dave_tf-old
June 5th, 2008, 16:45
...When I'm Sixty-Four
I did not write this article. While I'll be attributing it at the end, I found this saved in My Documents but can't recall where I found it originally or the ID of the original poster.
Now before I get to look at respect for age let me first analyse the above offensive sentence which certainly shows no respect for age or the person to whom it was addressed.
It's a sex object if you're pretty, and no love--or love and no sex if you're fat.
Nikki Giovanni (1943 - )
The word 'fat' is subjective. A young adult Thai is likely to be, on average, about 55kg in weight (although the McDonald's generation is making this less common). The average weight of a similarly aged Westerner could be about 10 kg more. So irrespective of age we are generally heavier than Thais. And again while I'm generalizing (as I will throughout this piece) the average height of a Westerner is greater than that of the average Thai thus adding to the weight and its distribution.
I'm perfect. The areas that I need help on are not negotiable. They have to do with gravity.
Jane Fonda (1937 - )
Like the apple pulled to earth by gravity this force also has an affect on our physiques as we age. I promise you, we begin to sag! As we age it is 'natural' for our weight to become redistributed in different areas from when we were young even if we do not actually put much on. While we might fight aging we cannot defeat it. However, it's amazing what 'ills' clothes can cover until the (in)appropriate time to have these exposed.
Some people are born to fatness. Others have to get there.
Les Murray (1938 - )
Middle age is when your broad mind and narrow waist begin to change places.
E. Joseph Crossman
So as we age we appear fatter (or actually are). But to compensate we have an Asian cultural norm. In Asia weight is not something that suggests heart attacks, gluttony, cholesterol, sweat, puffing exhaustion, purple faces etc. Rather it suggests prosperity. It has for millennia so these young people see weight quite differently from the weight-and age-obsessed Western society. They see it as 'prosperous'. They (like many young) also see McDonald's as haute cuisine - oh the ills Western culture brings to the world.
Behold, Esau my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man.
Genesis 27:11.
Now the word 'hairy'. Like the biblical Esau I am a hairy man. I am covered with fur and the Asian men I am known to consort with are not. I only have one observation on that - while I love running my fingers through the hair they have on their heads (I know what the guide books say and I don't care (and neither do they!)) and elsewhere many of them seem to get as much pleasure from running their fingers through the hair on my body. Maybe it is just reverting to our simian ancestors searching for lice. There seems no problems to an Asian who likes to go with Europeans that the said partner is hirsute.
I think on-stage nudity is disgusting, shameful and damaging to all things American. But if I were 22 with a great body, it would be artistic, tasteful, patriotic and a progressive religious experience.
Shelley Winters (1922 - )
'Disgusting' is again in the eye of the beholder. You may be disgusting to me but maybe this is because I'm jealous of your conquest. I have observed that Asians seems to have a different idea of what is attractive. I sometimes ask a Thai boy what kind of Thai he finds attractive. Very seldom do our views concur. I ask the same about a European. Each to his own, of course, but the explanations are at odds with what my eyes are seeing. The Thai often says things like 'he looks like he has a good heart' or physically 'I like his long nose' for a Westerner or 'he has white skin' describing the attraction to an Asian. So again we look at what is a cultural norm.
I don't believe one grows older. I think that what happens early on in life is that at a certain age one stands still and stagnates.
T. S. Eliot
And so to 'age'. In my country, as in those of many who make contributions to forums, age is looked upon as an infirmity. Experience counts for nothing as the wheel is reinvented daily by the young go-getters. History teaches nothing as the same mistakes or even successes are repeated. Mistakes are blamed on the old and successes are taken for the personal glory of youth.
It is fortunate that each generation does not comprehend its own ignorance. We are thus enabled to call our ancestors barbarous.
