Entry from the “Modern Translation Guide To Singles Pages Language”
HOPELESS ROMANTIC – has both herpes and aids.
No, no – its not that for me, and, no, ModemDavid remains a faithful married guy, not out there amongst the mingling singles who stare blankly from Ray Bans, thin rays of mingled hope & desire eminating from tired eyes foggy with cheap wine and cheese breath, still seeking that first miraculous locking of eyes with‘the one’ who at any moment may sashay through the doorway if I can only continue to look cool and detatched for maybe one drink more (yeah…right) And, no thank you, I have not gotten any social diseases, unless that mildly inflamed hickey I got from Holly Weiner at 17 counts.
Yet how now at the relatively not ancient age of 50 do I euphemistically describe myself as anthing better, more elevated than simply the cumulative sum of my diseases? Another round of medical visits, more probing, imaging studies (endoscopy, to be precise – which as Los Angeles is a union town involves lowering not only a camera but, apparently, a 3 man IATSE film crew down your neck – or so it felt in recovery) – all of this to reveal the happy arrival of a brand new baby diagnosis – little Moderate to Severe Reflux Disease to add to the list that have truly made 50 the new 70.
So whats on my list now:
Idiopathic Parkinsons
Peridontal Disease,
Myopia
Frozen Sholder,\
Mild to Moderate Spinal Stenosis
Chronic Inflammation of Juvinile Hickey Syndrome ( CIJHS)
I’m one fucked up dude, dude…….and yet
If I am not my name, what am I? If the essential ‘I’ remains more than the sum of my diagnosis, than how do I operate, how do I access the premordial ‘ I’ that animates me from the motionless steady state deeper reality in which the slow but insistant ravages of my multiplicity of disease processes are neutered, rendered harmless, baying perhaps like wolves or hyenas locked safely outside, but firmly enjoined to back off, not interfere or do anthing more than minamaly disrupt the trajectory of my days across the span of a lifetime. Answer me this, o wise one, and I will gladly buy you a beer.
So, like the ‘hopeless romatic’ I still seek retain a link to something optomistic, planning and hopeful looking across the Great Plains of my 50s and beyond hoping to lock eyes with a future that holds something more bearable, duralble and fulfilling than the cold and clear trajectory of multiple diagnosis.
Go figure,
Modemdavid
