Parting Glances: Mirror, mirror on the wall

I awoke the day after my May 12th birthday – a festive date shared with actress Kate Hepburn, Union Civil War nurse Flo Nightingale, and baseball malaprop Yogi Berra – looked up at my ceiling mirror (with remote magnification tilt) and hopped back into bed. Promptly.
Convinced I had gotten out on the wrong side of my eight-hour bliss-out, I lay amid my HAVE A BLESS'D LAY embroidered, feather-down, rainbow-pastel pillows, mentally regrouped with feisty determination, got out on the right side, and again looked up at my ceiling reflection – to no avail. Tilt or no tilt. I'm visibly over the hill.
Yes: advertising rumors to the contrary: I'm no spring chicken. ("For a good time, call . . . ") Maybe just one metaphorically overcooked slice of rump roast. No meat, all potatoes. Skip the A-1 Sauce.
Gravity – another year of unasked for application to body, mind, and spirit – has again taken its turnstile toll, in spite of daily tablespoonfuls of cod liver oil, 12 months' regimen of powerhouse vitamin pills (including 2000 mgs of Yohimbe), 300 ten-pound bicep reps, and a cameo appearance in the Detroit Free Press MY BOD column. (Phone number unaccountably omitted.)
My very own gravitational pull's been an ongoing fact of – and exertion upon – my life for 25,926.5 days (but who's counting?) I'm up to five-hundred 24/7 more, but I'll be glad to make do with half that wandering-into-the-Land-of-Dotage amount – provided the Republicans aren't still passing themselves off as chief caretakers.
For an old phart I feel damn OK. I'm a firm believer in the importance of taking care of myself. (If I don't, heaven won't.) I know for a fact – silly as it may seem – that my daily fish oil dosage (taken over a period of say 15 – burp! – years) has meant that during that timeframe I've had only one cold. (That's nothing to sniff at.)
And yes: I wholeheartedly believe in taking vitamins. (I recommend Twin Labs Two-a-Day.) And exercise is just good common sense – except to my high school buddy Gordon, who adamantly refuses. Smoking? Drinking? Well, I'm not here to preach a sermonette. If you feel you're abusing yourself (there's bad and good self-abuse – I highly recommend the latter) give cutting back or quitting serious thought, preferably before you have your first lung sitz-in, or your last liver spunk-out.
So, what's the plus side of getting to be too old to cut the Di-john Mustard? The plus side is that if you've got reasonably resilient LGBT genes you're never really too old to "do the deed," whatever that deed may be. (The downside is there are fewer partners to do it with – whatever "it" is.) By the way: a recent hands-on study finds that men between 18 and 50 who take care of their daily urge (translation: good self-abuse) have far fewer prostate problems than those who don't. (Not convinced? Give it a 90-day, at-home trial.)
But do be prepared when accelerating old, older, oldest. Getting there's a coming out process. Trust me. I've gone through all the stages. Knocking ten years off my age. (Paying someone to check my ID at the door.) Tinting my hair (and, for authenticity, my pubes). Tucking my tummy in in the shopping mall. And, recently, shaving my head (saving money and totally eliminating the telltale gray).
Sooner or later we all get pegged by the Sandman. It's life in the hourglass. To quote sage playwright George Bernard Shaw, "Too bad youth is wasted on the young." (Or foolishly spent on the enviably hung.)