A Coyote Looks at 33

So this is what it looks like, the view from floor 33. When I was 13, I remember being pissed at my parents for something or other. I remember telling my brother (who's five years older than me), "You're lucky. You can move out anytime you want."

Eighteen seemed like a lifetime back then. When I was 17, I thought 30-year-old women were as ancient as Ghandi. When I was 22, I thought I knew what Hemingway was talking about, and I was pretty sure that I had the world by the ass.

Nietchze was no dummy. He had a line that went something like this: "When you're thirty, you look back at your youth and laugh at how young you were. Then you're sixty, and realize that 30 was youth."

That's well put. A friend of mine was mad at his girlfriend the other day, and I asked him how old she was. He told me she was twenty-five, and I said, "Well, she's young."

But when exactly does "young" stop? When I was twenty-five and in love with an outright bitch from LA, it sure felt like love to me. I didn't feel that young. Indeed, after going through a few months of hell with her, I felt plenty old. Then I got to 27 and fell for a dancer with long-long legs. When I jerked her around, nobody asked how old she was (22), they simply told me I was a goof. Youth is the excuse of idiots. Age is the excuse of idiots who haven't learned any better.

John D. MacDonald probably said it best. "The heart stays young." I have no doubt that a 70-year-old man still looks at a young lady's ass with the same eyes he had on five decades ago. I know I will. Hell, with what the teenage girls are wearing these days, the cops would lock me up if they could read my mind.

My great-gandmother lived until she was 106. She saw the first automobile, the first airplane, the first lunar landing, the first compact disc. But I'll bet she didn't feel that old when she cashed it in. I'll bet she looked back on her life and, when her heart started to fail and her feet turned black, she thought exactly what John D. did following the "heart stays young" stuff: "Please, not yet. Oh, please. Not yet."

I've been accused of being a fairly independent person, and I guess I'll stand by that. Sentimentality feels good when I've had enough vodka, but it bothers me during family holidays. It shouldn't. My family never fights, and in fact my entire extended family is probably the poster child for how people should act over Thanksgiving. I guess I just never really liked holidays this past decade because (with the exception of my immediate family; and doesn't that say something?) everyone asks me questions about when I'm going to get a real life.

That's a good question. I'm 33 as of tonight, and I still have no clue. Gordon Lightfoot's songs are probably a fair description of how I look at life, and I make no apologies for that. I have more money than the guys in Gord's songs, but like them, I can easily answer some asshole over turkey dinner, "You don't know me. Son of the sea am I. If you find me feeding daisies, please turn my face up to the sky. Whatever I was, you know it was all because, I've been on the town, washing the bullshit down."

I harken back to Travis McGee (and in case you haven't guessed, my father and the writers he gave me are the biggest influences on my life), where he scolded himself for something stupid, then shrugged and said, "Well, you chose to live on the underbelly of life. Get used to it."

That's healthy. I think that's a lot more healthy than going with the flow and toeing the party line that modern days have handed us. I really don't give a damn who clubs a seal in the head, and I enjoy veal more than you'll ever know. When a ship spills oil and the SUV-driving soccer mom sings the blues, I yawn and have another beer. Sue me. I've done a lot of yawning and drinking in my time, and loved every minute of it. Most of my memories involve the nighttime, and my education of life has come at the hands of a taxi driver around 3 AM. And I'm all right with that. In fact, though I can get down on myself, I'm probably the luckiest sonofabitch alive.

I'm 33, but I've seen more than most men will in their lifetimes. It wasn't on purpose. Nobody gets lucky on purpose, ask your average movie star. Good luck, like everything good, is unpredictable. Nobody walks into a bar thinking they'll land the nicest blonde in the joint, but when it happens we don't say we're sorry.

Here's to me and mine. I don't feel old. In fact, I don't feel young. But I do feel. And I know a lot of people who don't, from people in their teens, to people with one foot in the grave.

Me and my father stopped by a graveyard a few months ago. There was row upon row of graves dated in the early 1920's. It was obvious evidence of the Spanish Flu. Kids aged six months were dropped into the ground and buried over. They never got to taste whiskey. They never made love. None of them got the chance to see how beautiful Venice is, or how bad it smells.

The dude in prison who screwed it up at 21 by robbing a liquor store, the guy who knocked up a girl at 16 and worked the rest of his days in the mill to raise the child, the woman who married at 18 and regretted it for the rest of her life. Those are the people I live for, drink for, see for, love for.

And man, have I loved. Truly loved. And been loved back. Sometimes it hurt, but mostly it was wonderful. I've dropped a lot of names, so I won't stop now by ripping off Kurt Vonnegut's epitaph from Slaughterhouse-Five: "Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt." We all know that's a lie, but those of us who have lived a decent life know that it feels true.

I have an uncle who likes to hop on his high horse now and then. He heard my tales of adventure and fun, and he replied with a stern, "Well, when is the point of no return?"

I got his drift. He's a lawyer, a politician, so forth. What he wanted to know was, "When are you going to knock off this crap and get a real job?" My immediate answer is that the point of no return is between a Swedish girl's legs, but I doubt he'll find the humour. My diplomatic response is that I try to be as kind as I can while I live the life I want to lead, for as long as I want to lead it.

The reason I love America is that they invented the phrase, "It's a free country." You can do whatever the hell you want, as far as they're concerned. That's right up my alley. Canadians more or less live by it, but they feel guilty for it, which is completely beyond me. It's probably because they don't want to be Americans. I often feel sorry for my country. We try so damn hard not to be the people we are most alike. I have been to every Commonwealth country there is, and I will tell you now that we don't drive like them, speak like them, think like them. We are so akin to our southern neighbours that it's a joke. Our national guilt would be laughable, were it not so disapointing. Still, we try. We do.

So here I am at 33, and there's lots of things I should be thinking about. When am I going to settle down? When am I going to raise a family? When am I going to get some responsibilty?

There's probably a lot of good answers to those questions, but I've only got one: "Screw you." Everyone might want the UN to run the world, but they don't run me. I'm a Canadian man. I have a God given, red-and-white right to live the way I want to live. If you aren't happy with that, then you aren't Canadian or American, in which case I don't give a damn what you have to say. With the exception of the Aussies, the rest of you sold out on your heritage and your beliefs. Leave me and my friends alone. Or we'll tell you to. Firmly.

So here I am, guys (and yeah, this is probably for guys; you morons who got married kept telling me that you live vicariously through me so often that I finally went and looked up what 'vicariously' meant), and I wish you were with me. We're getting old, but for me, it gets more fun all the time. Of all the lessons I've learned about aging, I think Hank Williams Jr. taught me the only thing that can't be denied: "Hangovers hurt more than they used to."

Gotta go. Working on one now.