The Four Freedoms of the United States of Geezerdom
3/16/99
THE FOUR FREEDOMS OF THE UNITED STATES OF GEEZERDOM
I’m immigrating to the United States of Geezerdom without emigrating from the United States of Boomerdom. I’ll always be a Boomer, but now that the dew is off the rose, I’m applying for dual citizenship as a Geezer as well. I already look so bad that ticket takers have carded me……in reverse. That is, they’ve asked me if I qualify for the senior citizen discount. No, I say, but I’m getting there.
The First Freedom offered by the United States of Geezerdom, a shadow nation which occupies the same space, more less, as the United States, but which occupies a very different psychic reality, is Freedom from Want. True Geezers no longer want. They no longer Wannabe. They’ve given up hope that they’ll ever become anything better than they already are. In fact, they’re sure they’re doomed to getting worse each day. They know their memories are getting worse, their looks are getting worse, they’re growing weaker, their tripes are rotting, their teeth are yellowing, their hair is falling out and that which remains is turning bristly, their skin is drying and wrinkling and their eyes are glazing, hazing, and bagging. You might think Geezers would at least hope that their descent into physical hell would be a slow one. You would be wrong. True Geezers hope for nothing. Which leads us to the Second Freedom.
Freedom From Hope. True Geezers no longer hope for deliverance of any kind, including a woman. And if they’re already stuck with a mate, they no longer hope that mate will some day take human form and grow a heart. True Geezers no longer even hope to afford cable TV. They’ve resigned themselves to sitting in their Barca-loungers in front of their black and whites, watching the same asinine major networks that lulled them through what should have been the best years of their lives. They’re gonna go down with the video ship that brought them to this sorry pass. The only technological innovation Geezers permit themselves is a clicker, so they don't have to rouse themselves from their stupors in order to get up and change channels. But Geezers will not go out and buy a color TV with remote. If they can’t scrounge one out of somebody else’s garbage or inherit one, they’ll stick with black and white. And if they’re too weak and tired to climb out of their loungers and switch channels, why, that’s OK too. They’ll just sit in front of the same damn channel, hour after hour, day after day. Don’t make no never mind to them if it’s a talk show, confirming their worst prejudices against the human race with an endless parade of physical and psychological wreckage, or a test pattern. True Geezers will NOT climb out of their Barcas, not even to pee and crap. If they have to, they’ll get themselves fitted with catheters and colostomy bags. And if they can’t get either one, why, they’ll just sit there in their own filth.
Freedom From Regret. False Geezers still gnaw on the bitter cud of remorse. True Geezers know they’ve botched their lives, admit it, and understand it’s too late to do anything about it.
Freedom From Rap. Geezers, black and white, refuse to say “Dah Bomb.” They’ve got no more hops. Or hips. The closest they’ll ever come to hiphop is an artificial hip replacement. If they were offered an artificial hiphop replacement, fully paid for by Medicare, their bodies would reject it. True Geezers of all colors and stripes don’t care to listen to rap and if they happen to hear it they don’t and won’t understand it. Geezers are angry, very angry. But the anger of rap is not their anger. Geezers are outlaws, and you might think they could identify with rap’s gangstah ethic. But they can’t and they won’t. Rapsters make a big show of not belonging to society. Geezers don’t have anything to prove. It’s perfectly clear they don’t belong to anybody and anything and that nobody wants them. There is a single word Geezers are willing to share with Rappers. Dis. But they don’t mean no disrespect when they use it. Geezers say dis because their teeth are falling out and they're trying to say “this” but it comes out sounding like “dis.”
Freedom From Pride. Rappers still cling to pride. They’re proud of their allegedly big dicks and their anger and their gangstah ways and their ability to rhyme and dance. They’re proud of their alleged prowess with women and their alleged courage in battle. Geezers know better than to take pride in themselves. They know they have much to be ashamed of, but they’re too tired to be ashamed, as well. Geezers may have once accomplished something*, they may have once wooed and wowed women, or been brave in battle, or even done something smart. But they know those times are past. The present is a holding action, a struggle to subsist. The future? Perhaps it will bring the mercy of Alzheimers, sparing the Geezers from realizing just how bad things have gotten.
