"I SEE DEAD PEOPLE"

At some point in the past two decades, I streamed The Sixth Sense. It must have been a dreary day, probably while I was living in isolation on British Columbia’s Sunshine Coast. It’s not really my type of movie. What sticks with me is an image of teary, traumatized ten-year-old Haley Joel Osment saying, “I see dead people.”

 

Now, in 2026, I can say the same thing. I’m not sure if sixty-one-year-old me is any more composed.

 

Dang social media. My problem these days involves Facebook and Instagram. I’ve fallen into some irksome algorithm that gives me a daily dose of the deceased. 

At first, it was an AI novelty. Each day on Facebook, there would be images of the cast of a movie or TV show from decades ago. The “then” image of Little House on the Prairie’s Melissa Gilbert would be joined sitting on a bench alongside her “now” image. “Then” Melissa Sue Anderson would meet her “now” self. I would linger for the nostalgic stirrings linked to a ’70s series that I watched weekly during childhood, back when there were only three channels to choose from. I’d smile when Alison Arngrim appeared. She played the unlikable Nellie on Little House, but I’d sat a pew away from her at a pro-LGBTQ church in L.A. during the early ’90s. A good person, it seemed, in real life. I’d see then-and-now Matthew Labyorteaux who played adorable Albert. (Still adorable.) 

But then there would be Michael Landon, his “now” image appearing with white angel’s wings, followed by angel versions of Mr. and Mrs. Oleson. Landon died too soon, as we tend to say, at the age of fifty-four while Mr. and Mrs. Oleson (actors Richard Bull and Katherine MacGregor) lived until eighty-nine and ninety-three, respectively. 

 

The next day, it might be the cast of TV’s Knots Landing or Angie or the movie The Lost Boys. Usually, I’d pause and let the whole reel play, intrigued enough to see what Joan Van Ark and Michele Lee look like today and, yes, morbidly curious over who has died. There were surprises and sad reminders. Oh, how I loved Doris Roberts in Angie but so much more so in Everybody Loves Raymond.

 

I’d become tense during each reel, bracing for whose AI image would don angel wings. Being as I’d scroll through Facetime while I was groggy and still had bedhead, it was a downer of a way to begin the day. I knew I needed to shake off the sudden knowledge that Eight Is Enough’s Adam Rich, aka Nicholas Bradford, died in 2023 and the reminder that Malcolm-Jamal Warner from The Cosby Show died last year from accidental drowning, but somehow that felt disrespectful, too. How could I go out and grab an oat milk latte at a local café and write on as if these posts about celebrity deaths could be brushed off as some perverse form of entertainment?

Thankfully, my favourite series, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, never came up since everyone but Joyce Bulifant (Murray’s wife, Marie) and Lisa Gerritsen (Phyllis’ daughter, Bess) would have angel wings. Too much death even if it was a show that debuted fifty-six years ago.

 

This nostalgic novelty became too much for me. I’d scroll past and beg the algorithm to recognize how quickly I skipped over these posts. Please, no more angel-winged celebs in my daily feed! There was no benefit. Did I really need to see what Michael Gross, the dad from Family Ties, looks like today? (No angel wings…whew.) 

 

During the past couple of weeks, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter seem to have upped the posts regarding famous people who have died. Some of it may have been stoked by the fact Lindsey Graham and Sam Neill trended for days after their deaths. These social media platforms picked up on the fact that the public was curious about certain dead people, whether beloved or reviled. Suddenly, it seemed that other posts were being boosted regarding deaths of folks who’d had some time in the public eye…a band member from a group I’d never heard of, a player for the Blue Jays in the ’90s, TV and big screen actors whose time in the spotlight preceded my birth. 

 

I can see the operators of Facebook and Instagram frothing and running their hands together, back and forth. They want dead people…we’ll give them dead people!

 

But, gosh, please count me out. All this death gets me thinking of my own demise. It’s a terrible way to start the day, making me want to climb back up the stairs—I can still do that—and hide under the covers.

 

There are many days when I still feel like I’m in my thirties. Other days, that is but a wish. But whatever the sentiment of the day, I’d like to think I’m a couple of decades away from saying, “All of my friends are dead.” Maybe I’m kidding myself. By golly, I’ve already outlived Michael Landon, Malcolm-Jamal Warner and little Nicholas Bradford! Perhaps it’s a good time to update my will.

