Last week was my birthday. Which I regret having, even though it’s out of my control. Birthdays are a time of reflection and drunken ruminations. Regret comes along for the ride. I really regret leaving the womb entirely, it was a smooth ride, I think, my mom only ate bland food and I got out over 8 pounds with a cone head. That must have been good times. Also if I’m going to regret anything at all, I regret my XX chromosome arrangement, I’m sure I could have worked harder or used a different swim stroke to get the XY thing happening and I could have been born penuted (word of the day: meaning born with a penis or strapped on with a Shinjo) . If I was a boy, my parents told me would have named me Thor. True story. Do you think a boy named Thor would have made it alive through school in Quebec in the 1970s? I used to cringe thinking about it when I was young but now of course, I think it would have been bad ass. Through the taunts and the giggles, I would have grown emotionally like most awesome people who were tormented in school. I’d be hot in mind, body, and spirit. I’d probably be like my brother, handsome nordic type, but I’d grow a giant ginger beard which would make the girls wet, the boys stare, and my mother crazy, yelling at me about being a fecal dust trap. Oh, Thor. I’d work out at the gym every day and have sleeve tattoos and be a magnificent sexy beast who nobody would ever know if I was straight or gay, but I’d be focussing on deadlifts, so that might allude to something. I am Thor the Pansexual Gym God, and I regret nothing. That would be the slogan of my line of top-selling products, organic soap, tequila, pasta sauce, whatevs. Thor is just all that and a bag of chips. With his face on it, rakin’ in the royalties.
Anyway, this whole ageing process is not what it’s cracked up to be. It’s a constant fight and flight to the bitter end, to make it through somewhat intact. Also I notice that most people as they get older, become more set in their ways. And their ways are total bullshit. Like for example,they need to eat the same thing everyday. I dated an “age appropriate” dude last year in his midfifties going on half rotted corpse. 55 is young-ish (yes, it is, just wait, it’ll happen to you before you finish Games of Thrones final episode) but he was one of those wilting oldsters, slowly curling up and hunching over, morphing into an armadillo. He had to use every pharmaceutical available to make every top to tip bodily function happen from blinking in eyedrops every 30 minutes to a nightly toe fungus spray (btw, the Rogaine wasn’t working). He would eat only fructose corn syrup laden “power bars” all day then a frozen prepackaged sodium overloaded microwaveable something or other at night and he walked around all baggy eyed and scuffing the carpet with his dragging feet like they were too hard to lift since he was missing 8 bazillion nutrients…which he then attempted to replenish by gumming down handfuls of vitamins that he bought for dirt cheap on Amazon. Like that works, don’t get me started. “I don’t have enough salt in my diet,” he panicked one day when he ran out of iodine tablets. How do you fucking know that? “I’m so tiiiiired…” he said in his Droopy dog voice, popping a stool softener. This was only going to get worse. I definitely dodged a bullet there after he dumped me. Do you think people should dump you without giving you a reason? Neither do I. Jesus. At least I will go through life trying strange foods homemade from different lands (or from the walls, not the frozen aisle, of the grocery store every day) and gleefully pooping the rainbow with the greatest of ease, naturally, maybe regretting the occasional ghost pepper. I see him and his favourite fleshlight, Hello Dolly, living alone a one bedroom retirement suite with his power bars, pills, and ONLY his bitter regrets keeping him warm at night. He is the cautionary tale.
When you regret things, you imagine what would have been if you hadn’t have made that boneheaded left turn when you should have gone right or straight ahead. “Oh but you wouldn’t have had your children!” you say, which is true and something to say to yourself to shake you into reality when you are in deep regret mode. All stupid things, including that tequila shot, led you to the births of your children, now go take an Ativan and shut up. But I wouldn’t have known that and I could have had other children, with different noses. And one named Thor, maybe.
I’m only mentioning the nose part because on my birthday weekend, I had a visitor from my past who lives in another city and was in town for business and looked me up via the google and this here blog…cut to the chase: He was my very first boyfriend, the one I fell in love with first, and the one who got away or I sent back into the sea, heart shattered and broken like my hymen, yo. But! It was a long time ago, and all water under the bridge. But talk about the fork in the road. If somehow I went in another direction, I may have ended up living in another city, in another country, and have children with his nose, it’s the kind you can’t genetically escape, because it is so majestic. But! After the roads he took, he has his own children (yes, with his nose, it even works Asian-style) and therefore pleased with his prowess. Men love to spawn la wherever and they probably don’t spend much time playing woulda-shoulda-coulda game. So it’s just me all reflective and trying not to regret anything which is pointless because I am an insomniac ruminator…. SIGH! I would have liked to live in another city, anywhere but this stodgy-ass town where no one gets me…but, yes, I wouldn’t have my awesome kids, or my sweet angelic dog, or my crazy friends and those great lovers (not the jackass ones, although they make for good cautionary tales), or experienced #porchlife, holy shit, that will be next blog post, stay tuned. No regrets drinking all that wine, beer and bourbon, so there’s no reason to ruminate over it all. Maybe just enjoy the ride wherever it goes, I’m sure it will all work out just fine.
Besides, what would Thor do? I don’t think he would bother to ruminate about what could have been, he’d be too busy posting pictures on Pinterest of all his hopes and dreams, isn’t that what men do when they’re not masturbating?
***HAPPY 21st BIRTHDAY TO MY SPECIAL OKC FRIEND, IT’LL BE WORTH THE WAIT FOR THE RIGHT ONE!
art of modern living 