Men Age Badly and other Rhetoric For the Masses

I’ve lived in this city too long. Last night I looked out my office window and saw shapes moving in the park, in front of the government building and behind the fountain. At first, I think: they’re vandalizing the building! So I peer out a little more, and the shapes are moving, and there’s a bunch of them. Maybe it’s violent, maybe I should call the cops, I’ll watch and wait a while. Then, suddenly, the building lights up, every storey, and they start to sing so loudly I can hear them across the street and through the double pane glass. Carolers.

*

He’s sitting in our living room eating pork chops. Always professional and rumpled at the same time, perennial. Interesting and interested, with eye contact and pointed questions and a rare kindness that breathes on its own. Suddenly, my roommate says his full name. I recognize the grandfather he’s referred to in passing is the guy. A legacy maker, a man that we idolize and have attended events paying tribute to. His grandfather who we wonder if our careers measure up to, whose work we admire, whose reputation is sterling.

I ask my roommate about it when he goes, after peanut butter cups and discussing shooting his first deer. She says they’re not close; his grandfather never had much to say to him growing up, although he started to talk to him a bit once he finally made good and got into school. They don’t have a great relationship.

And it strikes again, that we should not aspire so much to certain things and follow paths we don’t really know anything about as if they were mapped. Brilliant career, but somehow he missed knowing his personal legacy -- this rumpled, considerate human being, halfway between dinner and a short sermon on bipartisanship.

*

A slow song comes on his mix CD and he switches it off, nonchalant and so close to surfacing. He doesn't remember the Fugees, because he's at least four years younger than me. Sometimes I think that if R and I don't work out, I'll just do my early twenties over again, spend a few more afternoons with mix CDs and the world between, a life before import beer.

I have no idea what younger guys see in me. Most don't know how old I am at the start because my family has somewhat ambiguous genes. A few months ago I was hanging out with this guy whose Peruvian genes made him look twenty when he was thirty and I'm pretty sure if we mated we'd have cracked the fountain of youth.

But I've figured out what I like about them, more or less. Partly, it's less serious, dudes in their late twenties get all marriage crazed and weird. Swinging wildly between displays of bachelorhood and evaluating your prospects as life partner, stopping only to stare and wonder if their hairlines are receding. Guys in their early twenties retain a certain idealism that wants to be with for being's sake, humming postal service lyrics, saying things so earnest and meaning them.

One of the great almost loves of my life changed from his early twenties to his late twenties. I met him when he was maybe twenty two. The first two years were amazing: he remembered details -- I'd mention liking some small thing and he'd seek it out just to prove he could. His values were a lot cooler, aligned with being green, diversity, open mindedness. Suddenly, he hit his mid twenties. He bought a giant SUV to replace his gas-friendly beater, stopped singing in the car, and never made breakfast again. He developed bizarre somewhat sexist preconceptions about how he should be treated because he viewed himself as a breadwinner and began to 'rule the roost.' Hilariously, he forgot how to kiss: what used to be sweet and earth shaking turned sloppy and forgettable.

There are a litany of complaints about what happens to women when they age, and various assertions that all men age like Paul Newman. Or at least Burt Reynolds. If I am shown one more condo like it's a dowry, or subjected to one more bridezilla conversation (because all women LOVE weddings and wedding type things), or asked once more by a relative stranger how many children I want to have... well, frankly, I will return to the follies of my youth with great pleasure.

*

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