Charles Dudley Warner (1829-1900)
There is no sense of what has gone before. The old (over 50 perhaps) are to be shunted aside to their own pleasures best undertaken from a wheelchair, the wheels for which the young just invented. I was reading a book the other day where an obviously 30+ guy was seated between a dizzy teenager and an old bore. The author did not acknowledge the 30+ was just as boring to the youngster and just as dizzy to the older person. Don't we love to generalise and catagorise!
Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing: age, which forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
[i]Twenty can't be expected to tolerate sixty in all things, and sixty gets bored stiff with twenty's eternal love affairs.
Emily Carr (1871-1945)
The disrespect for age in Western culture, I suspect, was not necessarily always so. When I was growing up older people had a function in a wider extended family. To have loving grandparents as surrogate parents was not unusual and these people were treated very much as patriarchs or matriarchs and were respected (feared?) as well as loved.
I don't have a clue what happens in family life today but my reading (agony aunt columns as much as anything else) would suggest that older people in the West are looked upon as interfering and those joys they may have experienced in the past as an important part, if not as head of an extended family, are past. I'm sure this is another generalisation. Also it is not the point of this essay.
So get to the bloody point you boring old fart.
Age is not a particularly interesting subject. Anyone can get old. All you have to do is live long enough.
Groucho Marx (1895-1977)
While I was certainly taught to respect my elders I was not taught to make love to them. This is the difference I am experiencing in Thailand. I am not suggesting that Thais are taught to 'make love to' elderly people but somewhere in their upbringing is the understanding that there is nothing wrong with it. The point is why do we put ourselves down over the 'love' or respect of a younger person? We are imposing our own values on an ancient culture. We must accept that we of the West do not have all the answers and must 'go with the flow'. To do otherwise will not win hearts and minds.
A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.
John Barrymore (1882-1942)
I find it uncomfortable to see a 20 year old of either sex snuggling up publicly to a man old enough to be a grandparent. But so what? That's my view and NOT my business. Only last night (at the time of writing) I saw one of my young (20-year-old) friends on the street. He was with a number of his similarly aged friends. I spoke to him. I bet the reaction from his friends was not one of ridicule. It may have been one of, perhaps, envy (or pity).
When I took a 20-year-old lover of the time overseas the Thai immigration officer called him over. When he came back I obviously asked what it was about. He answered, "He asked me with whom was I travelling. [His use of English was exemplary!] I pointed to you. He asked if you were my boyfriend. I answered 'yes'. He said that's good because if you had not said that I would not have allowed you to go."
We arrived in Singapore. I made him to go ahead of me. After a moments' discussion the immigration officer called me over. He asked if I was his teacher. Being honest I answered, 'Yes'. 'Have a good stay', were his words as he stamped the passports.
We only see what we want to see.
I have three kinds of friends: those who love me, those who pay no attention to me, and those who detest me.
S├йbastien-Roch Nicolas de Chamfort (1741-94)
In my home country I have no friends younger than my generation so let's say 50. In Thailand I have many friends, true friends, under 30. This age group includes no one of European descent.
There is 'my stable' - these are the group of lads with whom I have a 'stable' sexual relationship. (I have been told that to refer to them as a 'stable' is 'farang condescending'. No it is a pun. They are all stallions but very 'stable' ones rather than 'stabled' ones.) They each know of each other. I can't choose between them so they share my affections and I share theirs and it works. A couple help redistribute my wealth, another I pay for his schooling and nothing else and yet another will take me out for a meal tonight.
To resist the frigidity of old age one must combine the body, the mind and the heart - and to keep them in parallel vigor one must exercise, study and love.
Karl von Bonstetten
Whatever anyone might say who has not experienced it a young Thai is often turned on by sex with an older guy. There is a sexual attraction to their lover. They get hard-ons, they kiss passionately without any sense of discomfort, they play the giggling games of sex. Why? I don't have the answer but I do offer this sort of negative response to those who scoff at the mutual turn-on - I don't see 1,000 baht as an aphrodisiac. There really is something more there.
