When you're young, you can't even contemplate dying. It's unimaginable, it's impossible. Death can never, ever touch your life. There's so much fabulousness coming up for you, it should be literally impossible for anything to cut that short.
When you're middle-aged, though, that changes. You've seen it all. You've done it all. Now when you face the Grim Reaper you look at your calendar and see you have a DVD to get back to the library and a party at Adriana's on Saturday and you tell him, "Yeah, I guess that'll be okay."
Adding another straw to the camel's back is what I keep hearing about the future. There's good news and there's bad news.
The good news is, because of incredible medical breakthroughs, anybody who can manage to survive for the next twenty years should be able to live FOREVER. That's right! Leading scientists think that in twenty years we'll have the means to halt and even reverse aging, and then nanotechnology will augment our human flesh to make death a thing of the past.
The bad news is, the overuse of antibiotics has created new strains of nightmare bacteria that will infect our bodies and be impossible to kill.
Strangely, nobody seems to be correlating the humans will live forever thing with the antibiotic apocalypse. Because when you add them together you get a pretty interesting picture of the future.
You'll live forever and everybody will have syphilis.
Got that? Yes, you'll meet people who could be four hundred years old and they'll have syphilis. And you thought meeting new people was horrible now:
HOT GUY: Hey, good-looking! Are your lymph nodes swollen or are you just happy to see me? YOU: Hey, muscles! My lymph nodes are swollen. HOT GUY: I don't mean to be forward, but the spotting from your secondary rash really highlights your cheekbones. YOU: Oooh, you sure know how to sweet talk a guy! Wait'll you see my warts.
So, what do you think now? Still want to live forever? I don't know about you, but this pretty much makes Adriana's summer soirées look like It's A Wonderful Life.
"Roman," you say, "I'm an optimist. I'm pretty sure there will still be some people somewhere who won't have syphilis."
Really? You are an optimist. But let's imagine what will happen after, say, 90% of the world gets syphilis. All the billionaires will have syphilis -- I know this is gross already, so don't picture Mayor Bloomberg here -- but they won't want to have sex with syphilitics. They'll want pure, clean flesh. And will those old Amish ladies be able to resist their cash when they've got eternity facing them and horses that need new shoes every year?
But yeah, maybe you'll get lucky and find a few people who have different bugs. Would tuberculosis make you feel better? At least you could have sex with them, though if I'm going to end up covered in white goop I'd rather it not come from somebody's lungs.
Either way, you're welcome to it. Enjoy the future! But count me out. I'm fine fading away, like grandma, with memories of non-syphilitic boyfriends in my head. Into each life of bliss and happiness occasional rain must fall. We console ourselves that we've enjoyed good times, and the bad times only highlight them. It's what I'll do when the Grim Reaper comes, and why I answer the phone when Adriana calls.
