EATING A STICK OF BUTTER...

My second part-time job involves a lot of contact with one of the local establishments of "higher learning." One of the many advantages of working in and around a college is that I get to spend a lot of time around people who just got out of high school and who make me feel OLD.

Most of the time they also make me feel INTELLIGENT, but I realize that it is just the advantage of thirty years' experience, and that they will in fact wise up some day. Most of them will, anyway.

At least, we have to hope so... or we'd all slit our wrists.

But here's the other thing. Half of them are young men. They come in all shapes and sizes, and some of them are hard on an elderly Troll like myself. Even the graduate students that pass through the office are my children's age, and so entirely Off Limits. At least, I think so. Which is just as well, as the idea of propositioning someone whose diapers I could have changed is, well, odd. However, there is no denying that some of them are beautiful. And for some reason we see a lot of hockey players coming through the door, and one of them really speaks to the hard wiring [have I mentioned the Ear Fetish? it's wired in at a much deeper level than Leather, believe me.] I have sat behind this guy at various meetings, and had an opportunity to consider things like the way his hair shades off into down, and the whorls and patterns, and which bits of the above set the wires humming. I actually try not to look at his ears, usually. That way madness lies.

But the point of this post was actually the fact that I stopped off on my way home from the office -- a job candidate presentation having completely wrecked any hope of actually getting any work done -- and bought food for supper. Well, food, anyway.

The local Chain Grocery Store Monster was selling kettle-cooked potato chips at a significant discount. That was bad enough. I bought two bags; that was already stupid. Then I opened one of those bags in the car -- now we are skating close to terminally dumb. Because once the bag was open...

OK, OK, I ate the whole thing on the drive home. 1200 calories, almost 600 of them from fat. That is like eating 6 TBS [3/4 of a stick] of butter at one sitting. The crazy thing is that half-way through the bag, it began to feel like eating a stick of butter [i.e., a really bad idea], but I didn't stop. So I got home and crammed a salad in on top. That is somehow meant to balance it out, but I suspect that it does not in fact work that way. Does it? Well, "eat butter, die young and happy" has been my motto for years, but I never meant it literally...

Well, it's all coming to an end on Saturday night, as I have to start an all-clear, all-liquid diet on Sunday so I can present a nice, clean colon for the hospital techs on Monday. I have been living in the land of Sigmoid for a long time, as I have colon cancer pretty much everywhere in my family tree, but moving up to Colonoscopy and sedation is a serious commitment. I am glad that no one laid out the indignities of age when I was young, because I might have been tempted to opt out. Isn't it wonderful that we can't in fact see what's coming our way?

I tried to take the Silver Fox up on his invitation to return to his queen-size bed [haha] but can't even get a response. I guess I'm just fated to die a near-virgin. And to get a whole lot crankier before I die...

Because here's the ugly part: much as I deplore the "butcher than thou, younger than thou" sentiments of most of the gay world, I can see quite clearly that it is a set of prejudices I share myself: the queenier and more visibly elderly guys [some of whom are in fact younger than I am] don't even begin to register on my inner radar. Or don't make some kind of ruthless interior cut. I'm all of six months into This Gay Life, and already I'm a bitter old queen? I sure as hell didn't sign up for this.

Stay tuned.
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