I'm becoming an afro pessimist. Actually I have serious doubts about growing any decent hairstyle as I inexorably evolve into a baldy bastard. Eventually I'll lose so much hair that the line formed by what's left over will look like a ring of dirt around the bath. My hair has joined the FHC (Fucking History Club) and no amount of scrubby bearded, slightly used tennis ball macho is going to disguise the decline. If it doesn't work for Andre Agassi or Patricia De Lille, what chance do I have?
We all have our chosen ways of fighting off the approaching Zimmer frame of old age. Various friends and brothers run marathons. They used to jog, back in the days when wearing obscene silky shorts changed the stride and probably the fertility of a generation of athletes, but now we're allowed to call it "running" again. This is not the hip, drugged up transsexual version of the sport that we saw at the Olympics recently. The running these elderly gents engage in is more a feat of endurance over uncertain territory that has Kalahari Bushmen clicking sceptically as they glide by in their Toyotas. I admire my running friends' ability and marvel at their tenacity, especially those who have tackled the Comrades, an ultra-marathon sweated between Durban and Pietermaritzburg. The latter "dorp" also hosts the Midmar mile swim and the Duzi canoe marathon. The entire region is populated by people who are either extremely fit or homeless, because they're always outdoors doing something painful as a way of avoiding dating physiotherapy majors at the local university.
Now, now, Al, this is getting a teensy bit bitchy, probably because I know deep down that I'm never gonna put myself through this as long as I have money for busfare. The truth is I'll do just about anything to stay young too, short of truly immoral actions like drinking fennel tea, which rhymes with "penalty", because it's fucking foul! I just don't have a clear-cut strategy for achieving eternal life. Or maybe I do and, thanks to creeping Alzheimer's, I've forgotten where I put it. I even bought the Mega-Memory kit from Glomail/Verimark/Crap-R-us. And it works! I have it on my bookshelf and every time I see it I remember... that I'm a gullible fuckwit!
Religion offers me eternal life, just as soon as I die, but will eternity actually be everlasting or just seem that way as when listening to a Christian rock song? In the car I tune in to Radio Pulpit to make the traffic noise seem more melodic and it informs me that we're headed for "the rapture" when all born again Christians will apparently leave the planet. Rapture means joy, which it certainly will be for the rest of us when all born again Christians finally leave the planet, but it doesn't solve the problem of a clock ticking in my head.
I had a birthday a couple of months ago and, instead of going out and getting snotters, I had the sudden urge to buy wallpaper and tools. Not that I know how to use any of the shit, I just felt like it was stuff that somebody my age should own. I'm too old to go clubbing anyway. The seals are too fast. And these days in clubs, the definition of old is "pubic hair". The guy who figures out how to transplant pubes onto the cranium is going to kill! Honestly, you know you're getting past it when you see a girl walking into a club wearing nothing but a fanny pelmet and a nipple ring, and instead of going, "PHWOARR!" you think, "If a daughter of mine ever wore something like that..."
Still, I shouldn't be pessimistic. There's so much to look forward to. Erectile dysfunction for instance. Do you know the difference between fear and blind terror? Fear is what a man experiences the first time he can't get it up for a second time. And blind terror is what he experiences the second time he can't get it up for the first time. The gap between Clearasil and Viagra is just too damn short, folks!
See you next time.
Al
Leave a comment