Temple of Doom
The first thing my doctor did at my annual physical was ask me to rate my pain on a scale of one to ten, which immediately became a longer conversation than either of us wanted.
Apparently most people know what ten means. I don’t. Is it a paper cut? Childbirth? The meaninglessness of existence? Even if he’d handed me a laminated chart, pain is wildly inconsistent—not just between people, but even within my own body. I can feel a wrinkle in a sock like a frontier root canal, yet ignore whatever is tearing inside me until it’s time to Google “how to reattach a spleen.”
So I told him it hurt slightly more than stepping on a LEGO, but less than being asked to share my feelings at a twelve-step meeting I attended for the donuts.
Somehow, my precision only confused him.
“So what number would you give it?”
“Right now? Or in general?”
He looked at me for a long moment, then shrugged and wrote something down. I’m fairly certain it wasn’t just a number.
I was acutely aware of the fluorescent lighting, my paper gown engineered for acoustically weaponized crinkle, and an exam table that appeared to have been chilled in advance. So the room had already done its work before he performed a rectal exam and asked me to describe my bowel movements in front of a student intern with a clipboard and no facial expressions.
I tried visualization, pretending the doctor was tech support and my body was a laser printer in for its annual maintenance and inspection. It helped me stay calm when he reached into Tray 2—until my toner leaked onto his glove and he presented it to the intern, the two of them nodding in quiet, unsettling agreement.
I had discovered a new reference for ten on the pain scale.
It didn’t last.
Once I reached a certain age, pain stopped behaving like an event and started behaving like weather. There’s always something: a joint that grumbles, a tendon that objects, a background ache I only notice when it briefly goes quiet. My body now demands more sleep, less spice, and a daily regimen of twelve pills—four for blood pressure, two for bones, one for memory, and five that no one remembers prescribing but everyone’s too scared to stop.
Despite this inevitable collapse of meat and cartilage, normlings treat aging like a personal failure. Sagging is a sign of moral weakness, wrinkles are a character flaw, and belly fat is proof of giving up. They expect me to show up at social events in outfits designed for mannequins and to smile like my colon isn’t staging a coup.
If you ever want to see this denial in its natural habitat, attend a high school reunion.
I did.
Once.
I hadn’t planned to go. I’d avoided the last four, citing “other obligations” (like archiving last year’s unaccepted calendar invites). But when my 50-year reunion came around, curiosity got the better of me—as did a barrage of pleading voicemails from Darryl, one of only three classmates who had treated me like a person instead of a human software bug.
The invitation said “promptly at 7:00 p.m.” So I arrived at 6:59, foolishly believing in schedules and truth in advertising.
There were no classmates. Just event staff. One woman was adjusting napkins with the spiritual intensity of a monk arranging tea candles. A bartender was arranging wine glasses into a pyramid of resentment. A woman with the posture of a human exclamation point marched back and forth with no apparent purpose, possibly beta-testing a new form of cardio.
The carpet was loud—fluorescent floral loud. The lighting was set to “diffused denial.” There was a check-in table offering name tags, hand sanitizer, and an oddly large and auspicious display of gluten-free mints. A sign beside it read:
“Welcome Class of ‘74! Reclaim. Refresh. Reconnect.”
I briefly considered adding, “Repress. Regret. Reschedule,” but the Sharpies were zip-tied to a clipboard.
I wandered to the bar and asked for a club soda, which arrived with zero enthusiasm and (mercifully) minimal eye contact. I pretended to study the cocktail napkin like “Cheers to 50 years!” might reveal an epiphany about the human condition.
Eventually, someone else arrived. It was Debbie—former cheerleader, current reunion organizer, and living proof that you can lose the ability to blink if you overinvest in dermal fillers. She looked vaguely like the girl I remembered from high school—if that girl had been digitally restored, triple shellacked, and licensed by Funko.
“Alan!” she chirped after reading my name tag like it was a credit score. “Oh my god, you look so… how ARE you?”
“I’m still vertical.” Which was pretty much the extent of my fitness goals.
She leaned in for an air kiss, an ambitious move for someone who couldn’t legally bend her face. Up close, her hair had the tensile strength of a stadium roof. Her face was a high-gloss version of itself, held in place by something I assume was equal parts collagen and commitment.
“I got here early to make sure everything was perfect.” She gestured toward the balloons like she’d personally inflated each one using affirmations. “It’s going to be amazing. I’ve planned ice breakers. And a photo booth. And memory slides! You’ll love it—it’s like stepping back in time!”
I nodded and tried to look delighted, even as my intestines coiled into a panic pretzel.
She floated off toward the DJ, who was pretending not to have dated her in 1982. I exhaled and inspected the ingredients on my gluten-free mint like they might offer spiritual guidance.