I am told a woman can fake an orgasm. This is not easy in a man. I cannot imagine that many of the young Thai men I have been with, during very successful sex for both of us, just lie back and think of Thailand. It is not their duty. Of course they might rather be with Brad Pitt (or even Nicole Kidman) or whoever is the younger star of the moment, however, they appear as turned on by this aging Lothario as they might be with a younger version.
A country without bordels is like a house without bathrooms.
Marlene Dietrich (1904-92)
Almost from the moment we set foot on Thai soil our Western mind set changes. Money for sex is something we begin to accept. I do not see the guys I pay money for sex as 'prostitutes' in the down-putting way we use the word in the West. Perhaps it is like the distinction the United Nation puts on refugees. There are political refugees (the true ones) and economic refugees (those we send back). Thais in this category are often economic prostitutes.
As I have intimated some of the lads of my stable would be classified in the West as prostitutes. I ask you how many of you regularly go with prostitutes in your home countries? And further how many of you would consider them to be amongst your friends? And even further how many of them would you ask to become a more permanent part of your life?
As well as my 'stable' there are the young Thai friends with whom I have a companionable 'social' relationship rather than a sexual one. Then again we don't just quilt and cross-stitch but we do gossip! These guys are in paid employment and our relationship is one of mutual interests and social pleasures rather than carnal. Of course a lot of it is carnal as we stare at those parading before us with lust. But the carnality is not towards each other unfortunately as they are gorgeous!
The 'stable' will not join my 'social' group for some years if ever. They are 'too young'. I don't mean just in age but their interests are too young. I will probably remain friends with both groups but on a different level. I will watch them grow older, more responsible, taking a certain pride in their achievements. I will make jokes about their growing plumpness or wrinkles, or grey hair much as they do to me now! Look at the politicians - Thais do age and not always attractively!
I delight in men over seventy. They always offer one the devotion of a lifetime.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Now is this 'love'? Of course not. Is it respect? I hope so. Is it a security blanket? Maybe. (The Thai word for loan seems to include the silent 'non repayable' as though I was like a Thai financial institution). Is this using me? To a very small degree but I get as much pleasure from it as they.
I make sure the respect is mutual. While I expect respect from the younger lovers and friends I also respect them. I would not think to tell them what to do as if I was a parent. I would not expect to be with them 100% of the time, as I would not expect them to be with me. A mutual trust is something we have to live with. It is not a trust of monogamy, as we know we are not. It is a trust that we do not in any way 'harm' each other. It is the trust of mutual respect.
Trust men, and they will be true to you; treat them greatly, and they will show themselves great.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82)
At least four of my young friends have told me that through their relationship with me their lives have changed in a positive way. I saw nothing I did that was so spectacularly positive. I may have been a catalyst. Maybe it was just a small amount of respect and a little advice but just enough to encourage thought. I cannot and will never insist on change. Everyone deserves the chance to make his own choices and mistakes. I wish I had been granted that more often.
I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
My 'stable' are at the age of emotional immaturity. Each of them has asked me to have him as a permanent partner; each has been refused. (I suspect this is where the 'security blanket' aspect of the relationship comes in.) Their passion is not easily spent and we enjoy it together. But I will be honest - we do not necessarily enjoy one another's company. We are often bored with one another on a social level and I think this would be an ongoing problem.
Let me put it into perspective. I use one group for sexual stimulus. In the Viagra age you still need something to stimulate you in a physical way or else it doesn't always work. I hate the chase. I enjoy the growing knowledge and intimacy that a lasting relationship brings and I like the variety that having a few lovers gives. (I have often found that a single lover does nothing to increase my circle of friends; in fact it often limits them to HIM. But again, like everything in this essay, this is my own personal observation.)
Nothing makes one old so quickly as the ever-present thought that one is growing older.
