UPDATE--July 29, 2017: This post is written about an actual person, but his name is not Jack. I don't know if the real Jack has ever read this, but I am no longer comfortable speaking so critically of him in such a public forum. He probably is still an insensitive jerk, but I no longer wish to be one also.
The original post with names changed to protect all jerks follows:
I recently went out for dinner and drinks with a group of people most of whom I went to grammar and/or high school with. It was a rather odd mixture of people for various reasons that I will perhaps ruminate upon at another time, but what struck me was how everyone was aging in such different ways. There was graying, balding, plumping (a lot), wrinkling, sagging and even some transcendence into being distinguished looking (which didn’t apply to the women. Does it ever?) Oh, did I mention widening? (Our group actually couldn’t be seated in a booth because we didn’t fit. Really!)
But there was one person who stood out in my mind: Jack. First off, don’t get the wrong idea. I’m not protecting his identity by leaving off his last name. Everybody knows Jack simply as Jack. He and his lifetime antics have so stood out amongst the people who know and know of him that his last name is no longer needed. He is now just “Jack.”
Jack and I were close friends in junior high and high school, often hanging out together and playing sports. It was easy since we lived about 100 yards apart and both had a strong affinity for sports and being obnoxious. We even went to our high school prom together (with our long-time girlfriends of course.) However Jack and I began to grow apart after going to different colleges, and the fissure was completed during a very unpleasant two weeks when Jack came to stay with me and my girlfriend in LA where I was spending the summer as a law intern. (This was a different girlfriend than the one I took to prom—that one was in the process of becoming a lesbian. And NO! I didn’t feel responsible for her new predilection.) Unbeknownst to me, Jack had become a full-fledged coke fiend by this time and was simply unbearable to be around.
But this isn’t about our long ago boyhood friendship or its deterioration. Rather it’s all about Jack--just as he likes it—and his lifelong odyssey with drugs and the effect they may have had on him physically. I have no idea what quantity of drugs have passed through his system, but suffice it to say that it was enough to lead him to commit a variety of felonies, spend time in jail, lose his professional drivers license and means of earning a living, pimp out his girlfriend(s) and spend who knows how many months in the hospital as his body broke down.
But to Jack’s credit and in spite of the abuse he put his body through, Jack actually became more handsome as he aged. He went from being a good-looking 20-something guy to being George Clooney-handsome in his 30’s. It seems that no matter what Jack did or regardless of how much his health suffered as a result of his vices, Jack looked great. And since he spent most of his money on drugs instead of food, Jack also lost a great deal of weight and looked Hollywood-lean. No gym, vitamins or plastic surgery for Jack. His secret was physical self-abuse via drug addiction.
I saw Jack on and off through most of his forties and he somehow maintained his Clooney looks. But fairy tales don’t really exist do they. A few years ago Jack came to town and we arranged the usual get-together whereby anyone with nothing better to do would meet up and spend a day or evening listening to Jack tell us that he was finally straight and planned to do this or that or something that we had been told who knows how many times in the past. But while the staging and script were pretty much the same, this time the actor had changed. “Jack Clooney” had been replaced by Hans Moleman (the hard-luck, though equally tough to kill character from the Simpsons.) Jack was now a little old man, slightly hunched over and with too-thick glasses that enlarged his eyes ala Mr. Magoo.
The fact that everyone loses their looks as they age is certainly no secret, and is another one of those painful aspects of aging which demands an ever increasing amount of self-delusion to deal with. Personally, I have never been comfortable with my limited ability to self-delude. When I look in the mirror, my mind’s eye doesn’t see me as I looked when I was 25 or any other better-looking time; I simply now see myself as a 50 year-old guy. And though on a good day I’m still able to pass for 48, I realize that the day will come when I wake up, look in the mirror and am steamrolled by the realization that I look OLD. (Hmm, maybe the Magoo-vision is actually an adaptive mechanism crafted by humans over the ages to give a much-needed assist in deceiving ourselves.)
But hey, I don’t look as old as Jack, and in fact I was carded yesterday while buying beer at Jewel. Carded! Yes, me. I must say I was feeling pretty good as I started to walk out of the store, a 12 pack of the new Goose Island Ale in hand. But my delusion of youth quickly faded as I noticed that the sign that used to say “we card under 35” now simply read……”we card EVERYONE.”