People had started filing in. No sign of Darryl—but a tan, beaming overachiever zeroed in on me like a cruise missile powered by protein powder.
“Alan! Dude!”
It took me a second to recognize Gary—mostly because the last time I’d seen him, he‘d been balding at a furious rate. Now his head was crowned with a lush, symmetrical pelt that looked like a muskrat had been drugged and gently placed there to nap.
He sized me up quickly. “You look so…” He caught me staring at his head. “Oh, right! The hair. Didn’t recognize me with the upgrade, huh?” He ran a hand through it. “Transplant. Follicular unit extraction. They moved it from the back to the front. Like urban renewal, but for your scalp. I call it ‘terraforming.’”
“Very… forward-thinking.” I resisted the urge to poke it and see if it growled.
He leaned in conspiratorially. “By the way—Debbie’s still got it, huh?”
I blinked. “And more.”
Gary laughed like a man who hadn’t read subtext since 1983. He play-punched my stomach with one of those overly familiar gestures that somehow manage to jostle your kidneys.
“Looks like you’ve been enjoying the good life, huh? Little winter padding? Nothing wrong with that.”
“Well, you know, I…”
“I’ve been biohacking. Cold plunges, hormone optimization, red light therapy. You should try it. You’d be amazed what a little testosterone can do for a man our age.”
He disappeared toward the photo booth, presumably to flex at his own reflection and/or challenge it to push-ups.
I massaged my cheeks to loosen the facial tension that had been building since “terraforming.” My intestines seemed to be wringing out my spleen. I made a mental note to Google both “follicular unit extraction” and “how to fake a ruptured appendix in a ballroom.” Then I turned toward what promised to be a safe corner with a good-sized Ficus for camouflage and ran head-on into…
Pam!
Pam. My brief girlfriend from junior year. She’d once called me “mysterious and anti-establishment,” which I later realized meant “doesn’t make eye contact and only wears white T-shirts.” Our relationship had started out promising, but it ended after two weeks when I panicked during a make-out session and my penis had deflated like a post-party bouncy house.
“Alan!” She hadn’t even glanced at my name tag.
“Pam!”
“Oh my God! You look so…it’s SO great to see you again!”
She gave a strained smile that involved mostly her teeth and none of her forehead, which had a dull Tupperware sheen. Once-droopy eyelids were now missing in action. Eyebrows pointed upward, making her look permanently startled by electricity. Her top lip had the tension of a water balloon, and her nose—once gently aquiline—was now concave.
I took a sip of my club soda, which was the only other thing in the room not pretending to be something it wasn’t. I tried not to stare, failing miserably.
“Alan?”
“Oh sorry. Yes. Great to see you. You haven’t aged a bit.” Which seemed safer than, “Was your face cryogenically frozen for future generations?”
She gave me a half-hug, which felt like posing with a wax figure who resented the attention. After all these years, she still smelled faintly of patchouli, and the scent brought back the flush of shame from my humiliating sexual failure so many years ago.
“I’ve had a little work done.” Her smile lingered while everything north of the gums refused to participate. I didn’t know what to say.
She eventually broke the awkward silence. “I see you’ve stayed natural.”
Was that a compliment? I felt like I had to explain.
“Well I…”
“You know, it’s just easier for men,” she cut in. “You’re not judged on your looks. You can still get jobs after 40. This society is so shallow.”
And that’s when it happened. The thought. The intrusive, unstoppable, half-century-too-late compulsion to redeem myself:
“My dick works now.”
Maybe her face couldn’t move, but her feet sure could. She backed away like I’d declared allegiance to Satan and offered her a pamphlet. She didn’t say goodbye, but her exit radiated finality.
I was just beginning to plan my escape when a rail-thin woman with aggressively white teeth materialized from the left.
“Alan! You look so—”
“OLD. I get it,” I snapped, and turned directly into the gluten-free mint display. I left my dignity in the wreckage and marched outside, wondering what had possessed me to voluntarily reconnect with a building full of people and memories I’d spent half a lifetime trying to forget.
But looking back, I don’t regret going to the reunion. It made me realize that everyone’s aging. Some look freshly serviced under factory warranty. The rest of us are driving around with the check engine light glowing and three outstanding recalls. But we’re all vintage models—well-traveled, slightly unreliable, and still showing up anyway.
And when someone says, “You haven’t changed,” they’re just looking at the exterior. I’m not the same person they knew in high school, who was scared of his own penis and considered emotions to be a regrettable side effect of evolution. Aging is less about appearance, more about knowing who I am—and not needing structurally reinforced dimples to prove it.
I suppose my body has never quite felt like home, but rather something I drive around in with a mix of awe, suspicion, and one eye on the check engine light. Still, it’s the only vehicle I’ve got—and as long as it gets me through the day, accommodates a decent stim, and gets me out of the ballroom before I combust, it’s doing its job.