 

Three days ago, I got another Google Alert that another one of my namesakes had died. (That’s what I get for having a common name. I’ve died countless times and been arrested for heinous crimes.) 

 

Let death be off the table for this week. Let me scroll really, really fast past any announcements and tributes. Let the algorithm determine I’m a cold, heartless man who doesn’t want to mourn and has no propensity for nostalgic downturns. I know that, on average, 150,000 to 180,000 people in the world die each day—oh, dear, what will Googling that do to my social media feeds?!—but let me put my head in the sand, ignoring all that loss just like I’m ignoring the lingering pain in my right knee from Saturday morning’s jog. Let me be vibrant and alive. Let me pretend I’m thirty-four…or thirty-nine and a half. Let me spend the next seven days blissfully ignorant of any new activity in The Grim Reaper’s logbook. Bring back that video with a moose traipsing through a sprinkler! Show me more recipes with cottage cheese as a main ingredient in entrees (blech). Allow me to “like” my friend David’s new speedboat in peace.

 

Let me live without death seeming like it’s lurking everywhere. 

AGE ADJUSTMENT

As the decades pass, I keep shifting the bar regarding what is old. I’m closer to sixty-two than sixty-one and I know there was a time I thought sixty was old. I’m embarrassed to say that, in my twenties, I thought forty was old. Oh, to be so young again. (Forty, not twenty.)

 

Despite the fact I usually feel young for my age, I found myself doubting that this past week. Exercise at high altitude in the mountains can do that. 

 

For work purposes, Evan is moving to the Roaring Fork Valley of Colorado, a corridor that includes the ski areas of Aspen and Snowmass. We spent four days last week in Snowmass Village as he connected with colleagues, worked on new projects and looked for housing. (So expensive!) 

 

I used the small-but-good-enough hotel gym for one day’s workout but then did back-to-back days of biking roads and trails that run from Snowmass to Aspen and from Snowmass to Basalt. It’s the rides that had me feeling my actual age. 

 

Looking back, I would not say that my twenties were my fittest decade. I was still figuring things out. What were all those gym machines? Who were all those buff guys who seemed to have established routines and seethed with impatience as I worked with light weights on the cables? Why jog when it was such a sweaty experience? I loved tennis, but I struggled with back pain, popping Motrin and, on one occasion, lying on my office floor, door shut, unable to get up as I repeatedly called out to my admin assistant for help.  No, the twenties were plain awkward in terms of fitness.

 

It was during my thirties that everything clicked—in fitness, in work, in life. I wasn’t quite there, but I was beginning to realize I knew a lot less than I thought I did during the years from sixteen through twenty-nine. Not knowing brought on humility and a greater sense of relaxation—I didn’t need to know it all. I still found the gym intimidating, but I went more regularly and I knew which machines felt good with my body and which ones just made me look like a struggling fool. (Way too many mirrors!) 

 

From my forties until now, I’ve been relentless about exercising. I ignore the steroid-y dudes bench pressing twice my body weight and grunting loudly as they drop the barbell after a leg press set. (I’d say they grunt while sipping from their water bottle too, but I can’t confirm it…being as I’m ignoring them and all.) I still don’t like sweating while jogging and biking—especially when sunscreen seeps into my eyes—but I’ve accepted that it’s proof of exertion. I know that my form sucks, but I still swim laps at the pool, doing my own version of a flip turn, a roll that would make Michael Phelps and actual pool mates laugh. Despite all my workout flaws, I follow that old Nike slogan—Just do it!—and I even consider myself athletic, not just for someone who is sixty-something but even at a level for thirty-year-olds. Yes, I keep up!

 

But, oh, Roaring Fork Valley, you had me doubting myself. You humbled me. At the beginning on that first day when I set out on my bike to go to Aspen, the most exercise I was getting involved my hands as I kept squeezing the brakes on the curvy downhill route from the hotel above Snowmass Village. I might have even laughed if I hadn’t been aware that, as a cyclist going round trip, what goes down must come up. Yes, it would be a grind, but I told myself that’s what first gear is for. I would just make the adjustment and pedal my way back to the top, breathing evenly, keeping my head down so as not to be overwhelmed by how steep the incline was. 