OK, that’s Five Freedoms so far, not Four. You wanna make something of it? If so, go pick a fight with someone else. I’m angry enough to quarrel with you, but I’m not vital enough or strong enough or limber enough. Now that osteoporosis is turning my once-steely bones into honeycombs, they’re way too frail to risk in battle. Go pick on somebody your own age.
Up your nose with a rubber hose, here’s the Sixth Freedom: The Freedom to be a Crank. Because Geezers are so frighteningly alone, they no longer have to try to get along. Though they’ve given up, they’re still bitter….about everything. And they’re physically miserable. This accounts for their fantastically unpleasant demeanors. They lose their tempers continually, but are unable to vent their anger. So it just hovers there, rendering them rancid and dyspeptic. I don’t recommend looking directly into the face of a Geezer. You might just get turned to stone. And don’t be deceived by his laughter. If he is laughing, he is once again realizing that he is the butt of a cruel cosmic prank. His irony brings him neither dignity nor relief.
Number Seven, coming right up: Freedom From Being With It. Geezers are out of the loop. Their diction is a time capsule of earlier, benighted, eras. Their clothes come from department store giants----Sears, Penney’s, Montgomery Ward---which once bestrode the earth like mighty marketing collossi but which now are fighting for their lives. Geezers cling to the mores, styles, gestures and values of now-discredited times. They are like suddenly-rediscovered creatures, marsupial dogs, for example, which were once thought to be extinct. Their original ecological niches have been taken over by sleeker, more ferocious and efficient beasts. They cling to freakish margins of the environment. Their survival is an uneasy balancing act. Their appearance, their very existence, is vaguely disquieting to more modern, better-constituted beings. There are too many of them, they eat too much, they take resources away from young, healthy, upcoming animals, and they contribute nothing of value to the natural scheme of things. But fear not; more efficient predators, and the Geezers' own frailties and unfitness for life, will eventually cull them out of the herd. The problem with Geezers is that no matter how frequently they die, and they do die like flies, there are always reinforcements marching into their ranks from what were formerly youthful and appealing generations.
Freedom to Amount to Nothing. The game is up for Geezers and they know it. They’re not taken in by that self-esteem bullshit. They don’t waste energy trying to boost their own or anyone else’s. Nor do they try to make anything of worth of their lives or their moments. They are beyond worth and worthlessness alike. Once they overvalued their existences. Then they devalued them. Now value is beside the point. It takes too much energy for them to worry if they are fulfilling their potential, or if they have any potential at all, though they’re pretty damn sure they don’t.
Freedom to Eat Sugar and Take a Good Dump. Geezers have a morbid fascination with sugar and eat as much of it as they can get their crabbed hands on. It rots their teeth and gives them adult diabetes, but that’s OK because what few teeth they have left in their heads are already yellow and black and they’re going to die soon anyway. Sugar is one of the two comforts left to Geezers. The other is a good solid dump. A Geezer knows for sure he’s a Geezer when he takes more pleasure and interest in crapping than he does in sex. Sadly, few Geezers have plumbing which is sufficiently intact to allow them to enjoy the working of their bowels.
*Some Geezers even have big dicks, but if they do, they’re probably fitted with catheters or are, at least, impotent. If they are still potent, they’re just a bother, because no woman in her right mind would want to couple with a Geezer. And as for self-abuse, well, Geezers are too weary and dispirited to bring themselves to orgasm. They might get started with the task, but once they are embroiled in it, they begin to realize that all the images they once conjured up to stimulate themselves no longer seem to turn them on. They think about the once-beautiful women they yearned for, or possessed, and they realize those women are now menopausal, perhaps even hags. Then the Geezers subside back into their sloughs of despond, confident in the knowledge that their nagging erections will soon wilt and leave them alone. And that’s the Geezers with big dicks. Most Geezers, even the ones who once had big dicks, now have withered genitalia which dangle sheepishly and uselessly, like artifacts in a dusty museum case, like spoiled fruit, waiting to be pecked at by birds, or oncologists.
