When I sweat these days, I smell like Good Seasons salad dressing.  I don't know if you remember Good Seasons salad dressing; I certainly haven't seen it around in NorCal, where we treat salad with respect, and its dressing with reverence.  When I was a kid, salad was iceberg lettuce and Good Seasons Italian salad dressing, which was like this little packet of herbs that you added to (vegetable) oil, and voila! Salad.

It's not that we couldn't afford better.  My parents had money, my father small town rich, with the four bed- and three bathrooms, which I've finally gotten back.  It's more that my mom didn't know better.  Maybe nobody in Berlin did.  We were a simple folk.  We didn't go for that fancy lettuce like them big city slickers.  We had iceberg.  And we had Good Seasons.

And now when I sweat, I smell like it.  Which is weird, because I didn't use to smell at all when I would sweat.  In fact, I didn't sweat; rather, like a woman, I "glistened." But now I stink.  And I have hair growing out of weird places.  Nobody sees this because I am meticulous in my personal grooming.  Except for combing my hair, as we are in an ongoing argument, and I see no reason to hold up my end of the bargain until certain demands are met.

I hate getting old.  I know.  Who doesn't?  But it really sucks for me because I have finally figured out diet and exercise.  All through my teens and early 20s, I tried like fuck to exercise.  Jimmy and I used to weight lift at the Community Center, and I've seen old photos of me back then, and I had some guns.  I also boxed.  I sucked. But I could've been good.  But I had no fucking discipline.  Now I have the discipline. Exercise is a religion.  This was partly decided for me because of the accident. Like a shark, I need to keep moving or I'll die.  But I am also in a place where I recognize that I can't eat cheese pizza or a burrito late at night.  When you're young, you can eat practically whatever the fuck you want.  Try eating a donut at 40, and you can literally feel your ass swell.

So now I eat right, I exercise, and my body is falling apart.  Getting old blows.  My buddy Jimmy tells me he hasn't had a solid shit in four years.  And Petersen?  Fuck, that guy is like 70, and if he was a horse they'd have shot him by now; he has legs and knees for appearance sake only.

You see these really old people with all this hair growing out of their ears and off the bridge of their noses, and they can barely move, every task, however menial, a goddamn chore, grunting and laboring just to lift the lid.  And we're all getting there.  Little by little.  Day by day.

I am a stop gap.  What I do delays the inevitable.  I am a band aid on a busted leg. A torn condom versus the ejaculate of life.

And I stink like salad dressing when I sweat.

Welcome back, friend.