Submerged

by Thomas F. Monteleone

Everything feels the same; everything works the same. Nobody can tell if you’re twenty-two or forty-two. And it is simply, fucking, great. Then one morning, you see some lines around the corners of your eyes. No big deal. But they don’t go away, and they get matched up with a few gray hairs in your sideburns or your mustache or even an errant strand on your chest. That’s your first step onto the slippery slope. At first you don’t realize the lack of friction is so severe, or the angle of descent so steep. You ignore it because you can still drink ten pints of strong ale, pee it out like Secretariat, and top off the night with a couple shots of Jack D. You can still pound your date like a tent peg, wait an hour and do it all over again. You can still fall out of a boat and drop like a sack of cement into a hundred sixty feet of water so dark it could be the ninth circle of hell. You can do it like most guys step into the shower, but then the time comes when your pulse jumps around like it never did, and your breaths don’t seem to come as even. And when you get back to the surface, and you start bending and twisting and contorting your way out of your gear, you start to notice a twinge in a muscle you never knew you had or a sharp little needle of pain in a joint that goes away faster than you can think to describe it or remember it. But it will eventually come back, and it will bring friends.