Jed Wolf

Any day now I’ll be turning sissy four. Even spellcheck reminds me, like everything else these days how miserably I’m failing at remaining young. The wrinkled paint of the lighthouse stair treads I regularly climb, more frequent naps and not knowing things I once knew, like whether or not I have to pee, make me think “growing old” is a oxymoronic joke.

I smell of fish from trying earlier today, like the “Old Man in the Sea” to catch something for dinner but the wind and rain squalls provided little diversion. I threw back useless catfish pretending to enjoy myself recalling how Hemingway was accused of fakery too. The opposite of meaningful allegory, his grandiose “fish story” – (a huge Marlin dragging Santiago around for days at sea) was just another of Hemingway’s attempts to overcome his legendary impotence.

Luckily I’m not yet tempted to write a novel or do much else than settle for a pathetic, occasional compliment on my exhausted physique, cardiovascular prowess or tan. I too live in Florida, in some vague limbo like so many others between who we once were and death, knowing answers do not exist, only fewer and fewer hotter and hotter days.

I wouldn’t call them good company. I sing for other old men weekly, often daily and though I might feel grateful for not being crippled or drugged in a nursing home yet, I hold their transparent hands imagining us young again, being punched in the face by some or smitten with by others as if youth was better.

From what I spottily recall though, for the most part, youth was no picnic either. I always looked forward to growing wise and unburdened by ego and still do. It’s the “wisen” part I’m struggling with and though it’s embarrassing to talk about, I must chisel this awkward feeling in stone in hopes of coming to terms with it.

The jet black eyebrows I was born with are growing white. My listless sex drive is a Siberia from which I don’t expect to ever return. I’m shocked at how concerned I am about these facts of aging, but rather than contemplating eternity, I’m considering Viagra and building an outdoor spa.

We’ve designed a long narrow, curvaceous pool with a four person heated spa surrounded by thickly private, subtropical vegetation. When I imagine steamy full moon nights in January or sultry August evenings, I’m attracted to the idea and to the attractive guests draped on the surrounding serpentine patios, but what if it’s too late, for me?

Working out at my regular heavy pace has provided no noticeable results for many months now. I’m simply getting weaker. Though six trips up and down the lighthouse every other day feels depleting, it beats the couch.

After this summer in the mid nineties and the approaching chilly winter, I tell myself how wonderful pools of cool and hot water will enhance our backyard paradise yet when decrepitude kicks in, I feel trapped like I once did amid packs of other adolescent kids at neighborhood pools and local beaches wearing little else but vanity.

I’m not prepared to give up my regular workouts. I’ll keep resisting death for as long as possible and if self consciousnesses lays with me in my grave, so be it, and like always, any day now, perhaps in my sixty fifth year, I’ll continue to anticipate wisdom.

Perhaps global warming will tropicalize Siberia and in a freaked out world, nothing will matter anymore except soothing one anothers’ extinction while wearing whatever we want.