"HER," and Other Extremes by Jack Turley

Description:

NOVEMBER 22—TUESDAY: The reflexes have softened and diffused. The eyes no longer have it, at least not without reading glasses. The musculature, that lean, taut, youthful body I misused so well, has retired to Memory Lane. What’s left is the “essence,” not the original. And we all know that “essence” in this age of zipless sex and eternal youth, does not pay the rent.

Is this the bottom line of the aging process? Is this what I have left, a premature dotage shoved down my shrieking throat? Look, I’m still a man, I still have these vital, lusty feelings. I want to reach out and touch and take and have. But when I reach out, there’s nobody there. I am last year’s model in this year’s wrappings.

Excerpt:

About this business of “May-December” love, I can only speak for the “December” side of the connection. You see, I was a robust and virile “older” male who suddenly found himself mumbling unexpected commitment to this flashy little heart-crusher still in her twenties. I was twice her age, forcrissakes.

When a man like me has reached a place of supposed enlightenment and suddenly finds himself in a candy store with a license to steal, believe me, there’s trouble ahead. No matter how strong his resistance, how prudent and cautious his intentions, he’s still going to reach for the sweet goods. I did. When that young and beautiful temptress gazed deeply into my world-weary eyes and convinced me she had spent her tender years searching only for me, I was a fool without hope. All the supposed smarts which had taken so long to wedge into the space behind my age-dated forehead seemed to disintegrate. I became, under the hot-bodied domination of this nubile invader into my well-ordered life, a rubber ball bounced to the max.