I feel sorry for them, even though they don't realize that they are getting old. They don't realize how much our conversations have changed. They still see themselves as partyers, even though they probably can't remember the last time they saw the sun rise through that wonderful, sloggy, hyper-reality that comes at the end of an all-night poker binge. Slight hangovers? Those two words no longer work in partnership for my unfortunate companions.
Hangovers used to be playful little fuzzy things that set up shop in an unneccessary part of the brain after a vigorous night of joviality. They could be chased away by a few minutes of exercise and a good breakfast.
Today, hangovers for my aging friends are like hairy alien creatures that attach themselves to their faces and have to be pried off one claw at a time with a heavy metal bar. It is a process that takes most of a day and is not easily forgotten. Some have given up the sauce all together. Others will court the furry alien only rarely, after the torment of having to deal with it becomes a vague memory.
My poor friends have become preoccupied with sleep. They need more of it and of a better quality. And so, during times when, in the younger days, they'd discuss sexual conquests, they now discuss the benefits of napping. They discuss with almost sexual ecstasy the quality of a night's sleep aided by wonder drugs such as melatonin. You dream in color! they say, forgetting that in the old days, the color of a dream was not in issue. Just its moisture content.
My aging friends have entered a scary part of their lives. In the past, if the conversation turned to body parts, there were chiefly one or two that would dominate and they had to do with the reproductive system. Even a few years ago, a conversation about the body would involve large muscle groups, like hamstrings, that involved propelling the body forward when jogging.
Now my buddies discuss livers and prostates and the problems of digestion. It's scary because, while none of them actually has had an organ surgically removed or altered, they know someone who has. It is an irrevocable transition: First you don't even know what your innards are called, then you learn their names, then they start bothering you, then your friends' organs begin to get yanked out and then your's begin to rebel and have to be brought in line under threat of a scalpel.
IT'S a sad thing. Discussions of capped teeth and root canal. The nicotine patches and Pepto-Bismol. The inevitable search for new life on top of a buddy's head. It's right there, don't you see it? The small wisps of blond hair? That's new hair, one friend says. That shows the Rogaine is working. It wasn't there before, he promises.
And you want to see the patch of new growth because if hair can be grown on the dead reefs of an aging scalp than maybe time can be turned backward.
But the fact is, you don't see it. What you see are your friends bent over a table prying at each other's heads like silver-backed gorillas looking for mites. You look around to see if maybe Jane Goodall is hanging out in the shrubbery taking notes.
It's a sad thing. My friends used to talk of the getting the perfect tan. Now they talk about having a doctor dig little skin cancers out of their hide with tiny sharp knives. It's especially sad because it suddenly occurs to me that we are all about the same age.
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