ADDENDUM: THE FUTURE OF GEEZERS IN AMERICA
Is bleak. Geezer prospects, with rare exceptions, are unspeakably grim. So I will not speak of them. Not, at least, in too much or too painful detail. OK. Maybe I'll give you a taste. Geezers can expect what remains of their lives to be nasty, brutish, and short, especially the last few months, when they, if they are lucky, lie in a helpless stupor between pee soaked rubber sheets while their personal effects are looted by Third World attendants. Geezers who don't manage to find their way into nursing homes can be expected to be found, in Winter in more northern latitudes, frozen solid in alleyways, underpasses, and subway tunnels. Stacked like cordwood on the flatbeds of collecting trucks which pick them up each morning so their skinny carcasses will not offend the public eye, the Geezer stiffs are then taken to great garbage barges which majestically transport them to potters' fields on islands set a discreet distance from any respectable habitation or place of business. There they are dumped into unmarked graves while gulls soar overhead, crying angrily, mournfully.
In southerly latitudes, Geezers not able to get into assisted care residences drift down to the beach, where they cower in the shadows of pier pilings and subside into an angry lassitude. Their last hours are spent in the open sun, just beyond the reach of Mother Sea. There they crouch, occasionally lifting their bleary eyes to try to see a passing girl, voluptuously bursting out of her bikini. In their last moments, these southern Geezers are like starving sea lions, mere shadows of their former selves, washed up on shore to die,. Their pasts shimmer in their unsteady brains like half-remembered dreams: ecstasy & despair, triumph & defeat, health & sickness, love & hate, wealth & poverty, anguish & joy, all blur together in a soup, a neuronal stew, a foggy, staticky confusion of random, exhausted, synaptic firings, crosswirings, short-circuitings. The Geezers, thinking they hear another beautiful girl jog by, summon the strength to lift their heads one last time, but what they see is not a woman, but Death, in the form of the merciless, subtropical, sun, bearing down on them for the kill. And what they hear is the final fibrillations of their own lacey, depleted hearts, and the wheeze and death rattle of their brittle lungs.
They open up their mouths in surprise, and out pops their souls, which momentarily rise heavenward, then are vaporized by the sun's remorseless rays. All that remains on the beach are their leathery corpses, the hides tight and dry around the thin bones. Now they are indistinguishable from any other largish dead, unidentifiable entity along the shore. At last the burning gold ball of the sun plunges, steaming, into the sea and darkness falls upon the sands. Overhead twinkle the indifferent stars. The moon casts a ghostly pallor upon the Geezers' stiff pelts. The tide rises, lifting them, floating them, and away they go, into the arms of Mother Sea, never to be seen again.
All this is disgraceful and unspeakable, of course, so I will speak no more of it. Except to cite the happy exceptions to the usual Geezer rules. I refer to those Geezers so wealthy that they are able, if not to defeat time, at least to ameliorate its effects. Thus, we have John Jacob Astor, the wealthiest man in America at the time of his death in the mid-Nineteenth Century, an octogenarian who died at the breast of his hired wet nurse. And then there is Nelson Rockefeller, who had the good sense to expire, in coitus, in the arms of his 20-something mistress, a zaftig creature named Marshak.
Did these billionaires find it any easier to stare into Death's eyes in that final moment of rictus and agony when their bill came due, when it came time to cough up their souls? Yes. Because they knew they had gotten away with murder. They had lived the lives other Geezers could only dream of.
Short of being a billionaire, is there any hope for the Geezer? In general, no. But a few thousand will end up the final male survivors in nursing homes populated primarily by old women. There will be women, women, everywhere, but romance, should it blossom, will be a cruel, wizened, parody of its former self. Both desire and capacity are become mummies, mockeries. The Geezer, putative harem master, his lifelong dream come true at last, is, in fact, a eunuch, unable to satisfy or keep pace with his dessicated seraglio.
The only hope for a Geezer in this circumstance is for him to step past the bitterness of a broken dream, the dream of unlimited feminity granted 50 years too late. The Geezer who can transcend remorse, who can gnaw his way through his chysalis of rue, will emerge a new creature, a kind of geriatric butterfly of platonic love, fluttering from one crone to the next, staring into her cataracked eyes with his own teary, bleary orbs, now able to see afresh thanks to his rebirth & resurrection. This Geezer, radiant source of unlimited amor, will at last understand what all the years spent in a soiled Barca-lounger in front of network reruns were about. They were a preparation, a meditation, for the ecstatic life, and happy death, to come.
