It's High Time...

(Disclaimer, and it's a damn shame I have to say it but there are many who are too duh duh to get it. I can write pretty dryly and the less clever can't see that. I'm being tongue in cheek here! I also claim my First Amendment rights)

Transgenders, gay, lesbian, transsexuals and anyone that identifies as a giraffe are all accepted, at least in a court of law they will be. It's fairly amazing achievement considering about 50 years ago you could be arrested for being any of the above. The State of New York used to bust your door in if they had a court order accusing you of being a homosexual. Being dragged out into the open like that could ruin your career and life.

How things have changed.

But...but...still even today, if you're an older male and you look two and half seconds a bit too long at a college girl...you're a LECH! A DIRTY OLD MAN! A DEGENERATE! A DEVIANT! For SHAME! Don't you have ANY decency?!

(By the way, I've seen older women look at college girls too, not out of any lesbian attraction, but out of pure JEALOUSY)

So when do Dirty Ol' Men achieve acceptance like everyone else has? We're tired of being oppressed! Damn! Cougars, the female versions of us, are accepted! They're cheered on! We dirty old men want Federal protection! We want our RIGHTS! It shouldn't be just for old, millionaire ex rock stars who marry 40 years younger!

You know who has the hardest times with this and most won't admit it but you can read their faces when it happens...and it does happen? Married guys with older daughters who leer that 2.5 seconds longer than they should at their daughter's female friends. I once called out a friend who eyeballed his 20 year old daughter's friend and he became wholly flustered and spouted a line of denials when I mentioned it to him. A guy looking at pretty woman has the same look as a wolf has looking at elk. Want, desire and drooling hunger. I know the look! Well, Ha! Too late! I busted him doing it! He had the look as if he was staring at an elk with a lame leg that couldn't run away. And if you're a Dad and your 20 Something daughter brings friends over, don't deny it, I've seen it too many times. All it takes is ONE glance!

When I was younger, and I mean “40” younger than the “pushing retirement age” I am now, I was sitting in my favorite Celtic Pub bar, when a 20 Something guy next to me opens up and asks a question of me.

“Why do guys your age look at younger women? I see it all the time.”

I answer him:

“Easy...they're pretty.” I could tell by the look on his face he didn't get it so I elaborated further.

(Before I go on...an apology to women in general who are my age. I, too, am looking worn, tired and threadbare. Very, very few college girls will want a future with me unless I am a millionaire and look like I will die soon, leaving it all to them)

I tell this Kid this:

“When you go into Stop and Shop and you go to the vegetable aisle, stand in front of the loose green peppers...which ones do you pick out? Which ones you choose?”

The Kid is quiet, as he doesn't know where I'm taking this so I answer it for him.

“You choose, the cutest, prettiest, tightest, smoothest and YOUNGEST pepper out of the bunch! You don't go for the soft, wrinkly or blemished peppers do you?”

“No” the kid answers.

“And that's why we older guys go for younger women, we see 'health.' You'll understand this as you get older.” I tell him. It's true. 23 year old guys cannot see what a 23 year old woman really looks like, you have to be older to see it.

**

At an old job I had, there was a guy we sort of named “John the Floor Guy” as that was his job. He was retired, very old but a nice guy who took care of the floors in the facility. He would routinely remark to me about the girls working there as many were in their early 20's.

But one day, one of the girls really tortured him., using her 21 year old charms on him.

John tells me one morning that one of the girls, a small Italian one, called him into an empty room and yanked down her pants in front of him.

“You like this John? She says. “You like my thong? Hmmmmm?” As she curled her body this way and that.

Apparently John's riveting his eyes on the girls there didn't go unnoticed by the women and one decided to really let him have it.

“Ron! She really did it about 20 mins ago! That little bitch was teasing the shit out of me! But Damn! What a body! God! I wish I was her age!”

“John” I tell him, “if you were 21 she'd NEVER do that to you, unless she was a stripper...she's just toying with you because she knows you can't do anything about it here or later...you're old and married. She knew she was safe!”

“It's wrong!” he says. “You can't blue ball a 67 year old guy! It's plain WRONG! Girls never understand just how that feels to us!”

I told him I agreed with him. That really was a low blow but at the same time, he enjoyed it as well.

So this doesn't turn into a lecher's lament, I'll quote John Keats and make noble this appreciation of beauty...

When old age shall this generation waste,

Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe

Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

Livin' On the Fault Line

Yeah, it's been a while since I put something up. Unfortunately, last summer there was a management change at where I work and the long term, core staff, myself included, did all we could to keep the place from sinking. I think we were dog paddling to keep our noses just above the waterline some days. We could have let the whole thing run off the rails and smack the wall but the problem is that we're on that very train as well and that's no fun. So we did what we could to stabilize it day after day to have the smoothest time of it. There weren't too many of those days as I did count them on one hand. Our work requires a team effort as we race against the clock and it doesn't take much to wreck the whole game plan because the work requires some pretty tight maneuvers and time management. Bring in someone who doesn't understand that and watch the whole thing crash.

Back last summer, I became so disgusted that I wrote up a resignation letter, undated, just in case my Mr Hyde personality came forth. There were a couple of instances where I might have marched out to my car, gotten that letter out of the glove compartment, date it, come back in and slap it down on the desk.

“Fuck YOU! I've HAD it! Have fun getting someone up and running in two weeks!

Lousy work environments sap you.

I've outright quit two jobs in my life and in one instance (and I won't say who) the facility was trying their damnedest to get sued for malpractice and I didn't want to hang around to watch that happen, or worse; testify in court! The other was with Coalition for Consumer Justice, an organization that I fully agreed with except they had me trying to beg donations from the most Republican areas in Rhode Island. It was like trying to sell porn in Tehran. Places like Little Compton viewed us as Commie Death Squads and it was no fun trying to squeeze cash out of them. I don't care how persistent you can be, you hear “No” a thousand times and you tend to get discouraged.

**

Why didn't I quit? Perhaps I should have?

I figured it out and it's two fold. I can, due to experience, put up with a TON of shit when I have too. There were times where I wore that as a badge of honor, a testament to my mental toughness to endure a shitstorm and walk out of it alive, perhaps wounded, but I managed to survive. When there are no other options, you have to walk through the fire. Do that enough times and your skin thickens, you become necessarily mean and you get used to it.

But, there will be no medals or parades for this kind of tenacity.

On the flip side of that, I was hit with an idea “Hey, I can tolerate a lot of crap...but wait...Why should I live in an earthquake zone just because I know how to? WHY NOT JUST MOVE?”

Jesus, the answer was that simple, “Why not just move? Why live on the San Andreas when you can MOVE?”

Well, things have changed once again at work and my personal jury is still out deliberating on the final verdict. I have to admit things have stabilized somewhat but for how long and what policy changes will we see in the future? We'll see...