 

There is always a learning curve in cycling a route for the first time. I don’t know what’s ahead and often find myself shifting gears too late as hills seem to rise out of nowhere. The road (and bike path) to Aspen were no exception. At one point, I had to dismount and walk my bike up one hill as I swear a couple of Steller’s jays laughed at me—loudly, too. (I reclassified them as mocking-birds.)

 

It didn’t help that, as a fair-skinned Canadian who prefers vacations in Iceland and Sweden, I was still adjusting to the Colorado heat, the temperatures above thirty degrees and I’d foolishly set out without a water bottle. 

Once I reached Aspen, I walked my sweaty, messy self into a bougie coffee shop and ordered a ten-dollar iced latte. (Oh, Aspen.) I knew I didn’t fit with the wealthy clientele so I grabbed my drink and walked my bike around town, window shopping at the Prada store and listening to a busker sing a cover of John Denver’s “Rocky Mountain High.” (Of course.)

 

Afternoon storm clouds nudged me to down my latte and get back on-trail to make the return trip. The overall distance was typical for me in summer though longer than what I’d been doing throughout the winter and spring. It was a decent challenge, the right stuff to shift me into summer mode. The return route provided a long, slow incline and my legs felt it enough so that I frequently shifted into lower gears, something I usually avoid doing for all but the most obvious hills. There was a switchback area behind the Aspen airport that had my mind flashing forward, fretting about how I would handle the mountainous stretch in Snowmass. One kilometre at a time, I reminded myself. Enjoy (or endure) the moment…

 

Instead of birds that mocked, I had to avoid cursing at the people on e-bikes who powered past, their legs opting for a pedal-free experience. (Eighty-five percent of “cyclists” were using e-bikes, half of them using them as nothing more than a sit-down version of an electric scooter.) 

 

When I reached the steep incline at Snowmass, I went easy on myself and the gears. I followed the plan. First gear, head down. Our hotel was above the village, where parking lots were numbered from one to our lot, lucky number thirteen. I made it to lot ten before I had to stop as a panted profusely. Even in low gear, I could not restart the pedalling effort, the hill being far too steep. I tried not to feel defeated as I walked up the final two hundred metres. I told myself the trek was not diminished by a short uphill stroll to the bike rack. I had done it. A good workout as my tight legs attested. 

 

I hadn’t planned to bike again the next day, but Evan needed the car for work and I felt restless after a short writing session at a café in the Village and staring at the partial view from the hotel room. I switched into my bike gear, slapped on the sunscreen and headed back down the mountain for a ride in the other direction to Basalt. It would be my longest ride in many months, but I told myself that, except for the final mountain ascent, the trail would be flatter. My still sore legs would appreciate a “lighter” workout. For the most part, the ride toBasalt proved to be a comfortable ride. Only one stretch looked like it would be a particular challenge on the way back before I had to tackle Snowmass Village. 

 

The temperatures were once again hot and, by the time I finally reached for the water bottle I’d remembered to bring, the water was warm. Once again, I stopped for an iced latte when I’d reached the turn-around point, this time in the charming, historic town of Basalt. My legs sent signals that they felt achy, but I did my best to prevent any whining from filtering up to my brain. I headed back, smiling proudly on account of the distance I’d travelled. I told myself that, worst-case scenario, I could take a slow but steady approach on the return leg, stopping all I wanted, refreshing myself whenever necessary by gulping down water that was now unequivocally hot. 

 

But as is so often the case, my mind went rogue, ignoring my legs, brushing aside any plan to be like the tortoise in that classic race against the hare. I knew I was in for a grind shortly after leaving Basalt when I took a wrong turn and dead-ended in a neighbourhood. To get back on-trail, I had to face an extra uphill segment that went on for half a kilometre. This was just the beginning of the trip back and, whoa, my legs were already protesting. 

 

Ignore, ignore.

 

There were distance markers I hadn’t even noticed along the bike path on the way to Basalt but now I found myself spotting each one and longing for the tiny, faded half-mile signs to show up sooner. So many to spot; so far left to go.

