Mustard After Dinner

"I, who am on my way out, would readily resign to anyone who came along what wisdom I am learning for dealing with the world. Mustard after dinner - I have no use for a good thing of which I can make no use. . . . It is an insult and unkindness of fortune to offer us presents which fill us with a just resentment that they failed us in their season."

           - Michel de Montaigne, Essays (Book III, Essay 10, "Of husbanding your will")

Age brings in its wake benefits exceedingly dubious. To your face people call you "senior" and offer you "senior" discounts, while behind your back you are simply another old fart. Younger people are described as "fit," "athletic," or "buff"; older people are merely "active," like yeast or fungus, or (worse yet) "spry." And upon turning 50, there are the sudden attentions of the AARP, the American Association of Retired Persons. Ready or not, retired or dead, you begin to receive publications, notices and advertisements from an organization whose solicitations, a month earlier, you would have hotly regarded as an insult. 

But imagine my horrified surprise ("I, who am on my way out . . .") to find, in the latest screed from AARP, a full-page ad with the banner line "Sex. It's Never Too Late To Learn Something New." This page flogs a 50 percent discount on "4 Better Sex Videos" plus three free videos entitled "The Art of Oral Loving," "The Art of Sex Positions," and "The Art of Orgasm" (which latter promises "secrets for intensifying 'the Big O'!"). (Oh, please.)

 "You didn't even take off your turban"

I say horrified surprise because . . . well, for any number of reasons. First of all, this appears in what I had taken to be a staid and age-appropriate publication, never previously having troubled myself to thumb its graphically perky but otherwise dreary pages. I mean, thought I to myself, this is like learning that my grandfather might have used Viagra, had there been such a remedy when he most had need of it. 

Before Viagra

It seemed unbecoming to find such explicit rubbish in pages I had supposed devoted to "senior" issues like how to choose a Medicare plan or how the latest Congressional shenanigans will hasten the End Time.

But fundamentally I found it horrifying because I thought that sex was what I had been doing for nearly five of my alotted decades. I've been around that block often enough; I'm familiar with the Grand Tour, so to speak. I've pretty much done it all - the instinctive and puzzlingly-named Missionary and the Missionary-cum-Pony variation, Roy Rogers and Dale Evans . . . 

. . . the Seal and the Nun, the Walrus and the Carpenter, the Priest and the Bicycle, the Lotus and Bamboo Shoot, Little Red Riding Hood . . .

- you name it (thought I), I've probably done it. Or haven't I? Maybe what I've been doing wasn't sex?  No, I realized, what they're selling here is better sex. It's technique. They think to change the rules of engagement, which as everyone knows is a) the Approach With Bribe,

"I brought you a little. . . ummmm . . ."

. . . b) Getting Her To Your Place . . .

. . . c) Getting Her Settled . . .

 "I won't be a minute, just checking e-mails . . . "

. . .  d) and the Engagement, or more vulgarly, the Business:

Four simple steps. How much could all this have evolved? And why offer all this new information now, as though to rub my enfeebled nose in it? Why weren't these lessons included in My Weekly Reader when I was only eight and might have profited by them sooner and for longer?

 "Sure, I've got a firehose, kid."

But on calmer reflection, I realized that these things are as much a matter of Nature as they are of Art. "The laws of Nature teach us what we rightly need," my alter ego reminds us. From time immemorial, on any other Grand Tour, things have remained pretty much the same - whether it's the Vuelta a Espagna, the Giro d'Italia or the Tour de France, a man rides a bicycle pretty much as he has always done.

Uh-oh - what the hell is this?!!

Cosmic Lemons, Lemonade Sea

"When life gives you lemons, rent a storefront in the trendy part of town and make artisanally squeezed lemonade at $14 a glass."     - Bike Snob NYC

                                                         

The Little Lemonade Stand of Life

Life is funny. It wasn't that long ago that I was complaining about having to pay my taxes. Complaining isn't exactly the right word here - let's just say that I was acknowledging my civic duty, but reflecting in a negative vein about what I'm getting in return, viz., the grudging ownership of a corrupt and bankrupt medieval principality somewhere near the Hindu Kush and the Karakoram Range that begins with 'A.'

