PERSONAL ASSESSMENT: WHAT I HAVE LOST & WHAT DO I POSSESS?

It is a beautiful Spring day, the sun is shining, the birds are singing, cherry blossoms pulled from their branches from a gentle warm wind are floating about, and women of every age from all around the world are walking about in short skirts showing nicely muscled tanned legs. 

Normally, such a day in this wonderful setting would have me feeling on top of the world; but today, I am feeling bittersweet nostalgia and more than a measure of dread. You see… another friend I have known since my youth has passed away; his untimely demise happened under mysterious circumstances.

He is presumed dead – his body was never found.

I have recently become aware that my friend had been burned – and I do not mean the car explosion where only fragments of what may have been his charred remains. I have learned that I, and several of my former colleagues are as well.

Regardless of how or why he died, he is gone, and I am left with only memories of the adventures we shared and the hardships we have both overcome. He is not the only friend or loved one who is no longer around – the years have taken their toll, and the Grim Reaper has been very busy – stripping from my life, practically everyone I have loved.

I sit and eat, barely tasting my food, and I ponder where my life has gone; what I am currently facing, and wondering how soon an agent of death will visit me.

I have decided that today, instead of doing my usual research and consulting on my laptop, I feel this instinctual urge to gather all the information regarding my life, and the lives of my friends, family & the other agents I worked with in various government sectors – everyone – dead or alive.

I am determined to find out who is behind my friend being ‘Burned’.

To do this, I will have to conduct a revisiting on every aspect of my life and theirs – at least the best that I can manage.

I need to do a self-assessment of how much my resources & skills have diminished, and what I still have to offer.

I recount all of the exciting adventures & misadventures I’ve had during my long life; I am also lamenting so many regrets – of which I have more than my fair share.

Those times in my life I foolishly misspent, the wonderous times I’ve been in love, only to have the sharp vicissitudes of fortune plucked them away, and worst of all, those few times when it was from my foolishness that drove a wedge between me and another from the promise of a life that could have been.

Except for my health, I am left with nothing but sweet memories and bitter regrets – not exactly lonely, but certainly alone in the world – at least from the people I have cared for – they are gone.

I think of all this, and I chide myself for not being my usual invincibly optimistic self; after all, though I am retired from almost a lifetime of government service – I am healthier than most people 25 years my junior.

Of course, considering the sad state of disrepair the bulk of humanity is currently suffering nowadays, I know I should not put too much stock in how I compare to anyone.

Today, my indulgence to wax nostalgic has me comparing myself to an earlier version of ‘Me’, when life was filled with exciting, seemingly limitless possibilities – when I was a man in my prime.

Don’t get me wrong, I am grateful that despite the fact people in their prime consider me to be an old man, I am doing more than okay.

I feel blessed that I have been able to overcome more than a decade of terrible health & near death caused by one of the hazards of my work for the government. I am adamant that I will not squander my new lease on life despite being past my prime. I acknowledge with some measure of satisfaction that I have regained a fair portion of my vitality and strength.

But today, I feel the perverse need to conduct an assessment of the decline of my body and physical prowess; as a former field agent, this necessity of tallying my strengths and weaknesses has been drilled into me.

I lament my body does not serve me nearly in the capacity of when I was quite the physical specimen – some would say superhuman. I once was a man who never suffered the usual aches & pains or injuries that even most young athletic men often complained of.

Though I trained with world-class poundage and intensities, I rarely was injured from training, and the few occasions the injuries were slight, or even the rarer instances when severe, these injuries healed at an accelerated rate compared to most athletes.

If I suffered from severe cuts or even deep muscle gashes, it seemed as if overnight they healed, and in a few days only a light-crusted scar would be evident; Even scars did not stay long on my body.

These days, I find myself getting out of bed, only to realize that somehow, I once again managed to injure myself during sleep; and such mishaps seem to linger. Cuts seemed to last forever.

Though I still have more strength than most men half my age, I miss the days of my youth when I possessed almost four times the strength of many robust men my size.

My legs once possessed world record strength don’t respond as they once did, I can’t run as fast, or for as long, though I still can manage a fast-paced walking all day without stopping – a few bathroom breaks are the only exception. The world-class vertical leap – gone; now my legs are too shy to hazard jumping on a foot bench.

