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ecotone99 · 5 years

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[MF] I'm an old man.

I’m an old man.

Okay, I’m not that old. I’m only seventy-five. I’m being dramatic. They say that the seventies are the new fifties. But, I’m entitled to being a little grumpy at my age. I’ve earned it.

When I was younger, birthdays earned you new privileges, like buying tobacco (albeit I hate the smell and only occasionally smoke a cigar, which even then I still find it mildly revolting), getting married, joining the military, voting, alcohol, and cheaper car insurance.

But now the doctors inform me that, based on my age and my insurance provider, I’ve earned the privilege of undergoing another test for some disease that’s sure to end my life miserably. Every year I go in for my physical, and every year the doctor runs a complete battery; cholesterol, blood sugar, blood pressure, hearing, prostate, bone density, and on and on.

I see a dermatologist annually owing to my fair complexion; a trait I inherited from my mother who had strawberry blonde hair and a spattering of freckles that ran up and down her cheeks. And every three years I have to drink that God-awful Crystal Light and apple juice concoction, shit my brains out for two days, and then get little cameras inserted up my ass and down my throat. If it wasn’t for the drugs, I’m not sure I’d enjoy it much.

Or would I? When you get old, sometimes you wonder about these things. I’m not gay (and I don’t have a problem with it, mind you), but these thoughts run through my head on occasion as I get older.

What if I actually enjoyed it?

Maybe I would have when I was younger and a bit more open to those kinds of things. Apparently, the prostate, that little walnut-sized gland near your bladder, is also called the “male G-spot.”

All I know is that on occasion, when the doctor sticks his fingers up my rectum, I get a little chubby. It’s kind of embarrassing, but if it weren’t for the sterile formality of it all, maybe I’d relax enough to enjoy it.

You see, I never considered these things before.

Just like every time I get some new test. It gnaws away at my mind’s ability to ignore the fact that my time on this earth is coming to an end, something my younger self never once considered as a real possibility. Where death was something that happened to other people, each phone call from my specialist inches me closer to the realization that I’m not a spring-chicken anymore, and I’m one rotten biopsy away from the grave.

So, when the doctor says “you’re as healthy a twenty-year-old,” I always respond (still a little slick between the cheeks), “that’s just great, Doc.”

But who am I fooling?

They say that the seventies are the new fifties, but on Tinder I am old. I’m old, and I’m creepy. At least, that’s what all the young girls tell me.

Swipe right, swipe left? I don’t know how we matched, because I can barely text my wife without transferring my life savings to an African prince. I joke, because they all end up in my spam folder anyway, along with my daughter’s e-mails … why can’t you just call me on the phone like a normal human being, or God-forbid, visit once in a while? I know you have a family of your own and live a couple thousand miles away, but would it hurt to bring them down to get to know their Papa before he chokes?

Online dating is as foreign to me as Ching Chang Chong. Or is that too pejorative of an idiom these days? One thing I’ve also realized is that the older I get, the more bigoted and wrong about the world I am, at least that’s what everyone keeps telling me.

But let me be clear, Chief, it wasn’t me who changed; it was the world.

When I was a kid, these things didn’t have the same context. People weren’t so sensitive. I grew up in New England, for fuck’s sake. If you don’t recall, we fought to end slavery during the Civil War. We championed equal rights, and I even marched to end segregation, and now I’m a bigot? Please, spare me.

I don’t want to get political, but there’s a reason Trump won. I don’t care much for the man, with his gold-plated shit palace and orange skin, but he appreciates what being American used to mean. In a lot of ways, those were the gold-old-days. Those were the days before Twitter, Facebook, and Insta-whatever. Things were simpler: you sent a letter in the mail and then you waited. And when you waited you learned patience. Kids don’t have patience these days. They want everything now, now, now.

The world has changed, and maybe I’ve stayed the same.

A few years ago, we decided we were going to audit an ethics class at a local community college. Being that we are retired and didn’t have to work for food, we thought it would keep us engaged with the world that seemed to be changing daily. At any rate, the professor, some snotty, high-falutin’, thirty-something who couldn’t commit to a PhD, decided he was going to lecture me about objective moral values.

