Finally Old
The day had finally come. He had finally grown old. His hair was white on the top of his head and mostly white in his beard. Little white hairs worked like pin worms out of his ears and nostrils. The hips were bad. The knees rusted stiff. Skin tortured and fissured to hell. He didn’t bother with moisturizer anymore. There was no need for it. His teeth had lasted, stained as they were, they all remained mostly in place. He brushed them once in the morning, never before bed. He still had his wits about him. He knew he had somehow managed to survive. And now he was old.
It wasn’t a goal of his. Old age was always something he look at with uncertainty. It isn't something that people wish for. Youth is what everyone shrieks about, and it was no different for him. He stayed young well into his thirties, maybe up into the forties. Then there was a long decline. He worked different jobs. Some of them were jobs for young men, the others designed for the elderly. He started a bar. It ran for two years. Never got into the black. So one night, he invited a bunch of friends over and they drank the place into bankruptcy. Not business savvy, but what a way to go out. The bank go the property. He got stuck with the fines, the paperwork, the unshakable feeling of failure.
At one point, he worked security. It was never as exciting as he hoped it would be. Walking around with a flashlight and no true threats was a terrible bore. As a security guard, he thought maybe he should have children and a wife. He made a good argument for it. The people his age were already on their third or fourth child. They had homes and mortgages. They pushed carriages and complained about the strain of it all.
So he went ahead and joined them. He found a woman with enough sense, but also enough desperation to settle down with a man in his late forties. The two of them got along fine. They moved fast. They talked about getting old, but they talked about it like it would never come. The second part of the deal never happened. The two of them never made any children. Not for the lack of trying. There was a problem with his sperm. Or there was a problem with her eggs. One was allergic to the other. They went to doctors and specialists and then they gave up the hopes of having any children.
The had a wedding out on a lake with the sun going down. People gave speeches and congratulated them on finally doing what everyone else had done. They had sex on their wedding night. If they were going to make a child, it was going to be that night. But it didn’t happen. He got used to the fact that it was impossible to make children with her, even as his wife. His wife never accepted this. She held out hope for too long. Hope that never turns over can cause bitterness. That’s what it did to her. She turned green a acidic. They had to get papers for a divorce. She remarried and tried even more desperately to have a child. It never happened. He never remarried.
He did find another woman. They went together well. It was different than it had been with his ex-wife. In a way, he wished he would have married this woman instead of his ex-wife. She wasn’t always trying to make children. She left him mostly alone about the subject of family. He proposed marriage to the second woman, but she wouldn’t sign the papers. Maybe she felt she was too old for marriage. The two of them split up.
Then one morning, it happened. Technically, it happened about a month before that. He retired. After so many years working week-in and week-out. Taking vacations once a year, always threatening to quit a job, but whenever he went through with it, he’d find himself with another. He retired and filled out the paperwork so he’d never have to work again. He was ready not to work. Working hadn't been a thrill for him the way some people experienced it. He signed his name in fantastic looping letters and dotted the I with a perfect pen prick. That was it. A month later, a letter arrived in the mail. That same morning he’d hobbled out of bed with one hand pressed to the small of his back. He had cereal with extra fiber. Then he open a letter. It was official. Retirement benefits.
That’s when it all settled in. He had reached old age. As a young man, he’d look at people who were retired. He looked at them with his head sideways, wondering why they had waited so long to do it. Some of them seemed happy. Most of them had grown permanent scowls. Their eyebrows protruded, casting shadows over their eyes. Their breath stank. They were constantly bickering with their spouses. But they were retired. They could wake upwhenever they liked. They could stay up late into the evening, even on weekdays. And he noticed that none of them did it. They watched bad television shows, rubbed ointment on themselves and fell asleep before ten. Out of spite maybe, they woke up early. Every day they woke up early. They felt it was their duty. Or maybe it wasn’t possible for old people to sleep late into the day. They got up to fetch the newspaper. But they stayed up. They stayed up and they didn’t do much. They didn’t have to do anything because they were old and that was perfectly acceptable.
And now he was them. Only he was going to be old the way he’d imagined. He wasn’t going to have the same stinking breath that they had. He certainly wasn’t going to wake up before the sun came up. So that’s what he did. You could tell he was old by the rasp in his voice. If you looked at him it was obvious. But late at night he turned the music up. He stayed up until two, three, four in the morning. Sometimes he’d sit on his back porch and drink beer with the music blaring. For a while, he had a neighbor who would call the police, but they police never seemed too concerned when they arrived.
He had finally grown old. His body was shabby and painfully slow, but he found things to keep himself entertained. The best part for him was waking up late in the day. Missing morning completely. There was never a rush. Not in the car, not in the mornings. If he had to be somewhere, he’d get there when he got there. No one questioned his timeliness. He did things his way. And he could, because he was old. Finally old.