G. C. Lichtenberg (1742-99)
To help me understand the age in which we live I look to my social friends. They keep me up with the latest in fashion, celebrity news, music etc. While I don't necessarily like it and laugh at much of it at least I do not ignore it. This is important in keeping young. While the body may age there is no excuse to encourage your mind or interests to do so. We can all know what we like but we must also be able to accept the new and different.
Morality comes with the sad wisdom of age, when the sense of curiosity has withered.
Graham Greene (1904-91)
I don't believe in the adage 'you can't teach an old dog new tricks'. I believe that age gives us experience well beyond learning. Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten has been attributed to an American psychologist B F Skinner. He is said to have written it in 1964. I was taught the very same phrase long before 1964! I suspect it was a Reader's Digest pithy quote. It is not a matter of not learning it is a matter of how useful is it to learn. We learn to survive and we will continue to (until Alzheimer's sets in). We will discard that which seems irrelevant. That you cannot use a mobile phone is not because you cannot learn but because you feel no necessity to learn (I learned quickly by necessity!). A number of the old tricks we know have served us very well for a long time so why learn new? And anyway what's new?
Age. That period of life in which we compound for the vices that remain by reviling those we have no longer the vigor to commit. To me, old age is always fifteen years older than I am.
Bernard Baruch (1870-1965)
The third group of friends in my life is my aging Western friends; they are the most important people in my life. They are not of sexual interest, they are often conservative old codgers but they are MY generation of conservative old codgers. We invented the original round-shaped wheel. We have experienced the same years together, we have followed the same trends. We may have gone down different paths but we know that at least there were other paths which we may have followed. There is a lot of unspoken communication between us. We can talk in a shorthand that requires no translation. When we say 'The Beatles' we do not think of entomology or a snack. We think of those four young men so important to our youth and in the evolution of modern music.
The young also communicate in their own shorthand and they need to translate as much for us as we need to translate for them. This is why often a mixed-age meal or meeting is fraught with stress. We really don't understand the subtleties each of us are faced with and we, the older, usually feel more frustrated as we are less tolerant of 'ignorance'.
Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among their mates;
but they are unwholesome companions for grown people.
Charles Lamb (1775-1834)
With my own generation I might argue and reminisce and we understand without having to explain. Just let me write some words and I am sure they will evoke memories. Kennedy, Cold War, Berlin Wall, Evita Peron (Madonna!), Beatles versus Stones, My Fair Lady, Charlie's Angels (no, not the latest film remake), Marilyn, Jimmy Dean - get the picture? If you don't let me put it this way - references like this are now found only on the History Channel! Say these words to a 20+ year old (particularly Thai in this context) and you will get a puzzled look. The young can play the same word game with us.
Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants, today it's open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.
Dave Barry (1947 - )
I do have a word of warning, as I'm that sort of conservative old bastard. Remember your age! Stupid isn't it to have to remind yourself but it is important. The emotions and dress sense of adolescence should be put behind us.
Youth, large, lusty, loving-Youth, full of grace, force, fascination.
Do you know that Old Age may come after you with equal grace, force, fascination?
Walt Whitman (1819-92)
Use the young to stimulate, to invigorate, to keep you thinking young and remember age should not wither us, nor custom stale our infinity variety, to misquote the Bard.
We have all fallen in love and that emotion affects us in different ways. It is also an emotion that develops from teenage fantasies, to crushes, to jealous insanity, to an acceptance of inevitability. All of it is the evolution of lust and love.
So back to the theme of this article - age.
If I can rework slightly the song, perhaps aptly named (albeit when 'gay' meant 'happy'), A Bachelor Gay.
At seventeen I fell in love quite madly with eyes of tender blue,
At twenty-four I got it rather badly for eyes of a different hue,
At thirty-five you found me flirting sadly with two or three or more.
When I fancied I was passed love
In Thailand I found my last loves
And I loved them as I'd never loved before.
┬й copyright pooh publications 2003.
I did not write this article. While I'll be attributing it at the end, I found this saved in My Documents but can't recall where I found it originally or the ID of the original poster.