--FIN--
THE FOUR FREEDOMS OF THE UNITED STATES OF GEEZERDOM
I’m immigrating to the United States of Geezerdom without emigrating from the United States of Boomerdom. I’ll always be a Boomer, but now that the dew is off the rose, I’m applying for dual citizenship as a Geezer as well. I already look so bad that ticket takers have carded me……in reverse. That is, they’ve asked me if I qualify for the senior citizen discount. No, I say, but I’m getting there.
The First Freedom offered by the United States of Geezerdom, a shadow nation which occupies the same space, more less, as the United States, but which occupies a very different psychic reality, is Freedom from Want. True Geezers no longer want. They no longer Wannabe. They’ve given up hope that they’ll ever become anything better than they already are. In fact, they’re sure they’re doomed to getting worse each day. They know their memories are getting worse, their looks are getting worse, they’re growing weaker, their tripes are rotting, their teeth are yellowing, their hair is falling out and that which remains is turning bristly, their skin is drying and wrinkling and their eyes are glazing, hazing, and bagging. You might think Geezers would at least hope that their descent into physical hell would be a slow one. You would be wrong. True Geezers hope for nothing. Which leads us to the Second Freedom.
Freedom From Hope. True Geezers no longer hope for deliverance of any kind, including a woman. And if they’re already stuck with a mate, they no longer hope that mate will some day take human form and grow a heart. True Geezers no longer even hope to afford cable TV. They’ve resigned themselves to sitting in their Barca-loungers in front of their black and whites, watching the same asinine major networks that lulled them through what should have been the best years of their lives. They’re gonna go down with the video ship that brought them to this sorry pass. The only technological innovation Geezers permit themselves is a clicker, so they don't have to rouse themselves from their stupors in order to get up and change channels. But Geezers will not go out and buy a color TV with remote. If they can’t scrounge one out of somebody else’s garbage or inherit one, they’ll stick with black and white. And if they’re too weak and tired to climb out of their loungers and switch channels, why, that’s OK too. They’ll just sit in front of the same damn channel, hour after hour, day after day. Don’t make no never mind to them if it’s a talk show, confirming their worst prejudices against the human race with an endless parade of physical and psychological wreckage, or a test pattern. True Geezers will NOT climb out of their Barcas, not even to pee and crap. If they have to, they’ll get themselves fitted with catheters and colostomy bags. And if they can’t get either one, why, they’ll just sit there in their own filth.
Freedom From Regret. False Geezers still gnaw on the bitter cud of remorse. True Geezers know they’ve botched their lives, admit it, and understand it’s too late to do anything about it.
Freedom From Rap. Geezers, black and white, refuse to say “Dah Bomb.” They’ve got no more hops. Or hips. The closest they’ll ever come to hiphop is an artificial hip replacement. If they were offered an artificial hiphop replacement, fully paid for by Medicare, their bodies would reject it. True Geezers of all colors and stripes don’t care to listen to rap and if they happen to hear it they don’t and won’t understand it. Geezers are angry, very angry. But the anger of rap is not their anger. Geezers are outlaws, and you might think they could identify with rap’s gangstah ethic. But they can’t and they won’t. Rapsters make a big show of not belonging to society. Geezers don’t have anything to prove. It’s perfectly clear they don’t belong to anybody and anything and that nobody wants them. There is a single word Geezers are willing to share with Rappers. Dis. But they don’t mean no disrespect when they use it. Geezers say dis because their teeth are falling out and they're trying to say “this” but it comes out sounding like “dis.”
Freedom From Pride. Rappers still cling to pride. They’re proud of their allegedly big dicks and their anger and their gangstah ways and their ability to rhyme and dance. They’re proud of their alleged prowess with women and their alleged courage in battle. Geezers know better than to take pride in themselves. They know they have much to be ashamed of, but they’re too tired to be ashamed, as well. Geezers may have once accomplished something*, they may have once wooed and wowed women, or been brave in battle, or even done something smart. But they know those times are past. The present is a holding action, a struggle to subsist. The future? Perhaps it will bring the mercy of Alzheimers, sparing the Geezers from realizing just how bad things have gotten.