My former strength I had taken for granted; I could go months completely sedentary, without any loss of strength or conditioning. I could go a few years, and only lose a small percentage re-acquired in a month; these days, If I go without training for two weeks I have trouble standing up from the porcelain throne, despite being one of those blokes who still is used to getting my business over in a quick fashion; and it takes me months to get my strength back on an even kneel.

My reflexes & hand speed are no longer what it was, I still manage to block or punch with greater speed than many men. However, these days I have to be careful – even a conservative flick of a punching or blocking movement may throw my shoulder out of place – or cause some other mishap.

An unexpected sneeze or fart can prove to be hazardous; innumerable times violent expulsions of air from any orifice could bugger my back.

I once enjoyed superhuman vitality; I used to be able to go days without food, & sleep for three days straight, as I’d toiled hard with physical labor – after which, I merely looked pleasantly exhausted & a one-hour nap had me feeling revitalized.

These days, I still can go many days without food, & three days without sleep – but only if extreme circumstances call for it, and only if the tasks are of an intellectual pursuit; I pay dearly whenever I am forced to do this – within the first twenty-four hours, I look like a man on a death-march.

Keeping a regular sleep schedule has become essential to retain a modicum of health & vitality; gone is the man who had the gift of laying his head down – even on a pile of concrete & within seconds could fall into an uninterrupted coma for eight hours and then wake up feeling fully restored no matter what I had put myself through.

Even during those occasions when my bladder holds enough fluid that’d sustain a camel across the Saharah would not rouse me from blissful slumber. Everyone I knew hated me because of this gift.

Now, people no longer hate me; Just like them, I have trouble falling asleep, and those times I have one night of fitful sleep, I wake up looking like Keith Richards on his worst day.

I sit in front of my meal and marvel over the fact that my vitality had once been so supreme, I felt transcendent, like a feral wolverine tethered to an Archangel – a mixture of base instincts coupled with the divine.

These days, I feel ordinary, and only on rare occasions do I feel the flicker of my feral nature or the fleeting glimmer of quantum consciousness – the merging of both no longer happens.

My physical appearance has suffered a sharp decline as well.

The once thick head of lustrous hair has thinned out quite a bit and the diminished population of stubborn holdouts stick out in every direction – I think of the lab rats I’ve seen on chemotherapy.

In my youth I reached the towering height of five feet eight inches; accidents & aging took two inches from my frame. Now I endure the internal debate that perhaps I need a child’s booster seat when I drive.

Despite the fact I have never been what anyone would call handsome – I used to possess the appeal of an ugly bulldog many women are fond of – but only when I kept my appearance up.

These days, a few women with generous hearts look at me with sorrow; they see a poor pug that should be euthanized out of mercy.

During my youth – in my best shape, my face as been described as nondescript – allowing me to be a bit of a chameleon. There were times I would sport a beard or a mustache to break up the monotony of my face or change my hairstyle. If I kept the mustache and put on a few extra pounds, I looked like the love child of Burt Reynolds and Dom DeLuise.

When I grew my beard out and muscled up, I looked like Charles Mason on steroids – so scary, at the sight of me, hoodlums would cross to the other side of the street; the homeless grifters treated me as if I was a thug for the mafia sent out to extort revenue; without a word from me, they’d hand over bags of bottles and cans.

If I ran twelve miles a day, ate nothing but salads to trim down & kept the mustache, I looked like Errol Flynn hellbent on dying from his dark excesses.

These days, I am still quite the chameleon, but when I grow my beard & hair out, I look like Gabby Hayes; if I put on some extra pounds I remind people of Orson Wells after a ten-year bender – only not nearly as attractive.

During those rare occasions I slim up & sport a mustache – and ONLY after extensive cardio and dieting – I manage to favor the once handsome Dennis Weaver on his last legs.

My once immensely broad shoulders diminished. My fifty-five-inch chest lost seven inches or more and is now distributed around my once magnificent eight-pack; in its place is a medicine ball beneath a still rugged two-pack, and though I still can take a pretty good punch in the gut, I dread the day when I will not fare any better than Houdini.

My flexibility & the quick lightness of my feet has disappeared; no longer can I perform splits & high kicks and twirl around with the grace and agility of a ballroom dancer; my movements on the dance floor – now like a shambling chimpanzee preferring a quadrupedal position.