 

Once reaching the base of Snowmass and taking the tunnel under the highway, I had only four kilometres to go. I knew the last half (which had been part of my Aspen ride) would be difficult, but I didn’t realize how tough the first half—a sprawling meadow area with a series of smaller dips and rises—would be. Let the water breaks begin. 

 

In the end, I dismounted at the first lot instead of the tenth and walked my bike the rest of the way. My legs were pedalled out. My pride was severely bruised. I let my sunglasses mask much of the disappointment on my face. 

 

It’s been a couple of years since I last did the 140-kilometre, uphill/downhill roundtrip trek from my condo in Vancouver to Squamish, BC. My Snowmass experiences had me wondering if such outings are a thing of the past. Were my challenges just a sign that I was only at the beginning of summer biking season or had I gotten “too old”? Was an e-bike in my near future? I reminded myself that no one on a regular bike had passed me on my four-hour ride along the busier Rio Grande Trail to and from Basalt. I assured myself that I could still keep up with thirty-somethings. Alas, the assurances fell flat. I felt old. Sixty-one, if not older. 

 

Four days later, I am still shaken from the experience. Have I reached a tipping point where I am too old for more things than just rave events, rap music and TikTok? Is it time to take up pickleball? Lawn bowling? Bridge? 

 

In a day or two, I’ll get back on my bike and ride for hours along the flatter bike paths in and around Denver. I’ll tell myself I still feel like I’m in my thirties (maybe thirty-nine instead of thirty-six). Still, I can’t help but think the aging clock is ticking faster. It won’t slow down; instead, it seems I will. As that now-old movie from 1994 says, Reality Bites. 

WHAT IS "OLD"?

Those of us who have lived at least a few decades see how fluid the terms young and old can be.

 

MUST be. 

 

When I first came out—finally—at twenty-four and started going to gay bars in West Hollywood, an especially brutal place for being judged based on looks, I remember thinking forty was so old. When I dated I guy who was thirty, I wondered if our age gap was too great. 

 

Thirty or even forty as something considered older…it feels embarrassingly stupid now. It also reminds me of needy guys on Twitter, announcing it’s their thirty-fourth birthday and saying they’re old just so those of us who are older will say, “Thirty-four’s nothing. You’re so young.”

 

Yeah, I don’t do that. If a thirty-four-year-old wants to feel old—genuinely or falsely—that’s his shit to live with. I remember thirty-four. It felt like the perfect age.

 

But now I’m sixty. My hands did not shake as I typed that, but I’ll admit to pausing after the period. 

 

Holy #%&!

 

SIXTY! So old.

 

But old in terms of being sixty feels like the word fag. I’m allowed to use it for myself but, hell no, it’s not okay for other people, i.e., younger people, to attach old to my age. That’s when I get defensive, even annoyed. Sixty is nothing. Or, at least, it’s definitely not old.

 

Yes, hair-obsessed...

I got my back up last night as I watched the first episode of Season 9 of Queer Eye, set in Las Vegas. The woman being made over was a sixty-three-year-old former Vegas showgirl. It wasn’t an especially memorable episode aside from the fact I was obsessed with the new guy’s hair—the highlights, the length, the styling. (New guy is Jeremiah Brent, replacing Bobby Berk as the interior designer.) I did, however, become too aware of how much the show set the showgirl up as being old.

 

Not knitting (or collecting)
doilies yet!

A grandma.

Living in the past, living only for her children and grandkids.

No new goals.

Let herself go.

Gray hair is bad.

 

Yes, it’s in the show’s interest to portray the poor woman as dour and dowdy in the beginning. This is a makeover show and a radical transformation is key to an episode’s success. Let her reveal come with a string of exclamation marks. Let the viewer say, “Oh, my god, she looks so good…for sixty-three.” Yeah, I added on that qualifier. As if sixty-three is old. 

 

I don’t know what I think is old anymore. I just know it’s not sixty. I won’t allow myself to think that. I certainly am not going with sixty-three, counting down the days before OLD walks into my home and takes over. Hello, knee-high socks and gaudy golf outfit, polo shirt tucked into plaid pants, Buddha belly as prominently on display as unkempt eyebrows and strands of ear hair.

