age ain’t nothin but a number, written by r. kelly

I am about to bid adieu to a long and turbulent decade. It’s no coincidence, perhaps, that concurrently I feel a certain dire attraction to irresponsibility. I am maintaining my basic concerns of eating right 4 my blood type, working out every single day, fresh flower arrangements and showing up for work on time. Beyond that, my primary interests include: dating teenagers, getting blunted and playing Super Nintendo. Like, I am actually compelled to do these things, which is entirely hypocritical, considering I have spent the past years in New York questioning friends’ annoying propensities to A. date cupcakes and garanimals who don’t challenge them and won’t even register as a blip in six months, and/or B. binge drink–all in their veiled quests to hang onto their perceived youths.
I think my impulse to go loco on these “last” days of “youth” is A. a desire to pretend I do not care about anything, when probably I care too much and B. direct opposition/rebellion to expectations, or percieved expectations, of the forthcoming decade. By some social barometers this is the pd when life congeals, I think, but as the age pulls up in my rearview I realize that the only thing I want in life is to enjoy summer, partake in the herbal arts, have dance parties, call my senators and read magazines. [Civic duty and intellectual curiosity are ageless.]
Last week I asked Jon, 30, if he had any advice for navigating this point: the concept of the future as a real viable now-ness rather than something to arrive at, having exhausted years of fresh-faced calamity and folly. This is what he who once bore my love said to me: “You have to remember that you don’t get any of it back.”
Here, now, I am contemplating jazz tapes. I do not exactly care that I am 30, because I still feel like I am 22, maybe even better than I did when I was 22. I definitely work out more.
But I do miss being stupid/drunk on my own idealism. Fearing hope feels dangerous.
And yet.