Even the once mundane task of clipping my toenails or putting on my socks has now become as daunting as an Olympian deep-diving event – I am forced to throw myself violently backward to get a ‘running start’ so that I can catapult myself forward with enough force over my medicine ball gut to perform this chore.

This maneuver alone is not enough to complete this task; like a pearl diver, I have to take in a deep breath at the starting position if I am to have any hope of accomplishing my mission; unfortunately, my gut has a strangle-hold on my diaphragm – allowing me only 30-second intervals before I have to resurface. After each attempt, I am sucking air like Usain Bolt just finishing a 200-meter race as I desperately suck in air to pay the oxygen debt I incur with each attempt. This ritual takes about five dives forward to complete the task.

My ‘Mojo’ with the fairer sex – considered legendary by my colleagues in my line of work – is now merely a flickering ember in danger of forever being extinguished. I have never been considered a good-looking bloke, but for some reason, I almost always managed to satiate my hedonistic nature to a level of success a satyr would envy – that is until injuries, poor health, and crippling pain led me to the fruit of the vine – just as it did with poor Ampelus.

The ravages of time diminished my lusty nature & had wreaked havoc on my mojo; this became most painfully apparent the first time after retirement from government service when I stumbled into a ‘Red Light’ district in a city I had never previously visited. I was simply looking for a payphone and I had approached a merchant of the night – she thought I wanted a night of pleasure – she was insulting and told me to take my story walking. 

Essentially, I was critically panned by an old hooker who, prior to approaching her, had been desperately trying to drum up some commerce and sent on my way.

All I could think of when this happened was, “Ouch!! I guess I don’t have the sex appeal I once had.”

If truth be told, I never considered such a strong lusty nature to be the measure of a man or a peg to hang my pride on; many men do. I am grateful that the years have taken the sharp edge off these drives. They’ve been most distracting – although I wish time had not blunted the edge so dull.

A lot of people feel sorry about how aging has diminished my sexual charisma; they think it’s they are duty-bound to set me up, believing I would be happier to have someone by my side to die with.

When I was a young man, I had more than my share of women who told me they wanted to grow old with me; of course, I knew women tend to live a lot longer – and they also usually inherit their spouse’s wealth – so it was obvious these women wanted me dead. I knew that these women were essentially death traps.

Because basically, I am free-range and un-domesticable it was easy to avoid such traps..

These well-meaning folks who want to see me miserable should not be too concerned, after all… I am still a hit with some of the blue-haired oldsters at a local assisted living facility where I donate my time to help them with physical therapy and hints of nutrition – and my secret passion of dispensing comedic relief.

I do my best to make light of their health problems, the horrific problems they have yet to face, and their impending death. I try to bring good cheer wherever I go – it is one of my gifts.

But to be frank, most women that much older than me don’t do IT for me; when I was a young man – even in my twenties I preferred women twenty or even thirty years older than me.

There were many reasons for this.

I was never one of those blokes who was put off by stretch marks, sagging breasts, crow’s feet, or extra weight; I was a man who is endowed with the appreciation of deeper more important qualities in a woman.

I was attracted to older women because they possessed a worldly sophistication I was lacking, they had successful careers, they were intelligent, they didn’t play games, they knew what they wanted; and besides they were hot cougars who knew their way around a mattress – and they were grateful as hell and did not expect commitment.

I still find women in their fifties and sixties attractive and there are some hotties in their seventies I am interested in, but the very few women who put the ‘hit’ on me these days, are old enough to be one of my aunts – may they rest in peace.

Their idea of a sizzling hot romantic evening is for both of us to sit on a saggy couch, cuddling together in ‘Snuggies’ as we both suck down a bowl of creamed corn and drink warm milk while watching reruns from ‘The Price is Right’ with intermittent conversations about our health problems.

I am amazed at how ‘frisky’ some of these blue-haired oldsters are when it comes to the subject of physical romance. It is during those enquiring times that despite still possessing extraordinary hearing I feign severe hearing loss.

One woman really pushed the matter, and I had to stop her; not wanting to hurt her feelings, I ended-up telling her I had a bad back, a dodgy hip, and a bad case of vertigo. She still pressed forward – I had a dreadful vision that I’d accidentally break her hips – again.