Objective moral values? What’s so objective about values these days when a man can decide to be a woman, and a woman can decide to be a Furry? A Furry. One interesting thing I learned in class: an employee filed an equal opportunity complaint because she not only believed she was a cat, but that she was being discriminated against because there weren’t any litter boxes for her to shit in.

Can you believe that?

Did the world go crazy, or am I going crazy?

One of the advantages of age is that it provides some perspective. A disadvantage is that facts about the world that one picks up in one era may not apply in a subsequent one. It’s not that the facts weren’t facts, but that those facts were time sensitive. What used to be true is not true now. But that doesn’t mean it wasn’t true.

I’m time sensitive these days. I’m sensitive to the fact that I’m not getting any younger.

But eventually, you have to move on. You have to give new things a try. You have to embrace—and I hate to sound so callous, but at seventy, you appreciate the time you had and you appreciate the time you have left—change. It is hard to move on, but, sometimes, the world changes and you just have to hang on for the ride.

So, when Judith messaged me (not sure if it was through Our Time, Zoosk, Elite or Silver Singles, or whatever dating app I ended up contributing practically my entire 401k towards), it was a bit unexpected. I have to admit, it was hard. It was hard to carry on a conversation through my keyboard to some stranger in the internet ether. Hell, for all I knew, she was some Russian hacker trying to steal my e-mails.

I’m kidding.

We decided we’d meet at a local café. We’d have some coffee, maybe some breakfast, and we’d simply talk. That sounded great, honestly.

Because another thing about growing old is that everyone you know is constantly dying. When you’re twenty, it’s one wedding after another. When you’re seventy, it’s one funeral after another. Your address book gets smaller and smaller over time, and conversations become few and far between. You find yourself talking a bit too much to that clerk at the grocery store, or the telemarketer who’s trying to sell you a timeshare.

I give my daughter a hard time, but she has a career, a husband, and children, and I feel a bit guilty expecting anything from her beyond a call on Thanksgiving or Christmas. Don’t get me wrong, she’s a wonderful daughter. She’s always trying to get me to move back to Maine, but I’ve grown accustomed to the Southern climate. They keep going on and on about climate change and saying Florida will be sucked into the ocean one day, but that won’t happen until long after I’m dead and gone. I keep telling her not to worry about me, and while she does, she knows I’m too stubborn to leave. But, daughters have a way of softening even the most hardened assholes like myself.

I showed up at the Waffle House a bit earlier than we agreed. Sitting at the booth I was reminded about how nervous I was when I was a kid.

But seventy is the new fifty, right? One thing I appreciate about technology is that it opens doors (both figuratively and non-figuratively). When I was a kid, you had to muster up the guts to approach a girl at the bar, an ice cream parlor, a diner, or the library. You had to introduce yourself while her and her friends pretended not to notice, but which made you even more nervous and uncomfortable. You had to invest an inordinate amount of time and resources into the act of dating that, probably, would be a waste of time in the end. It was a shot in the dark. You’d discover something about her personality, her values, her parents, her outlook, three or four dates into it, and you’d be back at square one.

Luck. That’s what it took to find the right one.

The great thing about online dating is you can weed out all those people you know aren’t cut out for you, that don’t share your worldview. It opens up the pool of dating I didn’t have when I was a kid. It’s simple math; the wider your net, the more chance you have of making the catch.

Sitting there I realized I still had my wedding ring on. I hadn’t taken it off for nearly fifty years.

In the bathroom, with a great deal of soap, I worked the ring backwards and forwards. The once smooth band was now sharp and cut into my finger that had grown a size (or two) larger than it was when I had first gotten married. The ring refused to budge over my knuckle. No matter how much I yanked, the damn thing wouldn’t come off. And the harder I pulled, the more I smiled and the more those crow’s feet, winkles, and loose skin scrunched up into an adolescent grin ear-to-ear as I realized I hadn’t taken it for nearly fifty years.

Judith ordered black coffee, two eggs sunny-side up, turkey bacon, and wheat toast. From her purse, she pulled out a shaker of Morton Salt Substitute, and that’s when I saw that she hadn’t taken her ring off either.

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