I think I only have three pretty solid regrets. I don't think I'm alone with these lamentations, as from what I've found they seem to be global. But here they are:
1. Have known earlier that women liked sex as much as men, or were at least interested in it.
2. Have realized that I was good and would have been able to do the things I didn't think I could do.
3. Understood that everyone is pretty much in the same shit shell of self doubt.
These have come to light in a series of e-mails from my friend Jason, a person with whom I could not not have been friends. That is to say, that I don't think there's a way I could not have known this man. Even if we hadn't gone to the same college, shared the same dorm and many, many of the same twelve packs, the electronic age of communication would have connected us. (Would have said, "brought us together" but we're guys and we don't do that.) So even without all those (now two decades) of shared experience, I would have Tweeted or blogged about regrets of women or confidence or both and he would have seen it and instantly recognized me as partner in shared grief.
We grieve for our dead selves, the ones we try to resuscitate every day. And it's probably setting us up for more regret, leaning over these corpses while the living dance around us, but it's become a bit of an obsession, these younger versions of ourselves. They're the most beautiful dead guys we've ever seen.
Things are not bad. I should say that because once you bring up regret people are apt to wonder what's wrong with what you've got. Well, nothing, but it's important (we feel) to gnaw on these old bones to remind ourselves of what you should be doing (ironically, not dwelling on meatless quandaries.) But there's something salty there, a memory mouthwatering enough to revisit these leftovers. I think Jason once described it as "porn," and not literally, as there wasn't much sex to watch. He meant it as something you just can't not watch, a reality show of gasp-inspiring social errors and self-plundering inaction.
But the spin is this: We do this to keep ourselves better today. There is the fear--well, reality--that nostalgia in huge heaps makes you wander into the same shit you did fifteen years ago. So after whining out yarns from the past, we remind ourselves of how important it is to be more aware of right now. Right now.
One downside about being familiar with the present is that you end up acutley aware of who you've become. I can speak to this in a very informal and non-sappy, non oh-I've-become-my-father fashion. I'm just talking about lying here and this bush of neck/chest hair tickling my chin. Who in the hell has to deal with that? Me, a guy reaching forty. And it's these kind of grotesque physical realizations, you know, the fact that you've become a bulbous ball of hair, that has you wishing you'd gotten laid more when you could tie your shoes without sounding like you're wrestling a caveman.
So regret is a pretty strong word, but these longings for a more confident man (my wife could relate) are just a guy polishing the reflections. Because the more I see how much I should have liked the younger me, the more I realize I might one day get to enjoy the current me. I'm hoping they catch up, these glossy nostalgic visions, to a guy on his back trying to type through cloud of chest hair. That guy (me) has to be on the verge of realizing that all that looking back is just him trying to shout, "Wake the fuck up! You're beautiful!" to that younger, less hairy version doubting away the opportunities. And since yelling into the past is futile, then he'd better do something now before an even older version spends nice sunny days trying to reach the thirty-seven year old typing towards something...some...thing.
"Get there...get there..." that even older me must be saying. "And you shouldn't even be thinking 'old,'" he just shrieked.
Damn, I just heard him.
I swear I heard him say that. Christ, how hairy must that motherfucker be?
Thursday, October 27, 2011 at 09:02PM 
