David Jett Explains Getting Old
I need a nap.
Many, and I mean many, years ago I had some friends in town and they wanted to go out to a blues club located in a heavy tourist area. The line out front was long, and as we got close to the door, we could hear the non-stop barking of the doorman/bouncer: “everyone get out your id’s before you get up here! I’ll need to see your ID! I don’t care how old you are, I’ll need to see your ID! I don’t care if you’re old enough to be Moses, get out that ID!” When I reached the front, I started to hold up my driver’s license and he said, without even looking at my ID, “oh, you’re good, go ahead on in.” WTF?!
Now that I’m exiting middle age and entering an age where I get unsolicited mailers for retirement communities (which actually look appealing cause I’m tired,) I thought I would explain to you younger folk what to expect as you’re getting older and how to spot the signs of really being an old fuck.
Not too long ago, I was seeing a 26-year-old woman. Throughout my life, I have dated older women, women my same age, and younger women, although this was the biggest age gap of them all and by a wide margin. We knew we weren’t going to be a long-term thing, but I still shouldn’t have gotten involved with her. One of the reasons I did was somewhat like George Castanza on Seinfeld, who in an episode was abstaining from sex but found himself with an opportunity to hook up with a Portuguese waitress who didn’t speak English. George said, “I calculated my odds of ever getting together with a Portuguese waitress. Mathematically, I had to do it, Jerry.” I calculated the mathematical odds of me ever hooking up with someone that much younger than me again, and, like George, I just had to do it.
We had flirted and messed around in some very questionable public locations, but I was going over to her house for the first time and full-on shenanigans were about to ensue. I had to sneeze at one point and asked her where her box of Kleenex was. She didn’t have any tissue, she just went to the bathroom and got a roll of toilet paper. I also noticed when I was washing my hands in her bathroom that she didn’t have a hand towel hanging. I suppose she just dried her hands on the bath towel she used that morning. There were other things like this that made me think that although she was 26, she was not an adult. I’m not saying I didn’t do things like that in my 20’s, I’m just saying that she wasn’t an adult and at the time I probably wasn’t either.
You would think that sex with a much younger, very pretty woman would be wild. It wasn’t. She wasn’t wearing anything special when I got there, not that she was required to, but it seems she went out of her way to dress like a 13-year-old boy going to gym class. She also wasn’t very passionate. She certainly liked sex, but it seemed very mechanical and almost more like a school-girl crush that involved a random dick. Many of you know that when a dude is in his teens and 20’s, his penis gets erect at the drop of a hat, literally. A woman could take her hat off and a young dude will get a boner. When you get older, you stop getting random hard-ons and things are much more situational. And it takes a lot more concentration to just get an erection, much less keep one. That’s why I like to “get into character” so to speak. This was difficult, if not impossible, with her. Especially with her pets. She had a very large dog named Boomer (not the dog’s real name. Even dogs get to be anonymous in my articles) and a semi-feral cat. I absolutely love dogs and cats, so this is nothing against them, but she had no control at all over them. So, we’re getting at it, and Boomer, naturally, tries to get in the middle of things. She then would scream his name out to get him to stop. “Boomer. Boooooo-mer!!! Boomer!! Buhhhhhhhhhhhmmmmer!!” This was very distracting and was not exactly the sexiest thing ever. It didn’t help my concentration at all. So, we moved to the bed. Boomer is up and down, and in the bed and out of the bed. The cat is in the other room knocking over all kinds of unknown shit off the counter accompanied by loud crashing sounds. Then there was the constant “Boooo-mer!!” At one point, I couldn’t take it and just screamed out “Oh, my god, this is like trying to fuck Dr. Doolittle!!” And of course, I’m so funny, that when I said that she started laughing hysterically and then so did I, and none of that helped anything in the sex department.
It’s hard being an older guy who isn’t mentally an older guy. I think like a young guy but my body can’t do young guy stuff as often. When it comes to a relationship, I’m always looking for a partner in crime. Someone who doesn’t sit around knitting hats. But also someone who doesn’t want to be partying every night. Just some nights. I saw a Christmas post on social media that said “I’m just going to jingle some of the way. I’m tired.”
