Thursday, June 9, 2011

space time and lad magazines

The cover of the maxim magazine (brought home by my wife after a business trip, btw) in my bathroom is the image of me getting old and being swept out to the sea of old dudes that will never again be looked at by alluring young ladies like the girls on the covers of Maxim, girls who were once my peers, who once were the girls I used to think that someday I would try to bang, Girls who were once girls older than me or my age or just a little younger than me and therefore suddenly attainable even though they were out of my league technically. Those girls.

That face of that 20 year old, who’s (for the purposes of this exercise) replaceable and not at all important as an individual, is the shrinking face that looks at my aging decrepit carcass from the shore as I float out to sea to get the whales and seahorses drunk on my decay. I will never get younger. I will never have another chance to do the things I didn’t do. It’s even more perverse and ungraspable than the notion that someday I’ll be dead for eternity. Although really, if I think about that, I’ve already been dead for eternity (in the eternity that took place before I was born) so I’m just going into something I’ve literally had the entire history of time to experience.

Big math is weird. I’ve been an entity for all of infinity just due to my tiny blip of an existence here, and so have all of you. It’s impossible to put into your head, or at least my head. Maybe you guys are smarter than me, (bloody unlikely).

The point here is not that I want to bang the women on the cover of Maxim (or to paraphrase Louis CK, I do want to bang them but they don’t want to bang me so fuck them). The point is that models are, like so many things on this earth, a springboard for the imagination when you’re a kid. “Someday,” the ten year old you may think to yourself as you flip through FHM at the barbershop “I’m gonna have a dental assistant that looks like that and if this is any indication of what can happen, wow! Awesome!” just like as a boy perhaps you once looked at firetrucks or fighter planes or professional sports teams and thought about how someday you would be one of those firemen, airforce pilots and/or Chicago Bulls.

I used to think that I would literally be everything. I kind of figured I’d be a rockstar astronaut professor doctor pro-wrestler movie star. Slowly, it dawned on me that no, in fact I wouldn’t be an astronaut. I’m already 22 and I haven’t even given a thought to aeronautical training, plus I smoke 2 packs of cigarettes a day. I realized not long after that, the reality of the future. I already had no more interest in being a doctor or a wrestler or a cop or any of those things. I had developed into a person with very limited exploitable paths, as we all do.


You guys who are of a certain age all know this feeling, I’m sure. One day you wake up and you realize that your big, outsized little kids dreams (the ones you maybe never seriously considered beyond answering the question “what do you wanna be when you grow up?”) are definitely not happening. Suddenly you’re way beyond the point where you could pull it together and become (let’s say) a professional quarterback. For one thing, you’re full grown and you’re 5 foot 6. For another, you never REALLY applied yourself to football. Hell, truth be told, you spent a lot more time playing basketball and you’re pretty good at that, actually. But you’re still 5’6” and you’re not one of those “I’m short but I’m so fucking dedicated that I can dunk over Manute Bol” dudes, SO, you’ll probably never be in the NBA either.

That shit kind of skates by and it’s a ‘well, holy shit. Will you look at that’ kind of feeling. You first kind of notice the passage of time, but fuck. You’re still young and you’ve still got your life ahead of you and all that, so it doesn’t REALLY register that what’s happening is that your options are closing. The springboards of your imaginations are retreating, because you CAN’T reasonably pursue every interest you have. It’s a fact of life and it’s not really a sad one, but here’s the part where it gets maybe kind of sad.

There is a song by a band called Too Much Joy called Train In Vain (and it’s not a cover) which features the opening line “the playboy centerfold is younger than me.” It’s actually a very beautiful, very sad song, and I remember as a kid hearing that and thinking “wow. That IS weird. Someday I’ll be older than the girls in playboy!”

Well, guess what? It’s been almost a decade since a girl in the centerfold of playboy (or a girl on the pages of Maxim, to keep this all somewhat tidy) has been my age. I’m no longer looking up at these models as the hot chicks that someday I aspire to be cool enough to impress, but rather I’m leering down at them from my aged perch, remembering when I knew girls that age.

In this particular instance, for the purposes of my current train of thought, this isn’t about wanting to fuck younger girls or feeling like I’m no longer sexy (because, uh, have you seen me? I’m spicy dick on a stick, bro) or anything like that. It’s more about having moved on from the world of kids where there’s this hopefulness and the smell of fucking and danger on everything, to the invisible world of grown ups. Don’t get me wrong, I think the people my age tend to be boning a lot more than the kids from what I can tell, but it’s different. And anyway, that’s not the point. This isn’t about fucking. It’s about suddenly having even the imagination springboard of who you’re gonna impress someday be gone.

You already didn’t impress them. And now they don’t even notice you. And again, it’s not about fucking or virility or sex appeal or anything like that. It’s simply about the fact that one day everyone wakes up and realized that they’re some weird grown up, and the kids are off fucking and getting high and looking pretty and don’t give two fucks about you, walking down the street with your groceries. And sometimes all that hits you while you’re taking a piss, staring at some random model on the cover of a Maxim.

