Thanks, once again, to the great team at Exterminating Angel for allowing me in another issue with another group of great writers; it remains a pleasure and honor (only more so) to be included in the mix. This very short piece was originally inspired by a Mad Men marathon, tweaked on and off for a few years, and now seems at once forward-looking and old-fashioned, circa our current socio-political apocalypse.
ANODYNE, EVER AFTER
Everything old is new again.
Take me for instance. Every day that passes I’m older, yet eternally new. Every night more of you have joined me, yet I’m still near the end of a line I can scarcely trace. There are so many former somebodys up here you could work the front room and be in there forever.
I used to think it would be paradise to do away with earthly things, nirvana to never comb my hair or clean my teeth or move my bowels. Now I’d give anything to shampoo sweat from my scalp or stub my toe or spend a sick day fighting off a bout of food poisoning.
There’s only one thing worse than being busy and that’s being bored. The only thing more frightening than fear is uniformity. Being immortal is, above all things, anodyne. And so I find myself fondly recalling many of the things I liked least back when I counted myself amongst the scarcely-living: stuck in another senseless meeting, or stalled on the subway, at a business lunch with no appetite and nothing to talk about, prostrate during a dental exam. Not only did I never savor any of these occasions, I detested them. But during the worst moments of an ill-lived life I was still alive: I could smell, I could taste, I could suffer.
Speaking of suffering, I miss being cold, I miss being scared, I miss falling in or out of love.
Most of all I miss drinking.
The only ones who don’t are the idiots who never tried it or the suckers who couldn’t do it right. The secret is to enjoy it almost as much as you enjoy life: too little and it’s insufficient, too much and you’re out to sea. You can savor food but so can animals. You might feel inspired by music but we see things up here that make mortal aspirations seem silly. Passions? They only die in the end, like everything else. Alcohol is the one invention that was perfected by humans and can’t be improved upon by the gods. They say the gods gave us wine but a million stained toes tell a different tale. Nature may have put corn in the fields but human nature understood how to distill it to become greater than the sum of its stalks. Getting just one lifetime, especially an abbreviated one, to figure it out, to understand what we’ll be missing, is the cruelest prank anyone ever pulled. And when I finally get to the front of this line, that’s the first thing I’m going to say.
Everything old is new again.
Look at them, all these self-satisfied consumers rediscovering drinks we thought we’d concocted. We used to imbibe not for amusement but to oil our engines, to fortify our infested souls. Bloodshot eyes weren’t a badge of honor; they were the price of admission. We perceived how little we knew and that’s why we struggled. It’s also why we mattered. We endured as best we could, but it was never fun and it was never fashionable. So what do I think when I see people ordering Old Fashioneds and thinking it’s nostalgic? It makes me wish I was alive for one more day. I miss my Manhattan: my city, my drink, my self. My worst mistake was thinking I wouldn’t live forever. How are these fools going to appreciate what they no longer have one day if they don’t understand it now?
Everything new gets old.
Except up here. We have however long it takes to decipher what we might have done differently. And what’s the point if we never get another chance? At least when some of these people join me I can explain a thing or two to them. Maybe they’ll listen; maybe I can help. Or maybe they won’t miss being human because they happened to cherish it the first time around.
