Revolution #51

aging in the pandemic

I can’t complain, but sometimes I still do.

—Joe Walsh, “Life’s Been Good”

Today marks another revolution around the sun for me, and I feel lost in space. I thought I was 51 already. I lost a year, somewhere. Anyone else have that feeling? I bet I’m not the only one. Also, I’ve made a habit of changing every decade, regenerating like Doctor Who into a new actor. As you can see, about every ten years, I’ve become a different person.

Or maybe I’ve been the same one all along?

10s: Class Clown

I mastered the eyeroll at an early age.

My parents divorced when I was seven, and I still don’t trust people in general, except for Sarah and a couple of friends. I was always a little weirdo into science and nature who’d rather go looking for newts under rocks than play sports or anything I was expected to do. I got in trouble in school for writing book reports on books off the approved list. My fourth grade teacher Betsy Foote helped guide me through the perilous journey of elementary school, and had us write books for an assignment. Mine was “Komodo and Dragon’s Adventure,” about two Komodo dragons who trick a poacher into driving his Jeep into quicksand.¹

20s: Hairy Punk

Marvel at the majestic ‘80s matterhorn of curls atop my head. Take a minute. Take two.

In high school my friend Pete Dell’Orto introduced me to Dungeons & Dragons, and my friend Frank Ritacco gave me a Dead Milkmen demo tape that introduced me to punk. From there I found Dead Kennedys and Jello Biafra fueled my political awakening. I wrote a ripoff of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy² and had a terrible short-short published in the school paper. I left home after college and moved to Minneapolis, and started new. My English degree gathered dust while I paid the bills with a tech support job. I had my first story published back then, in a short-lived mag called Blue Murder.

30s: Mat Rat

No, the hair is not hidden under that hat.

Most of my friends there moved to California after a while, and I moved back to New York to start an I.T. career, just in time to experience 9/11. I took a job in Port Newark, and reconnected with my high school friend Peter Dell’Orto, who was getting heavily into martial arts. We joined a school where bareknuckle fighter Phil Dunlap taught Kachin Bando, a Burmese style of fighting and grappling. Pete went on to fight amateur in Japan, and I followed to be his corner man for his first fight. I wrote a movie blog and restaurant reviews for a regional website.

40s: Writer

I married Sarah, and she encouraged me to begin writing again. I wrote my first novel and gave writing a go. I set a goal of ten years to get traditionally published. We traveled a lot, and visited Louisiana every year, which I still enjoy. I wrote four novels, three of which are in print, and dozens of short stories.

50s: Your Average White Suburbanite Slob

I drove up Uranus Road nice and slow, parked and took a picture.

The pandemic hit me hard: on the weekend of my tenth wedding anniversary, I lost my job and my uncle died from Covid. I turned fifty in the middle of the pandemic when vaccines were just making headway. I got a new job and bought a house in a new town near the Pine Barrens. I’ve been very fortunate. I never broke into traditional publishing, and I’ve given up on that for indie, as the Hollywood high concept virus and corporate conglomeration has infected the publishing business to the point where I have little interest in trying. I’d rather write what interests me, and I hope you enjoy that, too.

Oddly enough I feel like I need a change, even though I’ve changed jobs and homes. I’m not sure what the change is yet. In my head, I’ve been taking a lot of road trips. We’ll see. I can’t see myself pivoting to video, which is the preferred medium for travelogues and such.

Like I said, I have little to complain about, but it’s a hard habit to break. I’ve mostly withdrawn from social media because I find the pantomimes that we all perform there—writers most egregiously—to be off-putting at best. I feel like once reality shows became popular, everyone thought they were starring in one. I barely watch television shows anymore because nothing seems real. I can see the curtains off to the sides and it takes me out of the story. Part of this is probably lingering depression and part is just getting old. I don’t necessarily think things used to be better—so much was much, much, worse—but I understand things better. I don’t see the pantomimes. The winks to the audience.

I watched Vagabond by Agnes Varda last night, and it was exactly what I needed. Varda tells the story of a young woman who lives on the road and dies in a ditch—no spoiler, that’s the opening shot—and uses a pseudo-documentary style where the other characters break the fourth wall and talk to us openly about her. And this felt so much more real than anything I’ve watched recently. I bought the complete films of Agnes Varda from Criterion, and I think I will be immersing myself in her oeuvre.³

I can never spell that word on the first try. I also really enjoyed Fire Island, a gay rom-com streaming on Hulu, written by Joel Kim Booster, who also stars. It's a Pride and Prejudice update, and works perfectly. You know what's going to happen but it's still compelling, and it's just fun with how it transplants the class and sex issues of the novel into the gay community, and how Asian men are portrayed, demeaned, and sometimes fetishized. It's not tailored for straight audiences but it certainly can be enjoyed by anyone.

For my birthday, we’re going out to dinner at the Barnsboro Inn, a tavern established in the mid-1700s and still operating today. They serve beer and burgers, unlike the Gabriel Davies, Cedar Bridge, Potter’s, and Indian King taverns, which still stand as museums only. I’ll write about them this weekend. And I’ll probably drive out to a Nature Trail and Boardwalk that I couldn’t find last week, now that I’m armed with better directions; and I’ll visit the Brooksbrae Brick Factory Ruins if it’s raining. My grandfather liked to drive his 1973 Mustang in the rain with us, listening to the thunder and the hard patter of the raindrops on the black vinyl roof, and the ritual has stuck with me.

The winner of the copy of Low Down Dirty Vote #3 is Joanne Austin. Congrats, Joanne! I’ll be reaching out for your mailing address soon.

1. Quicksand was an unholy terror in the ‘80s. I still have not found any on my hikes.

2. “Your Tour Guide to the Universe.” I am very glad that no copies exist.

3. Not as dirty as it sounds.