Now before I get to look at respect for age let me first analyse the above offensive sentence which certainly shows no respect for age or the person to whom it was addressed.
It's a sex object if you're pretty, and no love--or love and no sex if you're fat.
Nikki Giovanni (1943 - )
The word 'fat' is subjective. A young adult Thai is likely to be, on average, about 55kg in weight (although the McDonald's generation is making this less common). The average weight of a similarly aged Westerner could be about 10 kg more. So irrespective of age we are generally heavier than Thais. And again while I'm generalizing (as I will throughout this piece) the average height of a Westerner is greater than that of the average Thai thus adding to the weight and its distribution.
I'm perfect. The areas that I need help on are not negotiable. They have to do with gravity.
Jane Fonda (1937 - )
Like the apple pulled to earth by gravity this force also has an affect on our physiques as we age. I promise you, we begin to sag! As we age it is 'natural' for our weight to become redistributed in different areas from when we were young even if we do not actually put much on. While we might fight aging we cannot defeat it. However, it's amazing what 'ills' clothes can cover until the (in)appropriate time to have these exposed.
Some people are born to fatness. Others have to get there.
Les Murray (1938 - )
Middle age is when your broad mind and narrow waist begin to change places.
E. Joseph Crossman
So as we age we appear fatter (or actually are). But to compensate we have an Asian cultural norm. In Asia weight is not something that suggests heart attacks, gluttony, cholesterol, sweat, puffing exhaustion, purple faces etc. Rather it suggests prosperity. It has for millennia so these young people see weight quite differently from the weight-and age-obsessed Western society. They see it as 'prosperous'. They (like many young) also see McDonald's as haute cuisine - oh the ills Western culture brings to the world.
Behold, Esau my brother is a hairy man, and I am a smooth man.
Genesis 27:11.
Now the word 'hairy'. Like the biblical Esau I am a hairy man. I am covered with fur and the Asian men I am known to consort with are not. I only have one observation on that - while I love running my fingers through the hair they have on their heads (I know what the guide books say and I don't care (and neither do they!)) and elsewhere many of them seem to get as much pleasure from running their fingers through the hair on my body. Maybe it is just reverting to our simian ancestors searching for lice. There seems no problems to an Asian who likes to go with Europeans that the said partner is hirsute.
I think on-stage nudity is disgusting, shameful and damaging to all things American. But if I were 22 with a great body, it would be artistic, tasteful, patriotic and a progressive religious experience.
Shelley Winters (1922 - )
'Disgusting' is again in the eye of the beholder. You may be disgusting to me but maybe this is because I'm jealous of your conquest. I have observed that Asians seems to have a different idea of what is attractive. I sometimes ask a Thai boy what kind of Thai he finds attractive. Very seldom do our views concur. I ask the same about a European. Each to his own, of course, but the explanations are at odds with what my eyes are seeing. The Thai often says things like 'he looks like he has a good heart' or physically 'I like his long nose' for a Westerner or 'he has white skin' describing the attraction to an Asian. So again we look at what is a cultural norm.
I don't believe one grows older. I think that what happens early on in life is that at a certain age one stands still and stagnates.
T. S. Eliot
And so to 'age'. In my country, as in those of many who make contributions to forums, age is looked upon as an infirmity. Experience counts for nothing as the wheel is reinvented daily by the young go-getters. History teaches nothing as the same mistakes or even successes are repeated. Mistakes are blamed on the old and successes are taken for the personal glory of youth.
It is fortunate that each generation does not comprehend its own ignorance. We are thus enabled to call our ancestors barbarous.
Charles Dudley Warner (1829-1900)
There is no sense of what has gone before. The old (over 50 perhaps) are to be shunted aside to their own pleasures best undertaken from a wheelchair, the wheels for which the young just invented. I was reading a book the other day where an obviously 30+ guy was seated between a dizzy teenager and an old bore. The author did not acknowledge the 30+ was just as boring to the youngster and just as dizzy to the older person. Don't we love to generalise and catagorise!