The original post with names changed to protect all jerks follows:
I recently went out for dinner and drinks with a group of people most of whom I went to grammar and/or high school with. It was a rather odd mixture of people for various reasons that I will perhaps ruminate upon at another time, but what struck me was how everyone was aging in such different ways. There was graying, balding, plumping (a lot), wrinkling, sagging and even some transcendence into being distinguished looking (which didn’t apply to the women. Does it ever?) Oh, did I mention widening? (Our group actually couldn’t be seated in a booth because we didn’t fit. Really!)
But there was one person who stood out in my mind: Jack. First off, don’t get the wrong idea. I’m not protecting his identity by leaving off his last name. Everybody knows Jack simply as Jack. He and his lifetime antics have so stood out amongst the people who know and know of him that his last name is no longer needed. He is now just “Jack.”
Jack and I were close friends in junior high and high school, often hanging out together and playing sports. It was easy since we lived about 100 yards apart and both had a strong affinity for sports and being obnoxious. We even went to our high school prom together (with our long-time girlfriends of course.) However Jack and I began to grow apart after going to different colleges, and the fissure was completed during a very unpleasant two weeks when Jack came to stay with me and my girlfriend in LA where I was spending the summer as a law intern. (This was a different girlfriend than the one I took to prom—that one was in the process of becoming a lesbian. And NO! I didn’t feel responsible for her new predilection.) Unbeknownst to me, Jack had become a full-fledged coke fiend by this time and was simply unbearable to be around.
But this isn’t about our long ago boyhood friendship or its deterioration. Rather it’s all about Jack--just as he likes it—and his lifelong odyssey with drugs and the effect they may have had on him physically. I have no idea what quantity of drugs have passed through his system, but suffice it to say that it was enough to lead him to commit a variety of felonies, spend time in jail, lose his professional drivers license and means of earning a living, pimp out his girlfriend(s) and spend who knows how many months in the hospital as his body broke down.
But to Jack’s credit and in spite of the abuse he put his body through, Jack actually became more handsome as he aged. He went from being a good-looking 20-something guy to being George Clooney-handsome in his 30’s. It seems that no matter what Jack did or regardless of how much his health suffered as a result of his vices, Jack looked great. And since he spent most of his money on drugs instead of food, Jack also lost a great deal of weight and looked Hollywood-lean. No gym, vitamins or plastic surgery for Jack. His secret was physical self-abuse via drug addiction.
I saw Jack on and off through most of his forties and he somehow maintained his Clooney looks. But fairy tales don’t really exist do they. A few years ago Jack came to town and we arranged the usual get-together whereby anyone with nothing better to do would meet up and spend a day or evening listening to Jack tell us that he was finally straight and planned to do this or that or something that we had been told who knows how many times in the past. But while the staging and script were pretty much the same, this time the actor had changed. “Jack Clooney” had been replaced by Hans Moleman (the hard-luck, though equally tough to kill character from the Simpsons.) Jack was now a little old man, slightly hunched over and with too-thick glasses that enlarged his eyes ala Mr. Magoo.
The fact that everyone loses their looks as they age is certainly no secret, and is another one of those painful aspects of aging which demands an ever increasing amount of self-delusion to deal with. Personally, I have never been comfortable with my limited ability to self-delude. When I look in the mirror, my mind’s eye doesn’t see me as I looked when I was 25 or any other better-looking time; I simply now see myself as a 50 year-old guy. And though on a good day I’m still able to pass for 48, I realize that the day will come when I wake up, look in the mirror and am steamrolled by the realization that I look OLD. (Hmm, maybe the Magoo-vision is actually an adaptive mechanism crafted by humans over the ages to give a much-needed assist in deceiving ourselves.)
But hey, I don’t look as old as Jack, and in fact I was carded yesterday while buying beer at Jewel. Carded! Yes, me. I must say I was feeling pretty good as I started to walk out of the store, a 12 pack of the new Goose Island Ale in hand. But my delusion of youth quickly faded as I noticed that the sign that used to say “we card under 35” now simply read……”we card EVERYONE.”
