Polar Ends

Originally Posted Monday, February 24, 2014

I've not been drinking and when I do, I don't drink as much as I used to, but on a Sunday night when the liquor is almost gone, you have to make a decision fifteen minutes before the liquor stores close, and that decision is whether it is better to have a full bottle not to drink than to have an empty bottle that sits and laughs at you.  So with little time to spare, my mother having recently departed after a wonderful dinner and a bottle of Pinot Noir (I had just watched "Sideways"), I jumped in the car and made my way with minutes to spare.  As I got out of my car, a friend was just coming out.  Caught, we were, each making the last minute run.  I addressed him as Mr. Surname and asked him how he was.  He caught me up with a serious answer saying, "I'm trying to learn to cope with this aging thing."  I found it a bit odd as we are not so close that he knows my own fears and reservations.  He is an actor of some fame having appeared in hundreds of t.v. shows and Hollywood movies in everything from bit roles to a major role in an academy awarded film with Sandra Bullock.  Much of his work has been on commercial television which I rarely watch, but once in a while I'll see his face with a familiar shock.  It is more hard hitting, of course, when I am sitting in the dark of a movie theater and, having suspended disbelief, see his face appear enormously above me.  Anyway. . . I was surprised to hear the confession.  We chatted amiably for a few minutes and I asked him if he was seeing anyone.  He pointed to his parked car on the other side of mine.  I looked around and sitting in the front seat was a pretty woman probably more than twenty years his junior.  Oh, I thought.  Sure. 

"On the set of the last film, people kept mistaking me for Kris Kristofferson."

He is a bit younger than I. 

As they drove away, the pretty woman looked over with a sweet smile and a wave.  Maybe she thought I was an actor, too.  There is his dilemma, I thought.  I have had enough practice to know. 

Some people think such a relationship is wonderful.  Some think it awful.  The truth, if there is such a thing, lies, of course, somewhere in between.  Or, rather, it lies at the polar extremes.  It will, of course, make you younger.  Your attitudes are adjusted and your conversation takes on a more contemporary tone.  You pay more attention to things that are current and leave off most references to the past, at least if you are smart.  You don't moan when you sit and you don't feel the aching in your neck as much when you try to turn it.  You refuse to be tired when the sun begins to set.  Etc.  On the other hand, you are reminded of the difference all the time.  Lying in bed with your skin next to hers, you see the ravages of time, the "sun" spots, the roughness and discolorations, the lines in the joints of the fingers and the wrists.  Sometimes you'll notice her fingers running over them as she looks at your skin even as she is telling you she loves you.  There is an acute awareness. 

There are other things as well, but I don't want to beat a whipped horse here.  You understand already.  So when you see me with someone's granddaughter, don't think it is all fun and games.  Well. . . it is for me, for I have conquered all that Mr. Surname is going through, I think.  I have a vital intelligence as I've reminded you recently, and I am perfectly built for this sort of thing having one of the darkest senses of personal humor you could ever run up against (if I allowed you to).  For now, my friend will have to get used to his new Kris Kristofferson identity.  I've already learned that when people smile and say, "Do you know who you look like?", I just wave them off and tell them to shut the fuck up.  It is never going to be someone I want to hear.