My how the years and our youths pass on...

I’m feeling old. I was just talking about this on the phone with my buddy Pat last week. I used to have this weird system of gauging how on track (or more accurately, how far off the fucking rails) my life was; I went by movies and song lyrics. This made sense to me, because movies and music have always had a big impact on my life, and I figured that if I could stay one step ahead of these lines and lyrics at any given time, then I would be doing alright. I knew that I didn’t ever have to have it all figured out… I just needed to walk the sometimes-all-too-fine line between “All is Well” and “Truly Fucked.” So I used some of my favorite songs and some of my favorite films as the barometer. For instance, in “Slow Ride” by Sublime, Bradley Nowel sings, “…but sitting on the verge of tears does not become my twenty-two years.” Now I’d been listening to that song since I was eighteen, so at twenty-one, when I was putting myself through the ringer over a girl (ripping through an eighteen pack alone in my dorm room while listening to bad screamo then going Money Mayweather on every window pane in sight,) I realized that I was off the deep end and needed to reel it in a bit. I mean, I was acting out Atmosphere b-sides before I even knew who Atmosphere was. The sad part is, over half a decade later, I was pulling the same shit over a different girl, only this time I was firing down ten Bud Lights before bed, then sweating them out in the front of a classroom while trying to teach The Great Gatsby to a bunch of eleventh graders (you’d be surprised how much more of a bitch Daisy Buchanon comes off as when you’re working on a savage hangover.) As for Bradley’s words of wisdom… well, let’s just say that twenty-two years faded from the rear view a few thousand miles back.

When the needle stopped on the next level on the life-o-meter, I was up against a line from one of my all-time favorite bands, The Bouncing Souls. In “’87,” a great song about memory and looking back on life, there’s a line that goes, “I woke up one day and I was twenty-five, with a hell of a hangover and some demented sense of pride.” Truer words have never been spoken. Twenty-five crept up on me like a thief in the night. I was spot on with the song, though; I woke up with a lot of hangovers at twenty-five, and usually with a demented sense of something, though not always pride. Shame? Check. Self-loathing? Definitely. Where am I’s? One or two. Who-the-fuck-is-this-girl-in-my-bed’s? Indeed – and I’d like to say that from those few and far between incidents came that demented sense of pride…but that wasn’t really the case. I mean, the demented part, maybe. Cocaine’s a hell of a drug. Wait, what? No I’m kidding. I’ve never woken up with a strange girl in my bed (and I’m somehow equally proud and ashamed of that statement.) But either way, it was comforting to know that the feeling I had – the feeling that my youth was all but over, and that my mid-twenties barged in uninvited – was not uncommon. It took other people by surprise, too. As I write this, I can’t even remember a single distinct memory from twenty-five. I want to say that my relationship – my first true relationship – ended, but that could have happened at the end of ’04 or the beginning of ’06 for all I know.

*Here’s a weird movie vs. real life tangent for you regarding that relationship. If you’ve never seen the movie High Fidelity, it basically involves John Cusack counting down his top five most memorable breakups. The first is Allison Ashmore, who young Cusack used to make out with under the bleachers after school. One day, he shows up for their make-out session and she’s kissing some ginger kid named Kevin Bannister. Later in the movie, Cusack calls Allison up, gets her mother, and while trying to convince her that he was actually Allison’s first boyfriend, finds out that Allison and Kevin got married. Okay, so get this… the girl that kicked me to the curb after less than six months’ last name is Ashworth. I just heard through the grapevine that she’s engaged… to the guy she started dating right after me. If, when I’m thirty, I’m calling up Mrs. Ashworth and trying to convince her that I was her daughter’s first boyfriend, remind me to fix myself a bullet sandwich for lunch that day. Thanks.

That brings us to my favorite measuring stick of my life; Beautiful Girls. Entrenched on my top five favorite films of all time, it isn’t a single quote from this movie that I find relevance in, but the concept of the movie itself. It’s about a group of guys getting together in their hometown (most of them still live there – one of them comes in from his home in the city) for their ten year high school reunion. They drink, they relive some of the glory days, they drink, they sort out a bunch of their personal shit, and they drink some more. I used to look at this movie and say to myself, “these guys must be twenty-eight, twenty nine years old, and they still don’t have their shit together – which means that it’s normal for me at twenty-five/twenty-six not to have a fucking clue…right?” As strange as it sounds, that gave me solace.

So, guess what illustrious event recently came and went? That’s right, my ten year reunion. I couldn’t make it – I was stuck down here in heaven’s waiting room – which felt weird, because ever since I graduated high school, I always assumed that the ten year reunion would be this huge deal. It seemed like this abstract concept way off on the horizon, blurred by a fiery, setting sun. I used to wonder if we’d all show up to some fancy-shmancy ballroom or catering hall in three-piece suits, looking distinctively older and more experienced in life. Who would have kids? Who would be a millionaire? And, most importantly, who/what would I be? Would I be forced into a conversation with some random classmate who felt spurned or disrespected by me when we were seventeen, like in some cheesy 80’s movie? Would he condescendingly tell me about his high-paying executive job? His new house? His beautiful bride with baby on the way? Would I have to look him in the eye and euphemize on how I’m still living check to check? Maybe I’d get good and loaded and horrify him with the horrorshow-highlight reel that is my relationship history? Actually, that last part might be fun. But none of that was necessary. The event passed without so much as a ripple in the pond. I saw pictures, and everyone looked the same. But suddenly, I was the same age as Matt Dillon and Mike Rappaport and Timothy Hutton, and not a single step closer to having my life sorted out. Luckily, with age came a very tiny bit of wisdom – enough to realize that there’s no age limit set on making sense out of your life. I’m staring twenty-nine in the face, and you know what lurks around the corner. I am still living check to check. I’m sweating out the last four months of the school year so I can get the hell out of Florida and get back to New York, where I belong. Not the ideal scenario I pictured for myself at twenty-nine, but then again, I’ve never really had a cohesive plan. All things considered, I can’t complain.

So here I am, having outgrown all my song and movie benchmarks, and that’s part of the reason I’m feeling old. I said to Pat on the phone that day, “I’m gonna’ be twenty-nine soon… when the fuck did that happen?” His response was, “Dude, when the fuck did anything happen?” which is probably a more relevant question. My twenties are a blur; they came and went with all of the clarity of a blackout-bender. What I do know is this: most of the past decade has been spent waiting; waiting to get into grad school, and waiting to get out; waiting to get to Florida, and waiting to go home. I finally feel like the waiting is coming to an end. This past year has been especially tough, and I think a major reason for that is that I’ve shed the reckless skin of youth (for better or for worse.) I no longer have the desire to flail through drunken nights and Jack-induced meltdowns where mobile communication devices get shattered against walls and beer-stained barroom floors. Part of me misses the freedom that came from getting behind a good bender – there was a twisted satisfaction and distorted beauty in the wake of my perpetual trainwreck. I guess I’m getting too old for it, now. Quick, someone get me a pair of highwater slacks, two Viagra and find out what channel shows reruns of Murder She Wrote.