OK, that’s Five Freedoms so far, not Four. You wanna make something of it? If so, go pick a fight with someone else. I’m angry enough to quarrel with you, but I’m not vital enough or strong enough or limber enough. Now that osteoporosis is turning my once-steely bones into honeycombs, they’re way too frail to risk in battle. Go pick on somebody your own age.
Up your nose with a rubber hose, here’s the Sixth Freedom: The Freedom to be a Crank. Because Geezers are so frighteningly alone, they no longer have to try to get along. Though they’ve given up, they’re still bitter….about everything. And they’re physically miserable. This accounts for their fantastically unpleasant demeanors. They lose their tempers continually, but are unable to vent their anger. So it just hovers there, rendering them rancid and dyspeptic. I don’t recommend looking directly into the face of a Geezer. You might just get turned to stone. And don’t be deceived by his laughter. If he is laughing, he is once again realizing that he is the butt of a cruel cosmic prank. His irony brings him neither dignity nor relief.
Number Seven, coming right up: Freedom From Being With It. Geezers are out of the loop. Their diction is a time capsule of earlier, benighted, eras. Their clothes come from department store giants----Sears, Penney’s, Montgomery Ward---which once bestrode the earth like mighty marketing collossi but which now are fighting for their lives. Geezers cling to the mores, styles, gestures and values of now-discredited times. They are like suddenly-rediscovered creatures, marsupial dogs, for example, which were once thought to be extinct. Their original ecological niches have been taken over by sleeker, more ferocious and efficient beasts. They cling to freakish margins of the environment. Their survival is an uneasy balancing act. Their appearance, their very existence, is vaguely disquieting to more modern, better-constituted beings. There are too many of them, they eat too much, they take resources away from young, healthy, upcoming animals, and they contribute nothing of value to the natural scheme of things. But fear not; more efficient predators, and the Geezers' own frailties and unfitness for life, will eventually cull them out of the herd. The problem with Geezers is that no matter how frequently they die, and they do die like flies, there are always reinforcements marching into their ranks from what were formerly youthful and appealing generations.
Freedom to Amount to Nothing. The game is up for Geezers and they know it. They’re not taken in by that self-esteem bullshit. They don’t waste energy trying to boost their own or anyone else’s. Nor do they try to make anything of worth of their lives or their moments. They are beyond worth and worthlessness alike. Once they overvalued their existences. Then they devalued them. Now value is beside the point. It takes too much energy for them to worry if they are fulfilling their potential, or if they have any potential at all, though they’re pretty damn sure they don’t.
Freedom to Eat Sugar and Take a Good Dump. Geezers have a morbid fascination with sugar and eat as much of it as they can get their crabbed hands on. It rots their teeth and gives them adult diabetes, but that’s OK because what few teeth they have left in their heads are already yellow and black and they’re going to die soon anyway. Sugar is one of the two comforts left to Geezers. The other is a good solid dump. A Geezer knows for sure he’s a Geezer when he takes more pleasure and interest in crapping than he does in sex. Sadly, few Geezers have plumbing which is sufficiently intact to allow them to enjoy the working of their bowels.
*Some Geezers even have big dicks, but if they do, they’re probably fitted with catheters or are, at least, impotent. If they are still potent, they’re just a bother, because no woman in her right mind would want to couple with a Geezer. And as for self-abuse, well, Geezers are too weary and dispirited to bring themselves to orgasm. They might get started with the task, but once they are embroiled in it, they begin to realize that all the images they once conjured up to stimulate themselves no longer seem to turn them on. They think about the once-beautiful women they yearned for, or possessed, and they realize those women are now menopausal, perhaps even hags. Then the Geezers subside back into their sloughs of despond, confident in the knowledge that their nagging erections will soon wilt and leave them alone. And that’s the Geezers with big dicks. Most Geezers, even the ones who once had big dicks, now have withered genitalia which dangle sheepishly and uselessly, like artifacts in a dusty museum case, like spoiled fruit, waiting to be pecked at by birds, or oncologists.
