There is a moment after the holidays when I decide I am going to leave certain Christmas lights up all year. Not so much for the festiveness but just because I like falling asleep to yellows and blues and twinkling white lights. Maybe my parents were staring into space or at the sun while I was conceived, though I'd rather not think about such things.
I bet two of my friends on New Years Eve in 1999 that one of us wouldn't survive the decade. Well so much for that,not that I didn't come close a few times, though I think that whole morbid idea spawned out of the fact that a few people my age had died rather suddenly around that time, not so much out of any attunement to the spirit world.
Nope everyone for the most part is still on the ride and I'm starting to adjust myself to the idea that 2000 is no longer part of the modern era, that sitting at home and watching Netflix on a Saturday has become just as common as going out getting drunk and ending up at a diner until 6am, or, in better cases, creeping out of some girl's house as the sun comes up with an overtired, disheveled feeling of invincible excitement. Been a while since that feeling has popped up.
And that feeling isn't really rooted in sex, well maybe but it's not all about sex because I've had just as many times driving home afterwards cursing myself as an idiot. So let's agree that's some of it is the sex but some of it, most of it I think, is the naivete of thinking that you met someone you're going to cling to for an extended chunk of your years.
But as you get older and the number in the decade turns over yet again that all dissolves, and maybe it bubbles up every once in a while in the right state of delirium but now it's easier to squash should things go south.
And there's other considerations now that I'm older, grossly out of shape, and off my first overnight hospital stay. The fact is that for the foreseeable future I feel like it would probably be better for my state of mind that if I have to have sex I should probably save it for someone I'm not all that in to.
Now this really has nothing to do with any veiled attempt to spare my feelings or the old, tired cliche of "not wanting to get hurt". I actually did say something like that to a girl once and if I could travel through time and kick myself in the temple to spare myself that cringe inducing memory I certainly would. No, my reasoning here, behind having sex with someone I don't like, would be that there is a fair chance I might drop dead the next time I do take that deep sea saltwater plunge and while I know it's popular for guys to say that that is the way to go but I certainly don't want to leave someone I care about with the lasting image of me clenching up and going into a death gaze while I stiffly collapse on them and they spend half an hour screaming hoping the maid or the police can break down the door and pull this stiffening behemoth off before she suffocates. No sir, that's the kind of thing you want to save for someone you could care less about.
But in the end that's the trick. Getting over sex. Choosing tv or books over bars or clubs or bookstores or wherever the fuck people meet. I almost put "wherever the fuck people meet nowadays" but I think I'll hold off on that language until I have to take my teeth out at night and soak them and ask people to scratch my back because I can't reach it. Getting old is fucking weird, but you don't really get old, things just change. I mean physically yes your hair gets thinner, your ass gets bigger your skin starts to sag like Obama's popularity (AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA TIMELY HUMOR!!!) but who gives a shit? According to several reliable sources there's always someone out there who will fuck you, which I'm not completely sold on but I'm getting closer to believing it. So once the panic of that is taken out of the equation what else is there to sweat? Money,health, happiness I guess? I don't know. Right now it looks like 2010 will be the year I burn out my DVD player from over use and line my pockets with money I saved from not jumping at every chance to dive into some evening chasing every elusive bird who ever sent a kind eye my way.
We'll see.
1 comment:
WRONG
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