Youth, which is forgiven everything, forgives itself nothing: age, which forgives itself everything, is forgiven nothing.
George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
[i]Twenty can't be expected to tolerate sixty in all things, and sixty gets bored stiff with twenty's eternal love affairs.
Emily Carr (1871-1945)
The disrespect for age in Western culture, I suspect, was not necessarily always so. When I was growing up older people had a function in a wider extended family. To have loving grandparents as surrogate parents was not unusual and these people were treated very much as patriarchs or matriarchs and were respected (feared?) as well as loved.
I don't have a clue what happens in family life today but my reading (agony aunt columns as much as anything else) would suggest that older people in the West are looked upon as interfering and those joys they may have experienced in the past as an important part, if not as head of an extended family, are past. I'm sure this is another generalisation. Also it is not the point of this essay.
So get to the bloody point you boring old fart.
Age is not a particularly interesting subject. Anyone can get old. All you have to do is live long enough.
Groucho Marx (1895-1977)
While I was certainly taught to respect my elders I was not taught to make love to them. This is the difference I am experiencing in Thailand. I am not suggesting that Thais are taught to 'make love to' elderly people but somewhere in their upbringing is the understanding that there is nothing wrong with it. The point is why do we put ourselves down over the 'love' or respect of a younger person? We are imposing our own values on an ancient culture. We must accept that we of the West do not have all the answers and must 'go with the flow'. To do otherwise will not win hearts and minds.
A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams.
John Barrymore (1882-1942)
I find it uncomfortable to see a 20 year old of either sex snuggling up publicly to a man old enough to be a grandparent. But so what? That's my view and NOT my business. Only last night (at the time of writing) I saw one of my young (20-year-old) friends on the street. He was with a number of his similarly aged friends. I spoke to him. I bet the reaction from his friends was not one of ridicule. It may have been one of, perhaps, envy (or pity).
When I took a 20-year-old lover of the time overseas the Thai immigration officer called him over. When he came back I obviously asked what it was about. He answered, "He asked me with whom was I travelling. [His use of English was exemplary!] I pointed to you. He asked if you were my boyfriend. I answered 'yes'. He said that's good because if you had not said that I would not have allowed you to go."
We arrived in Singapore. I made him to go ahead of me. After a moments' discussion the immigration officer called me over. He asked if I was his teacher. Being honest I answered, 'Yes'. 'Have a good stay', were his words as he stamped the passports.
We only see what we want to see.
I have three kinds of friends: those who love me, those who pay no attention to me, and those who detest me.
S├йbastien-Roch Nicolas de Chamfort (1741-94)
In my home country I have no friends younger than my generation so let's say 50. In Thailand I have many friends, true friends, under 30. This age group includes no one of European descent.
There is 'my stable' - these are the group of lads with whom I have a 'stable' sexual relationship. (I have been told that to refer to them as a 'stable' is 'farang condescending'. No it is a pun. They are all stallions but very 'stable' ones rather than 'stabled' ones.) They each know of each other. I can't choose between them so they share my affections and I share theirs and it works. A couple help redistribute my wealth, another I pay for his schooling and nothing else and yet another will take me out for a meal tonight.
To resist the frigidity of old age one must combine the body, the mind and the heart - and to keep them in parallel vigor one must exercise, study and love.
Karl von Bonstetten
Whatever anyone might say who has not experienced it a young Thai is often turned on by sex with an older guy. There is a sexual attraction to their lover. They get hard-ons, they kiss passionately without any sense of discomfort, they play the giggling games of sex. Why? I don't have the answer but I do offer this sort of negative response to those who scoff at the mutual turn-on - I don't see 1,000 baht as an aphrodisiac. There really is something more there.