ADDENDUM: THE FUTURE OF GEEZERS IN AMERICA
Is bleak. Geezer prospects, with rare exceptions, are unspeakably grim. So I will not speak of them. Not, at least, in too much or too painful detail. OK. Maybe I'll give you a taste. Geezers can expect what remains of their lives to be nasty, brutish, and short, especially the last few months, when they, if they are lucky, lie in a helpless stupor between pee soaked rubber sheets while their personal effects are looted by Third World attendants. Geezers who don't manage to find their way into nursing homes can be expected to be found, in Winter in more northern latitudes, frozen solid in alleyways, underpasses, and subway tunnels. Stacked like cordwood on the flatbeds of collecting trucks which pick them up each morning so their skinny carcasses will not offend the public eye, the Geezer stiffs are then taken to great garbage barges which majestically transport them to potters' fields on islands set a discreet distance from any respectable habitation or place of business. There they are dumped into unmarked graves while gulls soar overhead, crying angrily, mournfully.
In southerly latitudes, Geezers not able to get into assisted care residences drift down to the beach, where they cower in the shadows of pier pilings and subside into an angry lassitude. Their last hours are spent in the open sun, just beyond the reach of Mother Sea. There they crouch, occasionally lifting their bleary eyes to try to see a passing girl, voluptuously bursting out of her bikini. In their last moments, these southern Geezers are like starving sea lions, mere shadows of their former selves, washed up on shore to die,. Their pasts shimmer in their unsteady brains like half-remembered dreams: ecstasy & despair, triumph & defeat, health & sickness, love & hate, wealth & poverty, anguish & joy, all blur together in a soup, a neuronal stew, a foggy, staticky confusion of random, exhausted, synaptic firings, crosswirings, short-circuitings. The Geezers, thinking they hear another beautiful girl jog by, summon the strength to lift their heads one last time, but what they see is not a woman, but Death, in the form of the merciless, subtropical, sun, bearing down on them for the kill. And what they hear is the final fibrillations of their own lacey, depleted hearts, and the wheeze and death rattle of their brittle lungs.
They open up their mouths in surprise, and out pops their souls, which momentarily rise heavenward, then are vaporized by the sun's remorseless rays. All that remains on the beach are their leathery corpses, the hides tight and dry around the thin bones. Now they are indistinguishable from any other largish dead, unidentifiable entity along the shore. At last the burning gold ball of the sun plunges, steaming, into the sea and darkness falls upon the sands. Overhead twinkle the indifferent stars. The moon casts a ghostly pallor upon the Geezers' stiff pelts. The tide rises, lifting them, floating them, and away they go, into the arms of Mother Sea, never to be seen again.
All this is disgraceful and unspeakable, of course, so I will speak no more of it. Except to cite the happy exceptions to the usual Geezer rules. I refer to those Geezers so wealthy that they are able, if not to defeat time, at least to ameliorate its effects. Thus, we have John Jacob Astor, the wealthiest man in America at the time of his death in the mid-Nineteenth Century, an octogenarian who died at the breast of his hired wet nurse. And then there is Nelson Rockefeller, who had the good sense to expire, in coitus, in the arms of his 20-something mistress, a zaftig creature named Marshak.
Did these billionaires find it any easier to stare into Death's eyes in that final moment of rictus and agony when their bill came due, when it came time to cough up their souls? Yes. Because they knew they had gotten away with murder. They had lived the lives other Geezers could only dream of.
Short of being a billionaire, is there any hope for the Geezer? In general, no. But a few thousand will end up the final male survivors in nursing homes populated primarily by old women. There will be women, women, everywhere, but romance, should it blossom, will be a cruel, wizened, parody of its former self. Both desire and capacity are become mummies, mockeries. The Geezer, putative harem master, his lifelong dream come true at last, is, in fact, a eunuch, unable to satisfy or keep pace with his dessicated seraglio.
The only hope for a Geezer in this circumstance is for him to step past the bitterness of a broken dream, the dream of unlimited feminity granted 50 years too late. The Geezer who can transcend remorse, who can gnaw his way through his chysalis of rue, will emerge a new creature, a kind of geriatric butterfly of platonic love, fluttering from one crone to the next, staring into her cataracked eyes with his own teary, bleary orbs, now able to see afresh thanks to his rebirth & resurrection. This Geezer, radiant source of unlimited amor, will at last understand what all the years spent in a soiled Barca-lounger in front of network reruns were about. They were a preparation, a meditation, for the ecstatic life, and happy death, to come.
--FIN--
posted by mobydoug at 1:19 AM
0 comments