I believe that no one over the age of 60 should be able to hold political office. Just take a look at some of these useless, doddering, senile idiots on both sides of the aisle. Mitch McConnell falls over more often than a frat boy stumbling out of Pat O’Brien’s and appears to have more strokes than Tiger Woods. Ancient Nancy Pelosi recently fought the younger democratic leadership in support of 74 year old Gerry Connolly, who was recently diagnosed with esophagus cancer. Both Trump and Biden are at an age where if they were your grandfather, you wouldn’t trust them with the car keys or even the tv remote.
Rock stars getting older is a mixed bag. They can be really old, but still pull younger chicks, much in the same way I can date younger women due to my sense of humor and confidence. Mick Jagger can probably date whoever he wants. I personally think the country/folk singer Emmy Lou Harris gets more beautiful the older she gets.
I once made a joke on Threads (back when I still used Threads) that involved Mike Reno of the 80’s rock band Loverboy.
Seems Mike had been videoed as he recently hopped onto stage at some random tavern to sing a tune with the band. Here’s a screengrab from that video.
The caption is what I posted on Threads. It was just a joke about how a dude that wore red leather pants and a headband in the 80’s now looks like a dad or a granddad. Which he probably is. It wasn’t to say that he should look any different or try to hold on to past glories. In fact, if he had been in red leather pants, then I would have made fun of him. The joke was just that the 80’s are over. People are older. I don’t wear the same things now that I did in my 20’s. My hair doesn’t look the same. Let me show you a pic of me from the early 90’s. My girlfriend at the time was going to school to be a hair stylist. She wanted to put blonde highlights in my hair. She put that Jiffy Pop thing on my head and then violently stabbed my skull with what seemed like assassin knitting needles to pull hair strands out to be dyed. Then my hair grew and my roots got out of control before I re-dyed my hair. Here we go:
A rock star that did not age gracefully was John Rzeznik of the Goo Goo Dolls. (you might remember them from their 1998 hit “Iris.”) Take a look at this dude. He looks like Lucille Ball decided to get three facelifts, multiple Botox injections, and then was in a car accident with a Mary Kay representative.
There was a week in the 90’s where I went to two concerts at the same venue in the same week. I was the youngest person in attendance at one and the oldest person at the other. (I was the youngest at Leon Redbone and the oldest at Julianna Hatfield.)
Here are some signs that you are getting older:
You stopped listening to new bands 10 years ago. My brother has a Spotify account and every time I’ve heard him listening to it, there is a 100% chance that it’s a Del Amitri song. He just reached an age (and he’s younger than me) that he stopped discovering new bands and music.
I once worked with a guy whose favorite band was Cheap Trick. The most current band he listened to was Green Day, and this was back during Dookie. Any band that came after that, he’s never heard of.
Look at your parents. I bet you a house that you can specifically tell me when they stopped listening to any new music. Probably somewhere around the last time Steely Dan put out an album.
One of the things that keeps me mentally young is that I’m constantly listening to new music as well as the old. During covid, there was an 8 month period where everyone at my company worked from home. We talked to each other on G-Chat all day about work things but were not there in person. There were people hired that I worked with that I had never met. My love of music and awareness of pop culture was such that, after making jokes on the chat about Cardi B and WAP and other current things, there was a young woman who was convinced that I was a black man in my 20’s. She was fucking floored when she found out I was an old white dude.
Speaking of music, one good thing about getting older is that if you are into music, you’ve seen a lot of cool bands. Here are just a few of the older bands/dead people I saw live in my lifetime: Johnny Cash, Prince, The Kinks, Rolling Stones, Cheap Trick, X, Iggy Pop, The Ramones, Tom Petty, Roy Orbison, Sam & Dave, Eddie Floyd, Wilson Picket, Journey (with Steve Perry,) Go-Go’s, Guns N Roses (original run,) Motley Crue (Girls, Girls, Girls Tour) Styx (Mr. Roboto Tour), Devo, Elvis Costello, Social Distortion. But I’ve also seen a lot of current acts like P!nk, Die Antwoord, Janelle Monae, and too many to list.
You’re getting older if you talk about things that you have to do to survive as accomplishments as opposed as shit you gotta do. The grass in your yard gets too high, you have to mow it. What you don’t have to do is talk about what a great job you did, or what weed killer you’re using, or how you think the neighborhood association should get off your back. That’s old people shit. The only thing young people think about a lawn is that it’s a great place to drunkenly pass out on if you can’t make it to the house. (quote from a friend from high school as me and my brother tried to drag his drunk ass into his parents’ house: “just leave me here on the lawn. It’ll be fine. Just leave me here. It feels soft.” BTW, it was 25 degrees out.)
