I’d like to say that the appearance part of aging – the loose skin, the saggy muscles, the gradual merger of boobs and waistline – doesn’t bother me. But you wouldn’t believe me, and I wouldn’t believe me either.
Month / June 2022
“When you’re old, the line between stylish and absurd gets very iffy. Upright posture and a confident stride will get you only so far (although perhaps further than you’d guess) – but the difference between the elderly lady in the drop-dead ensemble on the book cover, and your tipsy Great-Aunt Mildred who insists on polyester animal prints and refuses to acknowledge that size eight is far behind her, is little but context.”
from “On Appearances”
”When you’re old, the line between stylish and absurd gets very iffy. Upright posture and a confident stride will get you only so far (although perhaps further than you’d guess) – but the difference between the elderly lady in the drop-dead ensemble on the book cover, and your tipsy Great-Aunt Mildred who insists on polyester animal prints and refuses to acknowledge that size eight is far behind her, is little but context.”
“I’ve come to think of my lifetime as a relatively brief vacation, and my body as resortwear – perhaps a nice sundress, or a pair of colorful shorts. Like all vacations, this one will feel like it’s over much too soon. And also like all vacations, I will return to my real existence with a handful of nice memories and a certain sense of relief about leaving all that rigmarole behind me.”
from “On Grief”
I’ve spent time as a heterosexual and a queer, as a polyamorist and a married person and a celibate, as a woman and as something beyond gender. I’m a parent and a writer and a teacher about kinds of weird sex and relationships you might not even be able to imagine. And as I’ve moved in and through all these identities and more, the one thing that hasn’t changed is that I keep on getting older.
Some of the ways in which aging affects me are the same as anybody else’s (a wrinkle is a wrinkle is a wrinkle). But having walked purposefully into a scene designed to end with me sobbing and incoherent and outside my own skin changes the way I feel about age. Imagining my own deathbed, and the lovers and ex-lovers and friends and family I hope will hold me and surround me as I move on, changes the way I feel about age. Planning the removal of my breasts – not because I’m sick and not because I’m nonbinary, but simply because I’m bored with them and want them gone – changes how I feel about age, too.
Notes of an Aging Pervert is dedicated to anyone who’s stuck in the current of time, but swimming upstream against any or all of the other currents that tug us off-course.
As the book comes together, I’ll be posting tasty snippets of text here, along with the occasional illustration – to whet your appetite for the release of Notes of an Aging Pervert in Fall 2023. Enjoy!
Notes of an Aging Pervert 