 

Yeesh. Let that version of old be held at bay for a lifetime.

 

I cringed every time Tan, Jonathan, Karamo, Antoni and The Hair Guy said old or older. They made sixty-three something to dread…unless it came with a team that redesigned your entire home, kinda sorta showed you how to make a red pepper dip (Oh, Antoni) and arranged for a last hurrah on a Vegas stage. It’s worth noting that the QE crew is experiencing its own age creep with all but Jonathan now in their forties. (Still, so young now in my books!) From my perspective, the nineteen years between Karamo and the showgirl weren’t so great.

 

“Age is just a number” may be a cliché but, now that I’m seemingly aging more than when I was twenty-something, it does feel true. Let sixty be the new forty. Heck, honestly I’d say I feel not a day over thirty-seven. And immediately after typing that, I sense that I need to defend it. I still work out six days a week. My runs, as an example, are always eleven kilometers (or occasionally more) and I run them as fast as I did thirty years ago. I seem to spin all day, a flurry of activities. That Tasmanian devil critter’s got nothing on me.  

 

Somewhere (way) down the line, I’ll embrace the word old, but it’s a firm no thank you for now. I’m not going to let that mindset in. Let me continue to ascend and descend stairs, skipping every other step. Let me listen to podcasts or, okay, audiobooks. Let me sing-mumble that “Tipsy” song, even if it’s from my home office desk and not an actual bar. (Oh, the noise!) So maybe I’m not exactly young. I’ll concede that. I have no interest in spending a second of my day on TikTok. But I’m not going shopping for knee-high socks this decade either. 

 

Youngish. That sounds all right. Oldish? Nope. Don’t rush me, thank you very much.

 

 

 

 

 

DRINKING THE KOOL-AID…OR BATHING IN IT

Not as far back as childhood. In Disney World, I had my picture taken 

with Minnie Mouse. It's part of my father's collection of slides, 

never to turn up again. As you can see, finally meeting 

Pluto in Disneyland was one of life's milestones.

I was born in Hamilton, Ontario and grew up there until the age of thirteen. Situated on Lake Ontario, the city was considered part of the “banana belt” in the southwestern portion of the province since we got less snow than places like Buffalo, New York which was sixty-five miles away on Lake Erie. Still, the predominant Ontario mindset was to book vacation time during winter to head south, most commonly to Florida. Sun! Beaches! Pluto and Goofy! 

 

Every March, my family loaded up the station wagon and headed for cities like Sarasota and Fort Myers on the Gulf Coast. These were excruciatingly long trips for a kid. How many times did my brother, sister or I ask, “How much longer?” or more naively, “Are we there yet?” 

 

My parents learned the best way to make the trek tolerable was to set me up in “the very back,” in the section behind the rear seat where two little seats popped up, facing one another. Luggage and coolers were stacked between my spot and the rear seat where my siblings sat. This reduced my opportunities to pester everyone which I’d discovered was a highly entertaining way to pass the time. Every time my brother or sister shrieked my name, I felt deeply rewarded. 

 

With me being barricaded away, I had to find less interactive entertainment. Books seemed like an ominous undertaking, too long, too many extended descriptions about kitchens and pond algae. Every time we pulled into a rest area, I stocked up on tourist maps and pamphlets. I grabbed one of everything, a boy of indiscriminating taste. (Has that changed?) My father’s driving itinerary was always ambitious so there was no chance we’d stop at the ghost town in Findlay, Ohio or a Kentucky ventriloquist museum, but I could read about these spots, gaze at the photos and count the number of exclamations that dotted the descriptions of things to do there. Oh! What! Fun! It was more interesting than reading about what a fictional character name Albert noticed in Aunt Mildred’s mason jars. (Always berry preserves, never fingers suspended in formaldehyde.)

 

My pamphlet collection grew exponentially as the drive dragged on, each place overhyped to such a degree that I wondered if there were any standards for allowing a roadside stop to declare itself “WORLD FAMOUS!” How does a small chain in Florida gain such renown for plopping sauerkraut on a hotdog? Did people in Australia really talk about it? In Turkey? (As an eight-year-old, I thought a lot about a country named after a bird stuffed with cornbread.)