You know how young people view eating? They get hungry and they eat. Sure, they might have favorite foods or restaurants, but when the meal is done, the meal is done. You don’t hear a young person talking for 30 minutes about a pork chop they had two hours ago. That’s old people shit. Wanna see an perfect example of an old person? If you are married, just listen to your husband after he does the dishes or takes out the trash. Ya know, stuff you just gotta do. He’ll go on and on about what a good job he did. Spoiler alert: no one cares. Old people talk way too long and passionately about what amounts to odd jobs.
Another thing that happens when you get old is your stories get worse. When you’re young, you create a new story every weekend. When you’re old, you may get a new, good story three times a year, depending on how much you drink and how many 26 year olds you’re fucking. And then there’s the injury stories. If you get hurt when you’re young, there’s always a good story to go with it.
“Hey, how did you hurt your arm”
“Oh, that was nothing. I was drinking Jack Daniels and decided I could jump over three cars on a dirt bike using a cardboard box as a ramp and then some drunk gal jumped in my way and I took off wrong, hit a car, and spontaneously burst into flames. No big deal.”
When you are old, here’s the story:
“Hey, how did you hurt your arm?”
“I turned around.”
Men have never gone bald with grace. I have the right genes for not going bald. I have a high hairline, but I don’t have a bald spot on top at all. If I wanted, I could still grow my hair out and make it all rock n roll. Most guys, however, go bald as they age. The thing they used to do, when a full head of hair was valued, was the dreaded combover. Or the fake looking toupee. Neither fooled anyone. Today, men make a preemptive strike. The minute, and I mean the fucking minute, they start to go bald, they shave their head, like it’s a style choice and not rampant hair loss. What a bunch of pussies. Be a man and go bald with grace. Keep that hair as long as possible. Put up a goddamn fight.
Back in the 70’s and 80’s, losing your hair and/or going bald had such a stigma attached that wrestling promotions made big money on “hair vs. hair” matches in which the loser got his head shaved in the middle of the ring in the ultimate act of humiliation. Professional wrestlers Jerry “The King” Lawler and Bill “Superstar” Dundee had a hair vs. hair match in which Dundee lost. The following week, Dundee put up his wife’s hair and lost again. So the crowd at the Memphis Mid-South Coliseum got to see a woman shaved bald. (the wrestlers, and wife in this case, got paid a premium to lost their hair.)
One of the things I do as I get older is reverse things I did when I was young. When I was young, I made more and more friends every year. Now I try to reverse that and cull down that friend list into a manageable and more meaningful group of people. They say you come into the world alone. I guess I’m looking to go out that way. I block people on social media all the time. I’m looking forward to do that in real life. I’m looking to better my experience. I remember that when I was young, I would sit through so much bullshit on a dinner date if there was even a chance I might get laid. Now, I have such little patience (and know I can get laid any time I want) that I might not even make it through the salad before throwing in the towel.
I once worked with a guy several years younger than me, but had a real old man esthetic. He got mad with the proprietor of a glasses shop and told him, and I quote, “go shit in your hat.” I’ve never forgotten that phrase since he told me the story. The Frank Burns character on MASH had a lot of similar sayings. Barney on The Andy Griffith Show was right in there. Just dumb phrases/insults that sound like they are from 1930. So I decided to come up with some. We’ll start with the original and go from there:
1. Go shit in your hat.
2. Go zip up your trousers.
3. why don’t you go set the table
4. tell your mom to go perm her hair
5. you and your buddy can go round up your payment for charity
6. go throw your shoes in a corner
7. asshole, you can go steam clean your curtains
8. listen, lady, why don’t you go flatten your curls
9. all of you people can go rotate your tires
10. listen, why don’t you go shoot a CEO
I think a good way to end this article about getting old is for me to post some pics from throughout the years. You can get a visual of me aging. And I hope I can get all of these posted before my bedtime.
BONUS CONTENT!
You may have found that as you get older, you get more into cooking and cooking appliances. A very entertaining friend on Bluesky posted about this doohickey called Rotato which effortlessly peels your potatoes. I had never heard of it and found it interesting, so I looked it up on YouTube and found the most fucking bizarre product review I’ve ever seen. Here it is:
David, this was a brilliant read.
Note to self: start listening to new bands.