I am told a woman can fake an orgasm. This is not easy in a man. I cannot imagine that many of the young Thai men I have been with, during very successful sex for both of us, just lie back and think of Thailand. It is not their duty. Of course they might rather be with Brad Pitt (or even Nicole Kidman) or whoever is the younger star of the moment, however, they appear as turned on by this aging Lothario as they might be with a younger version.
A country without bordels is like a house without bathrooms.
Marlene Dietrich (1904-92)
Almost from the moment we set foot on Thai soil our Western mind set changes. Money for sex is something we begin to accept. I do not see the guys I pay money for sex as 'prostitutes' in the down-putting way we use the word in the West. Perhaps it is like the distinction the United Nation puts on refugees. There are political refugees (the true ones) and economic refugees (those we send back). Thais in this category are often economic prostitutes.
As I have intimated some of the lads of my stable would be classified in the West as prostitutes. I ask you how many of you regularly go with prostitutes in your home countries? And further how many of you would consider them to be amongst your friends? And even further how many of them would you ask to become a more permanent part of your life?
As well as my 'stable' there are the young Thai friends with whom I have a companionable 'social' relationship rather than a sexual one. Then again we don't just quilt and cross-stitch but we do gossip! These guys are in paid employment and our relationship is one of mutual interests and social pleasures rather than carnal. Of course a lot of it is carnal as we stare at those parading before us with lust. But the carnality is not towards each other unfortunately as they are gorgeous!
The 'stable' will not join my 'social' group for some years if ever. They are 'too young'. I don't mean just in age but their interests are too young. I will probably remain friends with both groups but on a different level. I will watch them grow older, more responsible, taking a certain pride in their achievements. I will make jokes about their growing plumpness or wrinkles, or grey hair much as they do to me now! Look at the politicians - Thais do age and not always attractively!
I delight in men over seventy. They always offer one the devotion of a lifetime.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
Now is this 'love'? Of course not. Is it respect? I hope so. Is it a security blanket? Maybe. (The Thai word for loan seems to include the silent 'non repayable' as though I was like a Thai financial institution). Is this using me? To a very small degree but I get as much pleasure from it as they.
I make sure the respect is mutual. While I expect respect from the younger lovers and friends I also respect them. I would not think to tell them what to do as if I was a parent. I would not expect to be with them 100% of the time, as I would not expect them to be with me. A mutual trust is something we have to live with. It is not a trust of monogamy, as we know we are not. It is a trust that we do not in any way 'harm' each other. It is the trust of mutual respect.
Trust men, and they will be true to you; treat them greatly, and they will show themselves great.
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-82)
At least four of my young friends have told me that through their relationship with me their lives have changed in a positive way. I saw nothing I did that was so spectacularly positive. I may have been a catalyst. Maybe it was just a small amount of respect and a little advice but just enough to encourage thought. I cannot and will never insist on change. Everyone deserves the chance to make his own choices and mistakes. I wish I had been granted that more often.
I choose my friends for their good looks, my acquaintances for their good characters, and my enemies for their intellects. A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900)
My 'stable' are at the age of emotional immaturity. Each of them has asked me to have him as a permanent partner; each has been refused. (I suspect this is where the 'security blanket' aspect of the relationship comes in.) Their passion is not easily spent and we enjoy it together. But I will be honest - we do not necessarily enjoy one another's company. We are often bored with one another on a social level and I think this would be an ongoing problem.
Let me put it into perspective. I use one group for sexual stimulus. In the Viagra age you still need something to stimulate you in a physical way or else it doesn't always work. I hate the chase. I enjoy the growing knowledge and intimacy that a lasting relationship brings and I like the variety that having a few lovers gives. (I have often found that a single lover does nothing to increase my circle of friends; in fact it often limits them to HIM. But again, like everything in this essay, this is my own personal observation.)
Nothing makes one old so quickly as the ever-present thought that one is growing older.
