“How long has it been since the last time you had sex?”
God help us. What would you even measure that in? Days? Years, in my case? And what if it hadn’t been days (years, it’s almost always days, at least day), it wouldn’t be the same sex as the sex I had when I had a girlfriend, or, God help us, a wife. Bar sex. Does that count? If that counts, the shower counts, spilling on the sink counts. I thought carefully, and I said
“167 days”.
Of course it hasn’t been. Words to describe a long time without meaning an unbearable time. That’s really how long it’s been—a long but bearable time. The number is a cipher. This is surprisingly bearable. There are things you miss more, I can tell you that. Maybe not in your twenties.
Why am I always old in my writings, anyway? I could be 30, 24, 15, because you don’t know me, because maybe I haven’t had sex in exactly 167 days, or 166 anyway, but I’m always incurably old. And even then, not the sitting by the fire taking down the book old, useful old, but boy am I getting old, winded after a flight of stairs, pants suddenly don’t have waistlines but hip lines under stomach lines old.
But I am old. Ish. Old enough.
I’m such a pain in the ass. That’s why I feel bad for my therapist. Who knows I’m lying, because who on Earth would say specifically, 167 days and not think it meant an unbearably long time, not because it’s so long, because long is different for people, maybe it is so long, but because if you know every day, if you know every minute of the days, it is written on your skin like a tattoo, and the sharp thing is in your skin again, a pen and a knife (is that what they use?). If you say 167 days, you have definitely been counting. And that’s an unbearable time. How dumb am I?
I know that we, that is we men, will eventually win this battle, despite being dumber, and less attractive because women tell me they are only ready for the battle in makeup and (sometimes) heels (but always makeup), and see fat that men don’t, and never have the right-sized boobs—and there are SO many right sizes, are there not me boyos?—whereas men are ready for the battle in sweat shorts and sleeveless shirts, after a long run, red-faced and sweating as if we were trying to end the Zamibian water shortage if said could be alleviated by that which is salty, warm, and particularly foul (secreted by glands). But I’m losing it, anyway. I lost it. You know that, gentle reader, and always have. The writing on the skin.
So I am old, I am sexless—in the sense of not having it, not in the sense of being fundamentally without: drive, desire, means—I am your columnist, your correspondent, the best way to talk without fear because only those will come to me who wish to come, only those will buy from me who wish to buy what I sell. I, like all syndicated columnists, am the grocery store of the soul. But there are no discounts here. This is the 1950s.
I do have my thoughts. Primary among them, these days, is that fact that in general, it seems like you can’t win anything in this life. Can’t, for example, stop people from believing things that are demonstrably untrue. A surprisingly large percentage of this country believes the President is not an American citizen, which makes good sense because: well, there’s no way anyone would have looked into that beforehand, would they? It’s only the Presidency of the United States. If you can’t do that, you can’t do anything.
(I understand Hawai’I has passed a law that they can “ignore repetitive requests”, in this case for Prez. Obama’s birth certificate. Reading the story on my one of my beloved news networks, it turns out that a lot of these requests come from the same people, which is sort of like watching an instant replay and expecting it to turn out differently. “Maybe THIS time it’ll turn out they never had it.” I have the same feeling, friends, whenever I see Dwayne Wade run into the air, throw his hands up, and shoot game-clinching free throws, believe me.)
A slightly smaller, but still impressive percentage think he’s the anti-christ, in which case, actually, they’re kind of right. The original formulation of antichrist was not, it seems, the demonspawn, sign of the beast kind of thing, it was just someone, anyone, who was against Jesus. Like how Cyrus of Persia gets called the “messiah”, in the Bible. Right? You knew that one. But it’s true, this guy is not a friend of the Christian right. No one should be, though. Those guys are assholes. So speaks me.
And in Arizona, they’ve recently made a law criminalizing teacher’s teaching any history that gestures towards white people’s thousands of years history of being dicks to whoever wasn’t them. I don’t see what they’re worried about. The world has been and always will be awful, and it was only their religion that came along and convinced people we need to be nice to everyone. Treat your neighbor as yourself. Care for the less fortunate, even if they have brown skin. Before that, there was nothing weird about ordering society so you had everything and other people had nothing. That was called winning. But it was a persuasive pitch, and now they want to say, “it didn’t mean all that”. Fair enough.
Then again, you can’t stop the news from running every story without regard for whether or not it will help people think sane things and believe what’s true, but rather, in order to start whatever fight they can, so who am I really blaming?
It’s no big deal. It’s not. There are a million dimensions. You don’t have to worry about a thing. Your plane goes down in this one? Sarah Palin becomes president? Zip. Into another timestream, where nothing bad happened. The Universe’s second pantsleg. You can trust me.
Long story: You can’t fight the moonlight. I’ve been a columnist for many, many years, and I make good money, and people read me. Believe me when I say I’ve never once changed anyone’s mind. It’s a gift. But at least all of that is just on TV.
No, it’s in your personal life that you really can’t win. Don’t know the boss? Won’t get the job over the kid who does. Want a chance at it? Go to a good school. Can’t afford that?
You can’t help but try, though. Rage, rage against the dying and all that. From the famous Dylan Thomas poem “To my father, who then miraculously got better, and is fine now.” It’s right next to A.E Housman’s “To an athlete, who won the race, and everything is fine.”
Sometimes people do up and die on you, you know. But for now, I’m to meet Rackstein at the pub. So, I sign this, as I have for decades now, Red naHoulihan, columnist. Ex-pat these ten years. You killed my father. Prepare to die.