but my wife got too angry, so I didn’t.
I explained to her that it was for his own good.
She explained that I looked more like a drug dealer than any of them in my black Adidas tracksuit and baseball cap, especially since I had a grey beard and a scowl on my face.
I agreed with her, but I also explained that if the cops stopped me for being a drug dealer, they could get fucked because all they would find in my pockets was,
- 1 x half-eaten packet of carob covered raisins
- 1 x half-eaten box of Gaviscon
- 1 x black wrinkly facemask with chai latte stains on the inside.
She argued that it wouldn’t matter because the cops would plant drugs on me as evidence, then I would be fucked.
I wrapped up the matter by explaining that the police like to keep all of their ‘evidence’ for planting on black people.
And that’s no fucking joke either.
I explained that the difference with the drug dealer at the intersection was that he is a drug dealer, and he looks like one.
So, if he gets busted, he is fucked.
It would be in his best interests for me to explain that the best way is to dress like a geek with a backpack or an accountant (Or in Hogan Torah’s case, an Orthodox Jew).
There is hidden altruism to my aggression.
Anyway, we pulled off before I got a chance.
It’s the same with the junkies.
I’m, a judgemental old man, and Im judging them for looking like junkies.
I want to scream at them to get fucking original — to wear an orange sweater and ride a unicycle instead of walking down the street hunched over, wearing a tracksuit, smoking a cigarette and looking over their shoulders.
I hate it more because sometimes they end up in our street, skulking around like dodgy cunts, chewing their jaws off and crudely waiting for an opportunity to steal.
It’s not the stealing that bugs me as much as them thinking they are being subtle about it.
It shits me that they are too bent to notice how obvious they are being.
I want to yell ‘get a job,’ but I would be a damn hypocrite because I’ve spent most of my life avoiding work.
I get aggressive when I see them, and I start fantasising about getting out of the car, chasing them down and giving them a good beating. Sometimes my fantasies go too far. Sometimes they start to manifest.
That’s when my wife usually calms me down.
And I wonder if those ‘successful’ 45-year-olds with their Audi’s and teef and kids are looking at me in the same judgemental way as I look at junkies. They probably are, and thinking about it makes me want to punch them too.
Don’t we all fantasise about pulverising our enemies? Surely it’s better to play it out than do it, right? It’s the old Grand Theft Auto argument.
My wife tells me I need to meditate more, which is funny because I’ve spent half my life meditating.
It’s tough to explain that if you could only see the inside of my head, I’m genuinely trying to help them.
I’m not angry. I’m just disappointed.