 

One pamphlet-harkening destination in northeastern Florida randomly popped in my mind again this past week, an attraction in the town of Saint Augustine, billed as “the nation’s oldest city.” I don’t know if the Medieval Torture Museum, the Oldest Wooden School House or St. Augustine Shipwreck Museum existed way back in my days of being barricaded. What piqued my interest then, and does so exponentially more now, is Ponce de León’s Fountain of Youth. There was no picture of this place, but I imagined something stately, one of those garden features but supersized with carvings of flying fish and lions and a long line of people waiting to drink from it as others jumped in and splashed about, their wrinkled skin becoming smooth, hair growing back on aging men’s scalps, none of it gray or white. This was why so many seniors flocked to Florida! I couldn’t understand why my grandparents, who stayed six months every year in a mobile home farther south in Lakeland, returned every April looking more like Jed Clampett or even Granny from The Beverly Hillbillies, not having transformed into Elly May or Jethro. Wrong priorities was all I could come up with.

 

At eight, the Fountain of Youth wasn’t a draw. I didn’t want to look four again, with grownups plopping back on a tricycle and clapping as I reverted to assembling ten-piece puzzles of fruit. Still, I knew I’d head to St. Augustine and the Fountain of Youth when the time seemed right. And, by golly, the time is now. Let me splash in it, swim, snorkel, scuba dive, float, drink from it and gargle with it. So long saggy bits! Begone, Santa beard! Vamoose, age spots! Hello again, boyish skin…without, fingers crossed, the accompanying zits. 

 

If only I still had an eight-year-old’s imagination…and gullibility. 

 

Like most of us looking at middle age in the rearview mirror—hell, that period’s long out of frame—I’m facing a comeuppance every time I glimpse any part of me in a mirror. Certain lyrics from Neil Young have new meaning as they pop into my head, like a most unwanted earworm: 

Old man, look at my life,

I’m a lot like you.

God lord, it doesn’t help that I’m conjuring up a song that was released fifty-one years ago. My only other pop culture reference thus far in this post is a TV show that’s even older. Why can’t I come up with a way to weave in TikTok, Doja Cat and some new series on a streaming channel that I refuse to pay for because I grew up in a time when watching The Carol Burnett Show and The Waltons was free? (I canceled Netflix after finishing all of Grace and Frankie.)

 

I’m at that awkward stage where I haven’t yet surrendered to complete irrelevance and dinners at three in the afternoon. I consider it a small victory that AARP, which had been popping up in my spam email folder during COVID, The Early Years, has lost my scent. Maybe my L’Oréal Revitalift eye cream is having a better result than I think. Maybe the dark bags I continue to see under my eyes are ghost imprints. After two decades of hanging out there, I can’t help but see the illusion of the pesky buggers.     

    

Aging is supposed to help us evolve, doing away with vanity, letting others take their moment in the limelight and paring our lives down to the things experience tells us are more important. As someone who has spent a lifetime beating myself up over my looks, letting go of all that misery would be a blessing. It’s a relief knowing that self-criticism is quieter, the swells passing more quickly. I step away from the mirror the second a negative notion surfaces, I don’t glance in windows to gauge my weight as often anymore…something I learned is very common for people with eating disorders. I can settle with a shrug as my self-assessment for the day, a teenager’s ennui (Yeah, whatever) without the youthful complexion. (Oily, Pimply…stop romanticizing it!) 

 

Still, I brace for the onslaught of wrinkles and age spots. I worry about my face being pulled down by prominent jowls. I wonder how I’ll be able to handle seeing my skin turn as thin as crepe paper, every bumbling bump commemorated in red blotches. Sure, vanity will fade to nothing, but I feel that, for myself, despair will move in. 

 

Could have bought that Porsche
if I hadn't invested so heavily
in false hope.

Like red Porsches, life’s lessons are wasted on older folks. Why couldn’t I have accepted my younger self? Why didn’t I embrace it, knowing that was as good as it would get? Why did I put so much hope into the radio commercial testimonials about Clearasil? Why didn’t I extend college another year or three? Why didn’t I fight back, blaring the Donna Summer cassettes in my Chevette every time someone had the audacity to say disco sucked?

