“When I was standing there at the airport, my whole life flashed before my eyes. I could see myself finding an apartment somewhere in Australia. I could see me filling it with a few men’s-style-magazine bachelor-pad staples – the wide-screen TV, the chrome CD racks, and the black leather couch. I could see me playing squash on Monday nights, five-a-side soccer on Wednesday nights, going for the occasional drink and a meal out with whoever would come with me on the nights that remain, and I could see that would be the sum total of my life.” Mike Gayle “Turning Thirty”
I’ve mentioned it before but I’ll say it again, I’m a big fan of Mike Gayle’s writing. A lot of people have called him Nick Hornby Lite but he does have this unnerving ability to capture the male psyche at that moment of post adolescence that you enter as you approach your thirties. Especially that moment when you look around and realize that everyone you know has seemingly gotten married while you, well, you just assumed that it would happen and were too busy to notice that it didn’t.
That’s why this line in the book (which I’ve put off reading since it makes me ponder subjects like this) has been twisting its way around my brain the past few days. Because I actually have a black leather couch and three separate metal CD racks with a fourth metal DVD rack just added tonight. Yep, and a wide screen TV to boot. And while squash and soccer are not my typical pursuits if you replace those with concerts, poker nights, and the occasional bar trivia contest you have described my life. Which means that despite how much I’ve tried, I still think that I am living in a cliché.
In a weird way, I think the issue really is this post-adolescence fact of looking in the mirror and realizing that you are an adult and needing to start thinking about the long-term. It’s the fact that I’ve changed my diet because I’ve realized I’d better get healthy now while there is still time and the thought of saving for retirement has suddenly gained importance. And with all that there are the biological and societal clocks that start ticking louder and louder as you see that fifteenth high school reunion staring you in the face knowing that the question, “What do you mean you’re not married?” is going to show up at one point or another. From a psychological standpoint, this is what you would expect. The problem is, I don’t know if I want to grow up.
I mean, the extra DVD rack is so I have a place to put my Playstation games, wrestling DVDs and Beavis and Butthead videos. It’s not that I watch them or play them on a daily basis (no more than I read the Shakespeare or Joyce that takes up the top shelf of my bookcase) but they just seem to be this part of my life that I’m not really willing to give up on just yet. Because if I do that I’ll have to be an adult and that just doesn’t sound like fun at all.
So I’m beginning to wonder if I’m stuck in an adolescence I didn’t enjoy when I actually was a teenager. And I’m thinking about what it actually means to be an adult. And incredibly, no matter how many places I’ve visited or how many pieces of paper I’ve acquired that say that I’m smart, I still don’t have an answer to that question.
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