Pretty weird.

29 comments:

Jeff said...

goddamn good article

Hamilton Martin said...

thanx for the fuckin morning depression. might as well go kill myself now

Dollar said...

ill be venom

Anonymous said...

that's gold BK, gold!
i kinda feel the same, at 25, that's worng isn't it?

Anonymous said...

Loved the point about it mattering to us that we stop existing, when we have not been existing for way longer. Philosophical shit right there. Love this blog.

Katie said...

I need a shot of whiskey now.

shawful said...

Agreed. That was a good one. Imagine reversing the role and being a girl looking at the cover of Maxim and wanting to be that, then realizing it's never gonna happen. That's a fun one, too.

Z.Einstein said...

Christ dude, I'm turning 39 in a few months (we actually share a birthday). May hit that mid-life crisis a year or two early thanks to you. Only I can't afford a Porsche (or young women for that matter). FML

Lauren said...

Point taken, but I mean, oh well.

Look at your wife! My friend and I were both at the Illegal Pete's show and JUST the other day we were talking about how hot your wife is.

So at least you have that hottie to get old with.

seannader said...

fuck this bullshit

It's A-Me, Martucci said...

Sean have u ever just kicked brendan's ass? Come close?

It's A-Me, Martucci said...

It liiiiike, we were not here, waaaay before we were, living here, like, just a blip on the raaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
--everyone ever's first stoned thought at age 14-18

Drunken Acorn said...

I just had that feeling at a show the other night. I went to the Title Fight and The Menzingers show and all the kids were up in the front moshing and screaming and I remember when I used to be that kid. Now I'm the old dude in the back.

motherfucker123 said...
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motherfucker123 said...

long time reader first time(most likely last time) poster from the UK

"hey man, let me tell you a joke
well what's attached to a leash
that it made itself
the punchline is the way
that you've been fuckin' yourself"

im 21 and im wasted right now listening to lawrence arms but, this quote applies to both my life right now and this blog entry.

im working a shitty job i cant get out of right now and theres no way im ever going to be any kind of amazing success in the world or a hot model fucker, despite any (to shamefully quote katy perry) "teenage dream" or wild day dreams or whatever... eventually everyone steps into the rigmarole and continues doing what they maybe once looked at as being a fucked up way of doing things (politics,jobs,tax, whatever it may be)

the joke is life and the punchline is the fact you believed it could be any different and for a while you were the thing attached to it btw for anyone wondering...

OutsidersNZ said...
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Jordan said...

*sigh*
I'm twenty and I feel old as shit. I haven't been to a punk show in over two years. I've been working my ass off trying to get my rent paid, trying to keep my head above water. I pay 650ish a month, and I make 7.50 an hour. I'm literally at the point where after gas and food and bills are taken out, I have absolutely nothing left. I haven't the time or money to have fun. It's a depressing shitty mess and I'm stuck in it. ...so I'll probably just die like this and no one will give a fuck or remember me, since I'm so easily replaceable to the world. Not specific people in the world, just in general, the world.

So thats how I've felt the past week. Fuck.

Hamilton Martin said...

oh jeezus tapdancing christ. all you twentysomethings who feel old. you haven't even felt the tip of the iceberg up your bums yet

gopher said...

whatever dude. you are one of the all time greats. you're definitely a hero to me and so many other old at heart twenty-somethings, i'm sure. just please dole that evolved angst into another rad album.

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Anonymous said...

I'm 27. Don't feel old. Actually just feel like I'm getting my shit together and am filled with an odd bit of optimism that isn't usual for me...
I am disappointed that my new job blocks BSC.... Fuck.

Just wanted to post because I loved that link to pornhub. Mercy!

Sean said...

i was gunna go see you play tonight, but I've already seen you play all those songs twice....

.... that and i think it sold out.

EmilMuzz said...

Is this article a part of your response to the upcoming anniversary? Only asking as a matter of timing.

Andrew Hudson said...

muther fucker wassup man? im drunk too. im the 21 ozzie dude. hahah fuck yeah i just watched red dawn, fucken hell charlies head looks so fucking shit now. haha anyway belt up folks.

Christopher Reid said...

Incredible article. And.. I have been trying to think of that awesome band I used to love's name for about a month now... and it's Too Much Joy. I'll be goddamned.

Wheezer said...

I used to think that I would literally be everything.
this whole line sums up my feelings about life lately. It makes me feel a little better to see that a cool rock and roll star battles with the same thoughts as a nerdy office worker. Thanks

Robb said...

So, 'Vagina Ain't Handicap' - what's the verdict? It's hard to gauge what kind of stupid nonsensical shit you'll poo poo or embrace/advocate, so it'll be interesting to get your feedback on that one.

That instrumental shes spittin to seems to sample the theme from Phantasm beeeeeeeeeex

Darin said...

As a kid i never had aspirations or dreams, maybe that's the problem in my life as a 31 year old.

Timex Social Club said...
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