What Whiskey to Drink When You Realize You’re Old and Gross

I’m not fishing for compliments here. But I have crossed the Rubicon. I have traversed the great vale of tears. I have toed the wet sprocket. I’m only 58, but I have the body of a diseased 80-year-old and I’m ok with it.

Age is inevitable. And I know you’ve already heard the worn-out psalm of ‘live while you’re young because sooner than you think you’ll be going to bed at 8:30 and mall-walking in bright white Reboks’—which is true. So look, if you’re young and in shape and feeling your oats then for the love of God get out there and fuck shit up because, as the maxim claims, pretty soon you’ll be old and gross.

I glanced in the bathroom mirror yesterday and it was already occupied by someone’s grandfather who’d apparently escaped from an emergency medical treatment center or perhaps a reverse spa because oh my Jesus. I look like Phillip-Seymour Hoffman fathered me with a weather balloon to raise me in a low-oxygen environment paved with used aquarium gravel. I look like I’m addicted to diuretics. I don’t have bags under my eyes; I have entire suites of luggage abused for half a century.

I work at home, and I don’t go out much, and I’m rapidly acquiring the grizzled attitude of a withered elder who’s lost count of his bathroom trips. A fading patriarch who can’t remember entire decades of his life. A prune-driven methuselah who can count his remaining years on one hand. I have developed an attitude from which I don’t give a desiccated wombat fart about pretty much anything. I just want my fiber and my giant water bottle. I’m essentially a hamster.

I recently learned just how old I am after I pulled up to a filling station and was about to put air in a tire when some youthful bupkus dill hole snatched the hose out of my hand and did all four tires while I watched. Then he put his hand on my shoulder and looked me in the eye a little too long before saying, “You have a good day, ok?” so I stabbed him.

My fantasies used to involve the Dallas Cowboy Cheerleaders, Marci Post, and Marianne. These days my greatest joy is holding down the corner of a qualified dive bar alone and not talking to people. My hair looks like I was skull raped by an over-caffeinated squirrel. I look like a manatee cosplaying Albert Einstein on a bender. I have reached that age where I no longer count. No one’s asking me to help them move, no one is hitting on me, and no one wants me to spot them at the gym. Not a single person under the age of 45 can even see me. I’m like a vampire, and the whole world is a mirror.

Bliss.

What whiskey should we drink when we’re old and gross? Back in my day, before you were born, when there were fax machines, and you could smoke at work, old guys drank Canadian Club and smoked Pall Malls. I’d settle for a decent American Single Malt and a pipe, but you’re not gonna hear any of that if you ask me because I’m just gonna turn my pumpkin-shaped dome your way and say fuck off, squirt, in an eldritch, raspy croak then die.