Meeting any woman, I could connect with who is single within an acceptable age range with shared values, interests & goals is becoming more problematic with each passing year – the pool of available women is such a pool is shrinking fast. I suppose it doesn’t help that I spend most of my time living a solitary life.

Even when I go out in public – which is often – it is to be alone in a crowd to observe the world as I work.

I like people well enough – or rather humanity in general, however, over the years I have become increasingly disappointed in the majority of individuals within my own species, often preferring solitude which allows me more freedom of my ever-restless mind.

At my age, older women are not an option, and younger women as well – so I avoid both these populations of women outside of the realm of simple conversation.

On occasion, a young woman will put the hit on me, letting me know they find older men attractive for any number of reasons. Some of them simply have daddy issues, with a taste for rough trade; these women believe I am either an outlaw or a ‘Bad Lieutenant’ in some law enforcement agency – either way, they believe that I am the type of man fond of ‘Breaking Bad’ and I don’t mean the TV show.

A few are pure-hearted generous souls who are willing to bless an old fart with a great memory before he dies – which likely they believe would be some time within the near future. All I can think of when they tender their charitable offers is that I have socks older than them. So, my answer to them is, “Thank you, young lady, but I hung up my rusty spurs when you were still a toddler.”

Some of the men my age I run into suggest I should just hire a prostitute to satiate my needs. I don’t know why they gave me this advice. I didn’t ask them for any. I have never shared my past or present love life or shared any inclination that I was interested in having a love life. I tend to keep such things close to the vest.

They mistake my reticence to talk about such things as embarrassment, and they tell me there is no shame that a man my age to resort to this option.

Maybe they assume because I am their age, I must also be a man who still possesses the drives of an old goat – which I do; and that like them, I am a loser without a shred of dignity.

A few months prior, I reconnected to an old flame, one of the only four women I have truly loved deeply, but due to my career, I could not commit. Now that I am retired and she is widowed with grown children, she and I talked about the possibility of a possible re-establishment of our love.

The entire get-together was heartfelt, filled with laughter as we shared nostalgic memories and then she had to catch a plane with the promise of revisiting in three months. This motivated me to get back in better shape in a speedier time frame.

Before Apollonia’s visit, I had been working hard during the past several years to regain my health, and I have made a lot of progress. I lost most of the excess weight, the chronic pain and fatigue is only a nuisance of the past. I have been pumping iron again and working on my conditioning.

Our reunion gave me more motivation to whip myself into better shape at an accelerated pace.

I started listening to the iconic ‘Rocky theme music’ while I trained. I watched reruns of ‘Vision Quest’, another iconic film all wrestlers love.

Her parting words were, “The last time we were together, you had the ‘Eye of The Tiger!” “You got to get that look back Rocky!”

I decided to do just that.

The hardest thing for me to work on was regaining my flexibility – so I joined an upscale fitness place that specializes in putting their clientele through Yoga, Pilates, Rhythmic dancing, & stretching. Except I ran into a problem I could not get past, wearing the horrific class uniform.

This outfit was tight dark purple spandex with a form-fitting hoody of sorts. I walked out to the workout area – only to come face-to-face with a large group of women & children just arriving for their Pilates session.

I cannot adequately describe the expressions of shock & horror on their faces. The children looked frightened as they stood tightly against their mothers desperately hugging their legs for comfort. Their mothers held them tightly in with protective embraces.

I know that some people consider me to be an odd-looking fellow – even a little off-putting or scary. However, I was not prepared for the sight that reflected back from a wall mirror across the room.

I did indeed look like two hundred pounds of pork squeezed into a casing designed to hold one hundred pounds of meat, except it was worse than this – the outfit made my still corpulent body look smushed on both ends with the bulk of the expanse bulging at the equator of my frame. But wait, it was even worse. I looked like a buggered larger-than-life Teletubby holding a ruby-red purse. To make matters worse, the tightness and the cut of the outfit displayed my Tinky Winky in the most vulgar presentation. I looked like a deviant with sketchy intentions – like a few dubious fellows I have seen in Eugene Oregon who are fond of hanging out on the perimeters of grade schools.

