I can see how being single in your teens and early twenties makes sense. There are a lot of things a person should probably work out when they're emotionally underformed, relatively unburdened with the psychic scar tissue of failure and physically still pretty bendy. Pliancy in all its forms is a desirable attribute when you haven't yet figured out the comfortable shielding effects of cynicism or that shower sex really isn't all that safe.
When I was in my twenties, I hooked up pretty early on with the woman I would eventually divorce, so I skipped out on most of that tasting-menu-type experience. I don't say "missed out" because all of that experience I opted into and I'm a strong proponent of ideas like human agency and personal responsibility. Plus I'm not 100% convinced I wasn't under some kind of voodoo sexmagick hex, so it wasn't my fault.
According to the social prescription, I've done everything backward: I was an old married man in my twenties and, now in my early-middle age, I'm a swinging, carefree type of part-time bachelor dude whose life is defined by its lack of commitment and openness to new interpersonal experiences. Hell, as of a few weeks ago now, I don't even have any dogs to take care of. It's the kind of unfettered lifestyle my married peers envy, organized around pleasure-defined short-term liaisons, irregular sleep patterns and regularly scheduled STD blood screenings.
OK, so it's not all glamor. Professional athletes my age (38) don't first start noticing themselves losing the spring in their vertical jump or the zip on the ole fastball,* they notice the lack of response in recovery time, from both injury and in simple recharging between efforts. My married friends envy my access to all matter of free-range strange. I'd be lying if I said a little bit of me** didn't envy their freedom to fall asleep before 10 pm in the recliner in front of syndicated reruns of The Big Bang Theory.***
The other hard part is that I'm old enough to see and recognize that in this process of coupling and uncoupling, trying out and trying on, efforting and failing and efforting again, people get hurt. Having been left, having been alone, having been lost in that space where the prospect of another set of stars aligning to draw you into that synchronous orbit with yet another wandering someone else seems so dreadfully, cosmically improbable, empathy alone can be an impediment acting in your own emotional best interest, in starting or ending a relationship, as the situation dictates. Maybe I'm just projecting. Maybe breaking up and breaking people's hearts when you're in your twenties just means you get to hold onto self-examination and second guessing for just that much longer. But I don't know. I feel like if you're in your twenties, burning through partners is what's socially expected of you and the guilty sting of leaving/the lingering ache of being left is diluted by the volume of years you imagine you have ahead of you. In your late 30s, at a certain point, every failing relationship feels like a Mexican standoff. In the end, everyone is likely going to get hurt to some degree. Sometimes one of them is actually Mexican. I don't know. It depends on how open you are, racially and culturally speaking.
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*none of these are sexual metaphors... yet. Patience. They're coming.
**There's one!
***I'll be honest, I'm not sure if that's one or not
Thursday, August 23, 2012
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3 comments:
For thirty years now I've been amused by the euphemism "strange." I always at least smile when I hear it. "Free range strange" just takes that to a whole new level. Than you.
"free range strange" IS pretty good. for all practical purposes, until I has halfway through age 25, I was essentially a 1950s housewife, also profoundly depressed (possibly the same thing?). I feel pissed off, regularly, that my Youth was squandered in such a stable, boring way - i did a lot of ironing, and grocery shopping, and errand-running, and I should have been having lots of random sex and getting drunk. now i feel a little too old for those things. it's a terrible, cruel world we inhabit.
Gumbo: I feel like if this blog has an underlying mission at all, it's in the expansion of the vocabulary of the profane. It's not often one gets direct validation of their life's purpose. For that I thank you right back.
KnK: I will say as someone who is older than you, it's never too late. Although I do skip the getting drunk part. It complicates the subsequent walk of shame, usually difficult enough through an unfamiliar dwelling in the dark. Also makes the driving home a bit more of a challenge than I'm looking for.
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