Dispiritualized

Are irrational attractions a common problem or just the sudden inexplicable bane of my existence? I haven't experienced the phenomena in ages, now all of a sudden men in magazines, tv, movies have started appealing to me without cause.

I was never into Lukas Haas, but I became excited, then let down, after he only appeared in the first scene in Inception. Lukas Haas? Really? Well, now that I think about it, I welcomed his brief 24 appearances whatever season that was. The other night I felt crushy over some random gray-haired dude in an Audi commercial.

Is this too a symptom of aging? (It's much preferable to the black hairs that have started sprouting up on my chin. I tried fitting in with a writing workshop a few years ago—I've never taken to the process, same with therapy, obviously—where one of the women, probably close to 70 had written an essay about chin hairs and bonding with a fellow old lady at an airport over them. For the record, I am not close to 70.)

I don't want to even want to speculate on this aloud, but it's as if nature has decided to kick in with a last gasp vengeance as I grow less fertile each month. Ew, I refuse to give in. And let's not speak of this again.

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I don’t think I exercise efficiently. (I don’t do anything efficiently, so much so that as an experiment I’ve started taking [prescribed] medication meant to help with focus—no, not adderall, with my blood pressure amphetamines would probably kill me—but on week three I feel no more focused just distracted, irritable, sweaty and a little high). I never feel like I’m getting enough oxygen to my brain even when I’m sitting still. As long as I don’t fall off of a subway platform, I’m good.

But at the gym I try to read magazines while on the elliptical (I can’t when running, which isn’t often lately because I’ve been winded) but can really only look at pictures, words are too hard, then I space off, fixate on things that don’t matter and sometimes believe I’ve come up with brilliant ideas (is this like those people who say they figure everything out while in the shower?) only to forget them the second I get home.

This weekend I couldn’t stop staring at a photo in Time Out New York’s music section. I fell in love with a 2D image, and I’m not proud. Who is this neither young nor old, sandy, tousled, my type in fantasy (I still tend to agree with most of these traits I identified over a decade ago) though never in practice?

Oh, it was a guy from Spiritualized, Jason Pierce. I never really followed them, staying out of most ‘90s Britpop. I only know the sad, dreamy song from Vanilla Sky and a VW ad. It's kind of an epic song, though.

But wait, he was also in Spacemen 3, which I only got into at the tail end when “Revolution” was a minor hit in 1989. But that was in high school and I assumed he was a grown up then and he looks too young in this photo. We can’t both be in our 30s, right?

This is when I started to worry. I’ve always lived like things will happen when you’re older, hence my sudden age panic. It certainly makes sense when you’re feeling like a trapped teen with no control over your destiny, having hope, something to look forward to is natural. Nothing happens automatically, though, and at some point an individual has to make things move forward. Age has nothing to do with progression. For decades it was as if I had to wait and it would all be clear to me, now I'm going down the other side like I missed out. At some point one has to admit that they're never going to do much of anything and face up to being average. Maybe that's what maturity is. Or maybe that’s when you start having babies so you don’t have to think about your own stagnation.

So, I worried because what if I was the same age as Jason Pierce and we were both teens in the late ‘80s. What I had I accomplished in the last twenty years? I only rested easy after I got home and was able to look up that he is 44. When I am 44 I will want my semi-successful strangers to be at least 50.

I also felt better after skimming a few photos (I’m still acclimating to the new Google image search where everything pops out at you) because he does look 44, after all, and it’s an age appropriate attraction. I don’t want to be like those middle-aged men who thinks they should be with 25-year-olds. My Mary Kay LeTourneau tendencies are fading, not that I want it to be so. It’s that I can’t think of a single hot teen off the top of my head, though that could have more to do with the current crop of teen stars. Justin Bieber? Taylor Lautner? They're like the opposite ends of the spectrum in this study about women on birth control preferring more feminine men.

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Yesterday morning on the way to work, I was picking up my birth control pills in order to continue nipping nature in the bud. All drug stores in Brooklyn are always a trauma no matter what time of day. Even with no one in line you can wait 15 minutes. An old Italian grandma in front of me had a stroller with a howling, tiny, red-faced newborn. Just like at the post office, there was some issue with the transaction so a lot of time was transpiring. The baby kept screaming, so much so that some random, 50-ish black woman (I feel the need to point that out; this neighborhood has tainted my judgment and I automatically assumed that she was someone's nanny. For all I know she owns a brownstone down the street) came over and started giving advice (I'd never really thought about that aspect of being a parent—it would seriously piss me off having strangers tell me what to do with my baby) and insisting the baby was hungry.

I liked that the grandma was so hands-off, "She says he eats at 10:30." It was 9:40am at this point (I try to be at work around 10am and it takes me 35 minutes on a good day) like she couldn't be bothered until then. This concerned the stranger who came over and started putting a pacifier in the baby's mouth, but he didn't want it. Is that nice or invasive? I don't know.

I've been trying to develop a sense of patience so I don’t have a heart attack before I’m 40. Ultimately, the grandma didn't have a prescriptions waiting for her, after all. She’d been waiting there for no reason. Then the pharmacist offered to ring up her stuff anyway and he didn't have change and had to leave his post in the back to go get some. Blood pressure rising…

Finally, it was my turn, a transaction that took all of 30 seconds (it felt like I'd been standing there 15 minutes when it was probably only ten). The pharmacist, a 30-ish goateed guy looked at my prescription, handed it over while confiding, "I hate to say it, but I'm glad I don't have children." “You said it.” I was thinking it.

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Dear lord, this poorly written missive is the opposite of focused. It's delusional. Clearly, I need to stop taking this medicine pronto.