On the other hand, I did record my elation at having applied for Medicare. This milestone is, like most milestones, a mixed blessing inasmuch as milestones generally mark the passage of one's days, and to qualify for this little prize you have to have reached a point at which, willy nilly, you begin to surrender certain of the powers and perquisites of being a large primate.

"Sure, I used to swing - both ways."

My point here is that sometimes, all you have to do is mention something that might use a little improvement, and the tables turn just the way you wanted them to. If I play my cards right I can break even - take back in medical payments what I pay out in taxes. That way, I'm not really leaving a balance on either side of the ledger, so I'm not contributing to the GDP. Which is just another way of saying that, provided I get sick enough, I will no longer officially exist. Or to put it another way, mereo, ergo sum. And that means I'll no longer have to do certain things, like comb my hair. . .

. . . or sit up straight

Not officially existing, in my lexicon of financial terms, need not mean the same as being entirely forgotten. So long as the Social Security Administration grants me a minimal existence by keeping me on its rolls as a beneficiary I'll be happy. So far, so good. Not everything is entirely rosy on that score however. They acknowledge my existence (much like that of a lesser god, a distant star or an awkward weather system . . . )

. . . but their letter apprising me of my new favored status ("Notice of Award") was sent from the department of Retirement, Survivors and Disability Insurance. That seemed to me a little bit of "giveth and taketh away" in the same breath. It is beneath mention that this is not a select group, nor do any of these designations include poor Miguel. I am neither retired nor disabled, and I like to think of myself in my cheerier moments as more than merely a survivor.

Survivor making artisanal knishes 

Let's be clear about this: being alive isn't necessarily the same thing as "being a survivor." It seems you would have to have survived something, like eating an artisanal knish, to qualify for the title.

"Knish, anybody?"

And then talk about making knishes out of lemons, this other thing happened as well, just like mentioning taxes and being immediately taken under the government's sheltering wing.  I had posted some time ago what was beginning to seem a premature announcement of my return to gainful employment somewhere in the Great American Desert - in Nevada, to be precise. But, like the pages of the calendar flipping across a movie screen . . . 

 

. . . the days passed, the phone was silent, the e-mail came and went with its empty promises of Viagra and ExtenZe offers. Forty days and forty nights I fasted in the desert; I complained, I raised my hand against the Cosmic Lemon, I cursed my humors and the fruit in my loins (lemons, assorted citrus). And the Cosmic Lemon heard my plaint and there issued forth lemonade in the desert.

There must be a moral here somewhere to help navigate this Sea of Lemonade we call life. In my case I'd say the moral is complaining will get you everything you want. It usually seems to work.

Bewitched, Bare-Assed and Bewildered

"We are naked, yet this is not a sexual group. We strive for a sense of community, acceptance, and a bond of brotherhood." 

      - "Organic Yoga," from yoga.organicmen.org/, a local naked yoga group for men
                       (emphasis in original text)  

"Oh shit, I forgot to take off my Rolex."

After a certain age (my age, in fact), the times are no longer changing - they changed a long time ago, when I wasn't paying attention. Guys are just doing different kinds of things than they used to do. Sure, they still go off hunting and fishing and bonding, but the numbers of hunter-bonders has dropped in the past 40-odd years by about 35 percent. Naked men's yoga is gaining ground fast, faster for sure than baseball, which we used to think of as the national sport. Once upon a time, every red-blooded American boy could tell Williams from DiMaggio (at least in uniform):

"Wanna hold my bat?"

I don't hunt and am not suggesting we all take it up en masse to save a troubled nation and stave off cultural decay. And I couldn't watch an entire baseball game if my life depended on it, which you can be sure it never will. But I know I'd rather watch baseball from now until someone appointed by the county catches and sequesters me from polite society, than I would do naked yoga in a room full of other men. Not that I see anything wrong with it, but we all have our limits and I think I may have found (another) one of mine.

I can walk around the locker room at the gym with complete sangfroid, but yoga seems somehow a different proposition. There are poses one assumes (asanas) which seem to defy our physiological parameters, the bounds of nature, the frontiers of medicine, public safety directives, the dictates of good sense (or good taste, take your pick). The pose called the 'downward-facing dog,' it is easy to imagine, may be disconcerting when executed nicely by the bare-assed guy right in front of you. Think of it as 'light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel.'

I know it's not a man.