 

I feel an inkling to fly to Tampa, rent a car and head two hours northeast. I’ve Googled the Fountain of Youth and I see no fountain at all. It’s just another schmucky attraction where people will happily my $17.79. 

 

But I won’t be a sucker. 

 

If I wait another year, I’ll get the senior’s discount, coughing up only $15.92, the savings getting me a sauerkraut-laden hotdog, once I peruse old pamphlets to find a time machine that’ll take me back to 1978. Ah, forget it. They didn’t have veggie dogs back then. Sauerkraut in a bun isn’t worth the effort.

 

And so it goes. Life. No brakes. No turning back. Maybe it’s another one of those indignities that comes with aging, but the future seems to be approaching at greater speed. I’m buckled in. Ready. Or not.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

THE DEATH SPIRAL

Okay, the blog is called Aging Gayly. While the aging is ongoing, the “gayly” can be a little spotty. It may have gone AWOL during a recent dark patch. 

 

I had a health scare in August, my body doing something for the first time. I did what any doofus guy who is squeamish and hates going to the doctor does. I ignored it. I hoped it would go away. A weird blip. 

 

The next day, my body did it again. It was more worrisome, not just because the issue hung around. It seemed worse. I did something worse than ignoring it. I Googled. Just a quick search, I told myself. If it got gloomy, I’d stop.

 

In less than three minutes, I’d found gloom. I stopped. I closed the tab and shut my laptop. But I’d already suffered gloom exposure. I couldn’t ignore that in the way I’d ignored my actual condition. 

 

I reminded myself of all the fine print on the info sheets that come with over the counter and prescription drugs and the possible side effects that fast-talking voice actors rattle off at the end of TV and radio commercials for medications. An ointment might be miraculous in removing a skin tag, but that result could be counterbalanced by some other pesky reaction. Rashes. Nausea. Seizures. Paralysis. Death. 

 

Death is always on the list. The grim reaper is one greedy bastard. How does a game of skin tag lead to You’re It? At least with the unsightly bump gone, the body will look decent for open casket viewings.

 

Of course, my worries were beyond fatal skin tags.

 

I called the doctor’s office to book an appointment. Usually, it takes six to eight weeks to get a slot. As it was August, I braced for a longer wait. My doctor was always off on bike or kayak trips in Italy or Greenland. I explained my symptoms to the receptionist and was slated to see Nurse Brian the next morning. 

 

What? So soon?! This seemed to confirm the gloom.

 

Hello, doom. 

 

Seizures. Paralysis. Death.

 

I made it to the doctor’s office. Nurse Brian was calm and professional. But then, his life wasn’t on the line. What was he…twenty-eight? As long as he avoided puffer fish sushi and acrobatic selfies on precarious hiking ledges, he had decades to go before intermittent thoughts of mortality.

 

Who's a big baby?
Yep, me.

Tests were required. Fasting first. I tried to suppress concerns about seizures, paralysis and death by fixating on my longstanding fear of needles. (I just Googled the term for that: trypanophobia. I got light-headed and had to lie on the sofa for five minutes. Seriously.) I walked to clinic the next morning, third person to line up outside before they opened. I needed to get the bloodthirsty stabbing over with. When it was my turn to give my medical info to the receptionist, she told me the requisition wasn’t in the system yet. “It takes 24 to 48 hours.” Not my time. Yet. 

 

I always reach this summit.

I shuffled home, relieved to avert being stabbed but frustrated too. Being a Friday, I’d have to wait the weekend, trying to suppress images of needles in my arm and thoughts of seizures, paralysis and death. I treated myself to a Last Supper of pizza and ice cream. Twice. And between meals, a pickup order of an item called the Little Mountain of Fries. I assured myself that a stomachache had nothing to do with my still-undiagnosed condition.

 

On Sunday evening, I went on a long bike ride to work off my jitters and the Kilimanjaro mound of French fries. I dealt with the lingering flash of Google gloom head-on. As an aging gay man, I’d lived a full life. I’d made it through the years of the AIDS crisis, I’d survived psych ward stays. I thought of people who died much younger. Life happens. So does death. If it was time to die, well okay. I’d pedalled my way through the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression…acceptance. It was a hollow victory.  

