Today is Rachel's birthday. She has been fibbing about her age for a while now, so I'm not sure how old she is supposed to be publicly. I just do the easy math from her birthdate in March of 197*... but those numbers don't align with what she has been telling people, so there is an issue of an imbalance between my discretion and her candor.
I'll keep her numerical secret safe for a little while longer. A relationship sure can accumulate an unfair number of secrets over time. For a while she and I did everything we could to dress up our closet skeletons, get them liquored up a bit, spin them in circles, plant some drugs on them, then waltz them out to get some good public exposure.
If an expose was ever done on our love then perhaps YouTube seems to be the best outlet for it.
You know what they say: white people can't jump but little white lies sure can dance. Well, I just said it. I'm not sure what it means but it sounds vaguely racist. Are we allowed to make fun of white people's dance choreography, on this, their most sacred of spiritual holidays? The Feast of the Martyr of the Blood of Patrick the Saint who brought his Best Buddy Christ to the Lapping Lush Green Shores of Ireland, the little bowdlerized Island next to the Other.
Now, Rachel and I are the image of a sweet middle-aged couple. We're very tender towards one another, it's touching. We seem interested in protecting one another from the cruelties of living, as much as is possible or convenient, whichever comes first.
Here is an unplanned picture of us that our son took at breakfast one morning in LA.
If you compare that image to the one above that I took above you'll notice that I am a much better photographer than a six year old. If you disagree with me then I would like to either fight you later today or make fun of you from a distance on social media. I turn 50 this year, so my fighting days might be coming to an end. Old trolls never die.
CS will hate that picture, of course. He has been cataloguing all of his hatreds of me lately. To my surprise some of them actually have something to do with me.
When he's not busy outlining our differences, and then proving himself packed full of parade-grade horse shit, he has been sending me articles about how dangerous and stupid it is for me to have a long term prescription to Xanax. Benzodiazepines are supposed to be a short-term solution. That's always how I have used them - as a near immediate fix to any problem, not so much as a chemical 401k to fight the plague of retirement anxiety.
There is no moment in which the short term ever becomes the long term. These two timeframes seem nearly unrelated to me. There is always more of the short term puddled up around me, needing to be managed. The long term is very far off and out of sight, where I pray it forever stays.
How else am I expected to handle my anxious inhibitions than with a potent anti-anxiety disinhibitor? Alcohol can't be expected to solve every one of life's problems, only the really big and recurring ones. You need mostly undetectable solutions for some things. Like: a casual visit to the DMV, operating rental machinery, Christmas morning, or being forced to listen to other people talk.
How do people endure parent-teacher conferences otherwise?
In truth, I rarely find the need for the stuff any more, though I am often in search of new reasons. I've learned to manage my stress by having the prescription available, if and when needed. And of course through other factors like diet, exercise, and hopefully not ever working another day in my long life again.
Having a bottle filled with magical Xanax does wonders for both anxiety and boredom. It can, quite literally, transmute one state into the other. It's a little matter what you actually do with the bottle, or if you ever even use it, just knowing that they're there makes life inestimably easier. Just thinking about them makes me feel as if I've satisfactorily pooped. Who knows, maybe I have. I am so relaxed right now. I'm lying perfectly still, dressed entirely in green, so that those little leprechauns can't find me. I think I can hear those fuckers everywhere.
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