G. C. Lichtenberg (1742-99)
To help me understand the age in which we live I look to my social friends. They keep me up with the latest in fashion, celebrity news, music etc. While I don't necessarily like it and laugh at much of it at least I do not ignore it. This is important in keeping young. While the body may age there is no excuse to encourage your mind or interests to do so. We can all know what we like but we must also be able to accept the new and different.
Morality comes with the sad wisdom of age, when the sense of curiosity has withered.
Graham Greene (1904-91)
I don't believe in the adage 'you can't teach an old dog new tricks'. I believe that age gives us experience well beyond learning. Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten has been attributed to an American psychologist B F Skinner. He is said to have written it in 1964. I was taught the very same phrase long before 1964! I suspect it was a Reader's Digest pithy quote. It is not a matter of not learning it is a matter of how useful is it to learn. We learn to survive and we will continue to (until Alzheimer's sets in). We will discard that which seems irrelevant. That you cannot use a mobile phone is not because you cannot learn but because you feel no necessity to learn (I learned quickly by necessity!). A number of the old tricks we know have served us very well for a long time so why learn new? And anyway what's new?
Age. That period of life in which we compound for the vices that remain by reviling those we have no longer the vigor to commit. To me, old age is always fifteen years older than I am.
Bernard Baruch (1870-1965)
The third group of friends in my life is my aging Western friends; they are the most important people in my life. They are not of sexual interest, they are often conservative old codgers but they are MY generation of conservative old codgers. We invented the original round-shaped wheel. We have experienced the same years together, we have followed the same trends. We may have gone down different paths but we know that at least there were other paths which we may have followed. There is a lot of unspoken communication between us. We can talk in a shorthand that requires no translation. When we say 'The Beatles' we do not think of entomology or a snack. We think of those four young men so important to our youth and in the evolution of modern music.
The young also communicate in their own shorthand and they need to translate as much for us as we need to translate for them. This is why often a mixed-age meal or meeting is fraught with stress. We really don't understand the subtleties each of us are faced with and we, the older, usually feel more frustrated as we are less tolerant of 'ignorance'.
Boys are capital fellows in their own way, among their mates;
but they are unwholesome companions for grown people.
Charles Lamb (1775-1834)
With my own generation I might argue and reminisce and we understand without having to explain. Just let me write some words and I am sure they will evoke memories. Kennedy, Cold War, Berlin Wall, Evita Peron (Madonna!), Beatles versus Stones, My Fair Lady, Charlie's Angels (no, not the latest film remake), Marilyn, Jimmy Dean - get the picture? If you don't let me put it this way - references like this are now found only on the History Channel! Say these words to a 20+ year old (particularly Thai in this context) and you will get a puzzled look. The young can play the same word game with us.
Although golf was originally restricted to wealthy, overweight Protestants, today it's open to anybody who owns hideous clothing.
Dave Barry (1947 - )
I do have a word of warning, as I'm that sort of conservative old bastard. Remember your age! Stupid isn't it to have to remind yourself but it is important. The emotions and dress sense of adolescence should be put behind us.
Youth, large, lusty, loving-Youth, full of grace, force, fascination.
Do you know that Old Age may come after you with equal grace, force, fascination?
Walt Whitman (1819-92)
Use the young to stimulate, to invigorate, to keep you thinking young and remember age should not wither us, nor custom stale our infinity variety, to misquote the Bard.
We have all fallen in love and that emotion affects us in different ways. It is also an emotion that develops from teenage fantasies, to crushes, to jealous insanity, to an acceptance of inevitability. All of it is the evolution of lust and love.
So back to the theme of this article - age.
If I can rework slightly the song, perhaps aptly named (albeit when 'gay' meant 'happy'), A Bachelor Gay.
At seventeen I fell in love quite madly with eyes of tender blue,
At twenty-four I got it rather badly for eyes of a different hue,
At thirty-five you found me flirting sadly with two or three or more.
When I fancied I was passed love
In Thailand I found my last loves
And I loved them as I'd never loved before.
┬й copyright pooh publications 2003.