I can't stop thinking about Hannibal Lector. And my CPAP.

MY CPAP MARKS MY FORMAL SEPARATION AGREEMENT WITH BEING REMOTELY COOL. IT'S OVER. DIVORCED. FINISHED. IRRECONCILABLE DIFFERENCES. EAGERLY AWAITING THE CRAZY OLD MAN PHASE OF LIFE

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It’s over.

My youth is gone.

I have quit trying to be youthful and feel fine about it.

It’s not the turning of the clock, a number, a birthday or some kid yelling from an open window, “Hey Grandpa!”

I’ve hated birthdays for 30 years.

It’s not that I haven’t been getting the “oh, I thought you were in your forties; you look so much younger” comments as much; it’s not that when I give my birthday at the pharmacy counter, the Asian guy does not flinch, though some fake shock would be nice.

I always knew that the “Oh, I thought you were younger” comments were more a cultural ritual than a truth.

Strange how we don’t hear a lot of “I thought you were older, you’ve aged like shit, did you do meth for a few years, live in a tanning bed, or never use skin cream?” Or, “For the love of all that is holy, get some sleep.” I’m not sure why nobody says this; nobody has a problem telling me, “I look tired, or are you sick?” Maybe to them, it’s framed in sympathy; to me, it’s always, “Hey, you look like shit.”

No, I am not tired or ill. This is my look. This is how God made me and the cumulative effect of ageing on my cells. Back off.

As far as the “You look younger” comments. Why don’t we just roll back everybody’s age ten years and ban the comments? Make “you look younger” comments punishable by law.

Like in Russia when you start talking about that war, or in Pakistan when someone says, “He,y I heard that he was starting his fire with Korans.”

But the reason my youth is gone is my CPAP machine.

I knew that my health was on the decline when I went to try a Ketamine infusion, a treatment that is designed to deal with persistent depression.

It was in the middle of Covid and not a good trip. The nurses - no, it wasn’t in a back alley, it was legal - were masked up with full body suits and the wet dream of a Covid-19 hypochondriac.

I hadn’t expected this. There I am, stoned out of my head on Ketamine, and in comes a nurse wearing the whole body suit; I freak out and swear to God that there has been an invasion and the earth is crawling with unattractive yellow monsters who aren’t saying anything.

I was terrified, and then a screaming alarm went off in my ear. I had no idea; the Teletubby interplanetary invader deals with it, but 12 seconds later, the screaming howl filled the room. Still clueless, a bit panicked, what was happening, but the Teletubby creature shut it off again, leaving me alone to have Ketamine infused pornographic imaginary examination fantasies that seemed reasonable at the time.

I won’t tell you what caverns were explored. But after I came down, I was told that I had practically broken the blood pressure machine and I might want to get that checked out.

The depression didn’t change; they said it was like a hard reboot of my brain, but it was more a reboot of my wallet, and the reboot left it $1000 lighter.

So then I became a blood pressure pill man; my blood pressure, especially when my dad was told he had constipation, and a day later they said lymphoma; at that point, my BP was hitting 180/120, and Mr Google said that if it kept up like that, I had less than a year to live. Pills helped, grief marched through me; my BP came down, and exercise helped. Groove was coming back. A hair transplant would help out.