There is a repeated insistence on some naked mens' yoga sites that it's all nonsexual, that it is intended to enhance nonsexual intimacy and closer bonds among men. I suspect that's all perfectly true - that most of the men who practice naked group yoga are not looking for sexual connections and are probably trying to stretch their boundaries and experience things in a new way. So it occurred to me that in order to write about the topic, it might be better not to remain within the limits of my own prejudices and narrow tastes, but to plumb the narrow prejudices and personal limitations of the man on the street, the Average Guy. My man-on-the-street poll consisted of the single question, "Would you like to join a group of men practicing naked yoga?"

The first respondent made no direct reply, which I prudently took to be his reply, and left the area immediately:

I found the next gentleman at home:

"You should probably leave."

And so it went . . .

"Like hell I will . . . would. Whatever."

 

"Never thought about it before. No."

Undecided, said the horse does naked yoga already

 Could not respond intelligibly

 "Mmmmm . . . probably not."

 "Sure."

 "I might. I won't say no."

 "Da-aad Gum! Is that even legal?"

 "Were you speaking to me?"

 "G-gawd!"

 "You haven't seen the end of this . . . I mean heard the last of this, soldier."

 "You first, mister!"

 "Say that again, bub?"

 "You're not from this part of town, are ya?"

 "Boxing, maybe. Yoga . . . "

 "Off this ranch - now!"

 "Well, heh, heh . . . maybe. What did Harry Reid say?"

 "What's 'naked'?"

"Absolutely not . . . I can't do setu bandhasana any more."

 "Are you serious?"

 "Fantastic! How about after dinner!"

 "Is that something you do in this town?"

 "No. But I used to wiggle my ears naked."

I've seen the websites, but in the end I really suspect it's all just a wild hoax cooked up from some crazy episode of "Family Guy."

"Griffin, we understand you've been 'advertising' your yoga sessions."

Dancing in the Dark

There is now dancing in the streets on the news that Osama bin Laden has at last been shot in the head and buried at sea. Both the partiers and the parties responsible offer assurances that justice is done. For my part, I neither share in the general rejoicing nor in the universal opinion that bin Laden's death is a good turn of events. Nor do I think it's a bad thing - I'm entirely indifferent to its moral implications, if it has any at all. 

For one thing, it seems medieval to rejoice in anyone's death (with the possible exception of Jesus').

But then, bin Laden was a medieval person, presumably one who took his scriptures literally, sine grano salis. For another, it seems medieval to award anyone the sort of demonic status he achieved in the American imagination. He was, after all, a human being - neither more nor less - with no more power for evil than each one of us has, though clearly he possessed a greater than ordinary penchant to exercise his spite. Admittedly, given the way I look, I wouldn't take my chances hawking Chinese encyclopedias at the front door of his Pakistani compound (although I might stand a chance hawking good old American-made weaponry). 

 "I got a helluva deal on an IED-proof Studebaker."

But if I looked more like him, neither would I take my chances with the celebrants on any American street.

It's difficult to see how justice has been done, as the President claims. It's quite natural to feel a moral satisfaction in the death of one who masterminded the deaths of so many others. But if by justice the President simply means retribution for an evil deed, an eye for an eye, then the American military response has more than settled that score over a decade, assuming that a single Iraqi or Afghani life is equivalent to one American life. If he means that bin Laden's life is recompense for all the lives (American lives, of course) lost in this past decade, he awards the man a moral and mythical status he doesn't deserve. To say that the death of a single person accomplishes justice seems unwittingly to diminish the general loss the world has already sustained.

It is also difficult to see, as Obama claims, how the world is a better place now. The State Department's cautions to Americans abroad give the lie to any notion that it's a safer one. And in spite of his infrequent video productions, bin Laden had already been marginalized as a political presence for fear of his life. He had become an idea, an inspiration, but then he still is - perhaps even more so now that he's dead. Other than a fleeting sense of emotional satisfaction, what has actually been set to rights in the world?

By now, he is a martyr among his followers and very good political capital for the Obama administration. Nothing will change, really. We just have a new trading card - the President can trump his opponents at home for a while, and al Qaeda will trade his death for more recruits, until some wiser, happier revolution in the Middle East gives the lie to the fundamentalisms of religious militancy and American exceptionalism, and at last unseats both al Qaeda and an unwanted American presence.

In the meantime, let's not forget that from the start it's really been all about defending a God-given way of life.