One look in the mirror, and I loudly exclaimed “Hell no!” I left as quickly as possible begging for leave. “Pardon me ma’am.” “Excuse me miss.” A leper with body parts falling off would have been less offensive. They parted for me like the Red Sea did for Moses.

It was then, as I quickly walked out, back to my flat & pulled out my old VHS copies of Jane Fonda’s workouts, Suzanne Somers’s ‘thigh master’ program, and Tamilee Webb’s ‘Buns of Steel’ video in the privacy of my flat while I listened to the theme song from Rocky.

I knew it would be preferable to train naked as I’d follow along with Jane, Suzanne & Tamilee rather than ever show myself in public in that horrific outfit. Not that I would ever train naked – well not usually.

That day, as traumatizing as it was for all concerned, I did learn two important life lessons.

Always be suspicious of a fitting room without a mirror; and purple was not my color, especially with a ruby red purse – they could have at least provided me with matching accessories that did not clash.

I’d traveled to parks and meadows that were uninhabited so I could train in private in the fresh air and sunshine.

Hours of stretching, body weight exercises; seemingly endless kickbacks to add muscle back onto my once muscular rump. I used to be equipped with haunches Brad Pitt would have envied.

The past couple of years, prolonged sitting has put me at risk of developing an old man butt.

A butt that looks more like empty saddle bags of hanging flesh so diminished you can see the posterior aspect of the Ilium and Ischium protrude through paper-thin skin. Not a pretty sight.

All of my efforts during the past few years have been fruitful, each passing week I feel like I am regaining more of my young self. The problem is I am habitually followed by Turkey vultures has me a little concerned, especially when I lay out to bake in the sun to get my vitamin D and to brown the fat. I remember a joke. One vulture says to the others, “The hell with waiting! I say we kill him now!”

A few times sleeping in the sun, I’d wake up and I thought I saw legions of Carrion Beatles standing shoulder to shoulder jostling each other impatiently to rush in at the hint of my last breath.

I sense the worms are lusting for my flesh, I see them all coming for me – and then thankfully, I am startled from my dreams.

That said, as I have gotten older, I have become increasingly misanthropic. I lament the ever-increasing shortage of interesting people to fulfill the lifelong craving burning within me to be around those souls who possess goals and a real purpose in life.

I lament this even more since the past year of running into misfits of all ages – even men & women close to my age – especially the men.

The anthropologist within compels me to go out into the world to monitor various tribes & psychological subspecies of human primates – to learn if any evolution has occurred. So much has changed in the world since I came on the scene, but dreadfully so much of the bad things about the human species of which I sometimes regret being a part remains the same – if not a lot worse. I feel set apart, and I don’t know exactly have to feel about this.

All of the negative assessments and mishaps that have come from getting older are enough to cause most people to shoot themselves in the face or start marking time until they die.

I have other plans.

Now it is time to tally up all the positives I still have in my life, regardless of how short the list may be.

I am resolute to learn all that I can to find out the people who are putting the Burn to my friends and me as well.

Only time will tell. I hope I can achieve this goal before the stalker of death takes me out of the game.

To Be Continued: Now The Good News

Check Out The Video About The Book I Wrote: “An Evolutionary Argument in Favor of Keto-Adaptation: and (Variations of Paleo & Atkins)” Has Merit or Not. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nzG6dC3WAxM&t=773s

An Evolutionary Argument in Favor of Keto-Adaptation: And (Variations of Paleo & Atkins)

https://www.amazon.com/Evolutionary-Argument-Favor-Keto-Adaptation-Variations-ebook/dp/B076YHZ38B?ref_=ast_author_dp_rw&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.E5ztOMV8cQxn_BYFenrcWCIaYIAANWlhpfNPP6yf4jfDvtYF75Il9h0nIOBX92X2BwHn6yX20_ExlBBBnB1-pGXQRXM4PuUjusHg6n4RvXAFkjBt-naahuwOA2lWB27mdT4bxnTMQ-YoHbfYwFxvkQgjl05l4IaL5JhuhsSEIcYz8IsVi_mruyQvZqz1UOGiXXKl7l48xfqdHnUpIwmXDSv8Uz3G2b2myafS8lFEzNI.UjM2cZYKOQb_yOH4088W5Qup9JEWAtCw32KxLfOrb_g&dib_tag=AUTHOR