 

Come Monday morning I submitted to the medically sanctioned stabbing. I survived that much, even though phrases like “Your veins are hiding” and “I’m not getting enough blood” are guaranteed fodder for future nightmares. 

 

Naturally, my results were delayed as an ominous message on the medical portal stated my bloodwork had been referred to another lab. That can’t be good! 

 

I may have eaten my way through another French fry mountain. Everest conquered!

 

Whew!

In the end, it was all good. The issue did go away…after ten days. When I finally had a phone appointment with my doctor a month later, he had no concerns. The anomaly I experienced was “fairly common” and “normal.”

 

If only I were.  

  

THE NUMBERS GAME

Last October, I changed this blog’s name to “Aging Gayly.” I realized the other day that I haven’t written anything since then that has been directly about getting older although references to Barry White, Karen Carpenter, Flip Wilson and Bette Midler may be dead giveaways. I don’t think I ever really left the ’70s. 

 

Sigh. Keep going...

keep going.

There are reminders that I’m no spring chicken everywhere. One of the worst comes when I’m filling out something online, perhaps purchasing an airline ticket, and I have to enter my date of birth. For “convenience,” the numbers for month, day and year are scroll-down options. It takes a helluva lot of scrolling to get to my year. Entering the four digits would be both quicker and less humbling.  

 

It's hard to believe I once struggled with accepting the term, middle-aged. It made me cringe. It brought to mind synonyms from my very own personalized thesaurus: passé, irrelevant, recalcitrant, rotting. Hello, regular references to nostalgia: answering machines, Blockbusters, “Designing Women,” Tang, Milli Vanilli, magazine subscriptions.

 

“Middle-aged” is way, way back in the rearview mirror unless I’m kidding myself into thinking I’m going to live to 116 (Go, science!). Do I really want to be that guy they wheel into the nursing home dining room, sitting deaf and oblivious in a wheelchair as they set a birthday cake in front of me when I haven’t eaten solids in a decade and gathering three or four staff members for a photo no one wants, then clapping as they pretend I’m the one who blew out the one candle they lit? I’d probably nod off before they even tracked down Jerry the custodian to borrow his lighter.

 

Yeah. There could be darker times ahead. 

 

I’m thankful I’m still spry and aware enough to want to spit at anyone who puts “spry” and my name in the same sentence. Soon enough, I’ll be able to look people in the eye, say the f-word and have people think it’s cute. Hilarious even. When I glare and repeat the f-word, they’ll only laugh harder. 

 

But I keep telling myself that’s far away. Middle-aged is gone but lopping off “middle” and just being aged doesn’t seem the right fit either. I continue to jog and ride my bike…a regular bike with no “e” in front of it. Then I’m reminded my bike just hit its thirtieth anniversary. I’m old-ish with old things. I try not to get hung up on that. I frequently pass people younger than my bike. Spry, indeed!

 

I’d like to believe I’m a generation away (or more, fingers crossed) from regularly reading obituaries and having funerals be my social scene. (“Finger sandwiches? Sheesh. They had a whole pasta bar at Lou’s.”) I hope to never be that person in line at a café who turns to a stranger and says, “All my friends are dead.” Let “good morning” roll off the tongue instead or, better yet, let there be no f-ing line. 

 

My closest friend and I have talked about a time when we’ll text each other every morning, the hello or “Damn. Outta prunes. Again” serving as a means of checking in on one another, talk of our lack of constipation a more polite message than, “You’re not dead, are you?” We don’t text much as of now. Mostly, it’s out-dueling one another to announce a dead celebrity. Ed Asner. Betty White. Tina Turner. People I “loved” inasmuch as you can adore a person you never met who nonetheless brought joy. It’s always a macabre exchange, each of us offering something dignified and mentioning a favorite role/show/song. It will only become more macabre when more of the famous dead people are in our same decade or, gasp, the one that comes after us. Live long and prosper, Rob Lowe, Lisa Kudrow and Debbie Gibson. Each of you looks far younger than your years. Let that stand…for you and, ahem, for me, too.

 

Age is just a number, they say, but my how it’s getting big. “F that.” [Insert laughtrack. (Yep. I still remember what that is.)]