No Exit?

It must be the endless weeks of rain and fog and cold on this coast. Or maybe it’s just that we’ve grown into geezers and see everything through the screen of our disappointments. What happened? Where’s the vitality of our youth? It used to be when you woke up in the morning you were excited about the day ahead. Stuff had to be done. People needed to be seen. It felt good to be alive. We looked forward to the day’s action. But then a slow- down started, a kind of malaise set in. First this expressed itself physically. The aches and pains, which we used to be able to ignore, took longer and longer to disappear. Some stuck around for ever, it seemed. Your back, your shoulders, your knees began to hurt. Your hands didn’t seem to be as steady as they used to be. Your skin got thinner and you bled every time you came even close to a sharp object. Then your mind began to decelerate. Your short term memory faded and you can’t remember anything, have to write everything down. With me, it’s gotten so bad that in the middle of a telephone conversation I suddenly realize that I haven’t got a clue to whom I’m talking. It’s embarrassing.

And it’s not just the tedium of physical decline that gets you down; it’s the knowledge of waking up in the morning and being unable to think of anything at all ahead to brighten your day, to get you excited, to put some lead in your pencil. You’ve been there, done that and it’s just going to be another humdrum day. You’ve simply lost interest in what lies ahead. You’ve turned into a bore.

Bleakness seems to engulf everything. It’s depressing to live with the realization that your hair has turned grey, your muscle strength has begun to desert you, your eyesight isn’t what it used to be. We’ve grown accustomed to living with our ceramic hips. You learn to be careful about how you use your body. No more high impact action. No more running. No more jumping or lifting heavy loads. You worry about falling and breaking your bones. And if you do, as I have done, the healing process is prolonged and miserable. And speaking of lead in your pencil, my pencil has been leadless for years. You know you’re in trouble, when you don’t even miss it any more.

Even food is no longer a source of enjoyment, because you’ve weaned yourself off all the good stuff that’s supposedly bad for you. Come on, tofu burgers, chicken sausages or veggie dogs? That stuff makes you gag, but it’s good for you, they say. For me this is particularly galling. Gone are the raw bacon sandwiches. The savory taste of blood sausages is a dim memory. No more sow belly, pig maws or tripe or all the other good eats that used to make me salivate. I miss Bavarian haute cuisine. What used to get me drooling sometimes in my dreams was the prospect of a real Bavarian breakfast – Weisswurst (white veal sausage), fresh Radi (fiery hot horse radish) and a Mass (liter) of Weiss-Bier (wheat beer). Can’t you just taste it? Alas, I abstain.

I’ve given up all the things that used to make life enjoyable, because my betters told me they were bad for me. I stopped taking chances. I quit smoking. I’ve given up brawling. I don’t imbibe to excess anymore. The vodka bottle stands untouched in my cupboard. I no longer covet my neighbor’s or anyone else’s wife, for that matter. I’ve learned to rein in and control my impulses, to smile and back off instead of losing my cool. I’ve become domesticated and insipid.

‘Shall I part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?’

There’s a larger rut. It’s all around us, in our schools, our courts, society in general. The place is falling apart, but everyone pretends nothing is wrong. T.S. Eliot’s J. Alfred Prufrock had it right when he lamented: ‘In the room the women come and go talking about Michelangelo.’ The idle chatter of the demimonde, of the wannabe cognoscenti, who surround us, bore me. They put on a front of living happily in their manors, but in reality they only co-habit the same space. They exist in a parallel universe. They pass each other occasionally, like two ships in the night, with the odd bilious remark cutting through the darkness. One spends his or her days in one part of the house, on the computer or with whatever else occupies their time; the other hangs out in a different room doing whatever. They walk their dog together and silently wonder where they took the wrong turn. The feeling is not unlike being in Sartre’s version of hell, there to torture one another, by probing the other’s sins and unpleasant memories. They pick at each other’s scabs. No one takes responsibility for their actions. “L’enfer, c’est les autres.”

All that loss and in exchange for what? Serenity? Respectability? Longevity? I’m convinced we’d gladly exchange all that in a heartbeat for not having to worry about our damn blood pressure, drooping hemorrhoids or cholesterol level, to be young once more, to experience the adrenalin rush of danger, of being in love, of being a winner. Alas, that’s not going to happen. We clearly suffer from existential angst.

Where do they find the cheerful seniors in those commercials pitching Viagra and Cialis and God knows what else? Maybe they live on another planet. What’s there to be happy about, if you have to ingest chemicals to get your what’s-its functioning again?

Obliging souls keep trying to sign me up with some geezer organization that arranges “fun” trips for “golden agers”, as they like to style themselves. I can just see myself joining a group of sprightly old ladies in their serviceable shoes, sturdy walking canes and their drug-induced liveliness on some eco-tour or museum trip and listening to their blather about making the world a better place. I’d probably end up in some foreign dungeon for strangling one of them in desperation. There is no hope for dinosaurs. People say you can change, you can adapt. All it takes is will power. Fiddle sticks.

I don’t know, maybe the jihadist have it right – go out in a blaze of glory. Forget about the mirage of paradise and virgins. I’ll stick with the maggots. They are real. I used to be pretty good at blowing things up. I have the commendations to prove it. But, God, that makes a mess. I’ve grown into a tidy person in my dotage. So what to do. To be or not to be that is the question.

Is there an exit? Do I have the guts to step through the door? Can I handle the heat on the other side of that door which Sartre’s protagonists feared? Do I dare? Maybe I’ll test the waters by firing up and enjoying a fat Cohiba and uncorking a good 20-year old port, that’s been wasting away in my liquor cabinet. After all, does it really matter if you die from cancer of the lung or liver or from a bullet through your eye or a heart attack? Perhaps warmer climes are the answer. I wonder if they have lead in Hawaii or Mexico. I never found any on my previous visits, but I also didn’t look very hard, didn’t realize I needed some.