A Modest Proposal - The 75ers Club
I had a revelation while cruising LA streets with my regular late nite bike ride, 'Taco Tuesday'- http://vimeo.com/12883727 - and hauling ass down Venice Blvd with another geezer who's name I never learned but I talk shit with anyway. We had both decided that hetero-sexuality is a costly habit. ( Not that going the other way would be much better at this age.)
"Yeah," says my amigo "It takes years off of your life, too. I mean there's always some reason women are unhappy and your job in life is to make it right for them."
And so we commiserate and commiserate and I finally chirp up with the bright side, "But if you have a women that blows you whenever you want, AND really enjoys oral, isn't it worth it?"
"What do you mean?" he says.
I venture a proposal, "Suppose you got this Grand choice; live to ninety with some lame, occasion sex life, off and on with a 'nice' companion, or, dead at 75 but oral sex on demand from now on til the end of the line with a women you pretty much enjoy all the time."
In the time it takes for a bike wheel to do one rotation, "Dog, oral on demand, no question." he responds.
All of which got me to focus my brain energies on the implications of this Socratic dialogue. I felt like we had just uncovered a truth as fundamental as the principals of geometry, namely, that life is about trade offs and one of those trade offs is, or should be, how long you want to live and under what circumstances.
Now I know all this Jack Kevorkian sort of talk is considered 'off limits' and maybe not appropriate for conventional 'prime time' discussion; but don't we live in a 24 hour world of cable TV where everything is off the grid anyway? If you can't 'blog' shit that's 'off the radar' why bother to blog. So I think its a proposal worth considering.
I'm proposing the creation of a new club of sorts - called the 75ers. Its founding principals are:
75ers are committed to calling it quits on or within 48 hours of our 75th birthday
We choice to live life til the fullest, all out, until that point, confident that we have sufficient financial and emotional resources until we're 75 years old.
Our choice is confidential and anonymous, kinda like an AA thing, nothing to hide, but its private
Most important of all, pass on those assets, attitudes and values that made our lives work and be successful to one or more next generation-ers ( folks 30 years younger or more).
The idea is to make room, conserve resources and enjoy life to the max while you can. Everyone heard of those statistics that say 85% of a person's health care costs are crammed into the last couple of years one lives. That old people cost money for upkeep, care and feeding; long after the time their productive. And that in general, our aging population of 'baby boomers' is starting to be a drag on the rest of the economy. Its clear to the kids, that older folks have crowded them out of the job market and from getting promotions and all sort of other resources. Here's a proposal designed to address some of those inequities.
Hey, reality bites and dealing with ones own mortality is at best an exercise in denial - 'cause we're all geared to survival. But maybe if we make it a 'club' - send out group discounts (like they do for AARP) and grow a '75 and So-Long' kinda holiday industry ( like they do for 'Fabulous 50' right now) - maybe it might just go viral. And maybe then, we'll get over the 'taboo' BS and start getting real about where things are headed whether we want to face it or not. Soylent Green, baby, Soylent Green.
