In adolescence I lived according to an erroneous assumption: life begins at eighteen. To the uninitiated, eighteen years as a living, breathing, and - most importantly - consuming creature is like the sudden burst of a cocoon – the unveiling of an idyllic life free of constraints. Alas, the uninitiated, blessed with a belly-full of optimism, often grow up to be twenty-nothings smoking pot in their parent’s basement. For others, eighteen is like any other any other grey non-descript milestone marking the long winding path leading to an anticlimactic end – dribbling onto an adult bib while being spoon-fed by an obese nurse, that is if you’re lucky. For me - because my own account assuredly has an unparalleled internal significance - eighteen was an inauspicious occasion. I made love to my seventeen year old girlfriend for the first time as a legal person. And somewhere in the dank recesses of my wretched mind, she remains a nubile forbidden seventeen; pink boundless lust stretching from head to toe.
The event has significance only in the larger historical context. It was to be our last encounter; the relationship soured and we went our separate ways. She moved on. I didn’t. That’s eighteen for me – a sumptuous fantasy suspended in the cold comfort of fleeting eternity.
“Eighteen years young and never to be the same,” my father told me with his mouth half-full with partly chewed birthday cake. Somewhere at this imaginary moment, when the reader discovers the writer’s wretched word, someone on the verge of an eighteenth birthday bathes in a porcelain tub of once immaculate waters spiritised by self-inflicted crimson. Another steps deliberately onto the seat of a black swivel chair – positioned and readied for the bed sheet noose. Another chooses a spectular sudden end and empties the barrel of a handgun into their skull. On my eighteenth, thoughts darker than these disturbed the ubiquitous sense of optimism orbiting me, the ever so special birthday boy. But nothing came of it. An instinctive fear of death and a boundless weariness about the vast unknown assurances that lay beyond held me back from the abyss. Nevertheless, there are those bold, brave, and honest souls who choose to end it in the prime of their youth, on the cusp of maturity, rather than bear the lukewarm stagnation of those etc. years following eighteen. They are pure Beings, who stand defiantly against the tide of change, and destroy themselves rather than be swept along. You see, those who idealize eighteen as the completion of freedom are naïve enough to believe that freedom is simply the ability to mortgage debt, drive a car, buy smokes, buy alcohol, legally buy pornography, and etc. Alas, when you’re eighteen, sugary presumptions are hard to swallow. You choke a bit, cough it up, and meticulously examine the hideous bile of naïveté; its beauty lies in its chameleon nature, its ability to take any form evolved by an enchanted mind. Naïveté has its origin in a most narcissistic emotion, romantic love. As a hapless romantic, still dwelling on unrequited affection, I can tell you that I am at once honest and duplicitous, self-deprecating and invariably self-absorbed. Alas, that is the condition of a stubborn fool still green and in constant fear of his surroundings, clinging to a long lost impossibility - with utter disregard to present or future.
One who passes through eighteen stands before a long portentous road snaking towards an unavoidable conclusion: death. In order to distract from the omnipresent possibility of having to face their own mortality, individuals convince themselves that they are in love with someone else – their “better half”, “partner”, or “beloved” – to repress a prior and essential impulse for self-love.
Woody Allen may have been onto something: "What's wrong with masturbation? It's sex with someone I love."
