Which Whiskey to Drink After Realizing Your Old Man Shoulders Have Come In

Because they have. Mine have. I didn’t know there was such a thing as Old Man Shoulders until I saw myself in the mirror one day and there they were. My shoulders, swept back like a real estate agent’s over 45 vanity hair implants, like the wings of a dove, like I’m surprised. I try to rehunch, but there’s just no way. It’s too late. Youth has left me overly erect.

If you’re not sure what I’m talking about, watch The Sinner, starring Bill Pullman. If you only know Pullman from his speech from Independence Day, you don’t know Bill Pullman. He’s a national goddam treasure and an actor of the first order. The man evokes. In season three, Pullman’s Harry Ambrose has retired after a particularly traumatic incident. He’s already had a pretty traumatic life and apparently a traumatic childhood. He’s a reticent, withdrawn person. Not the life of the party. Pullman plays the character so convincingly I almost need therapy after each episode. He talks like a guy who can’t breathe, every syllable dragged out of him. He is not just reticent, he hates talking to people. It pains him. And you feel it. He is in pain. It hurts to watch him. Pullman is a heroic actor. A genius.

But look at him. Look at how he carries himself. You see his shoulders? Those are the shoulders of an old man. That’s what I’m talking about. And they’re not physically different. It’s not like growing wings. It’s more of a symptom. The end is near. Dark clouds gather on the horizon of your lifeline. You’re nearly sixty. Your jokes don’t land anymore. Beautiful young women hug you with abandon like you’re their dad. Except it’s worse cause they think of you as their communal granddad. Young men hold the door open for you. They ask you what it was like back when phones had chords.

It’s awful.

Those wingback shoulders are the last efforts of your body to retain some dignity. To once again propel your way through the vicissitudes of life like it’s nothing, letting it all roll off your back like whiskey on a duck. But maybe, just maybe, you’re noting subtle divergence in the warp and weft with which you weave your vast tapestry. Wrinkles. Bunching. A ripple in the cloth, an errant thread that pulls you off the float of the story to leave you dangling in space, swaying unsteadily in the kitchen wondering why the fuck you came in there.

Well, you’re late for the party. Or the wake. Your shoulders saw it coming and over the last couple years, they’ve begun to rear back, to lean away from the inevitable. Look at Pullman’s detective. His gray stubble. His halting slur. His doubt. It’s all in his shoulders. Bent behind him like bamboo in a hurricane.

And so there you are standing in the dining room credenza bar staring into the mirror at your fucking wings, trying to pick a whiskey, and wondering why your body wants to fly away. Which whiskey? Who the fuck knows, Old Man. Does it matter? All of them?

All of them.