THE TRUTH ABOUT OLD MEN - Chapter 10

CHAPTER TEN

The oatmeal residue in my bowl is beginning to curdle. I don’t really care for oatmeal anymore, but, like masturbation, it’s gooood for you. It’s only a theory, but I have decided to believe frequent masturbation helps protect one from prostate difficulty -- at least I have no prostate problem. And, even if mine were the size of a grapefruit, I would continue to masturbate frequently, for without it there would be no romance in my life at all.

I am hoping what they say about Alzheimer’s is true -- that one develops an uncontrollable twitch...a sort of unconscious jerking motion. This would allow me to simply affix my fist to my most magnificent member and know love again without excessive stress.

Eventually, I expect male masturbation to become illegal. Like marijuana it is something we do to our own bodies in the privacy of our own homes, which allows us to have a good time without the presence of women. Apparently, these are sufficient grounds for law forbidding human male activity.

My wife convinced me to stop smoking marijuana when my son entered the first grade. She said it would be setting a bad example for him, and because I was unable to read between the lines, I thought she was referring to the obvious result, which would be time in prison or the destruction of brain cells. Years later, when son went off to college and wife and I divorced, I retired to my clearing in the forest on the banks of the St. Johns River to write best sellers that would never be published. And there I resumed the smoking of marijuana.

For three years I lived in the forest rarely ever seeing another human soul. The smoking of marijuana allowed me to find great pleasure in the simplest of pursuits. It made me independent of the need for human companionship, for I could find satisfaction that engaged me in the smallest of challenges.

I had to give it up again when I returned to civilization and resumed my career. By then drug testing was in place at every radio station where I might find employment. It was not coincidental that my need for human companionship returned along with the resumption of a pot-free lifestyle.

The conduct of civilization depends heavily upon the individual’s need for a sea of other souls surrounding him. Seen through an old man’s eyes, the danger of marijuana finally becomes clear. Who’d-a thunk a lifetime of arguing against laws forbidding the smoking of pot might end this way. The logic once seemed so plain. How could liquor that promotes violent confrontations be legally sold when marijuana, which promotes serenity and harmony, remained illegal? How could liquor that destroys the body be legally dispensed in establishments across the nation while marijuana which relieves stress and is no more or less harmful than cigarettes remained illegal? How could liquor be taxed for public improvements while billions in pot tax revenues escaped us and the sale of the substance was left to promote criminal activity and over-crowd our court systems and our prisons? It just didn’t make sense.

Finally, the evil of the weed becomes plain in the pale light of a seasoned intellect. One must make a journey across decades and know the emotional independence marijuana makes possible to see it. Then one must return to the stream of consciousness in which the need for other people becomes overpowering. Living through these chapters requires time spent in each to truly see the alteration in one’s own personality that marijuana makes. A nation populated by people in possession of real emotional independence is a dangerous thing -- not to the individuals involved, but to the nation which depends upon their need for each other.

This examination of marijuana’s impact on the culture is necessary in order to reach the conclusion mentioned earlier about the inevitability of masturbation becoming a criminalized activity. Yes, it did sound a bit absurd at the outset. But the old man can see it coming like a tsunami no one noticed until Miami was mincemeat.

Masturbation and marijuana are equally potent in their capacity to provide a man with emotional and physical independence. Closing in on sixty, I realize it was no coincidence that X convinced me to abandon the practice of masturbation even before she undertook the crusade to stop my pot smoking. She made a better man of me some would argue. It was not her design to increase my dependence on her companionship that motivated her -- that was a coincidental result they‘d say. But after one has lived through a few thousand afternoons spent thinking about a date for the evening and learned how easily such angst can vanish during a five minute masturbation session, magically replaced by a larger interest in tonight’s football game, it finally becomes clear that the real danger of masturbation is that it makes a man independent of the need for women, and that makes it as dangerous to the social order as marijuana for the very same reasons.

This had little impact on the business of law making before the politicians signed up to go to work for the National Organization for Women.

Once the girls and their politicians finally begin the assault on male masturbation and the pressure groups have developed on the net, once the PACs are sent to Washington to lobby the politicians about the creation of law to prohibit it, once the talk shows have kicked it around and Oprah and Rosie have branded it as a tool of the devil the bills to ban it will be forthcoming.

There will be new room made in the prison system for the chicken chokers who once roamed freely on our streets. Throw them in with the pot smokers. The disgruntled wives of celebrities will “out” their former spouses as whack-off wackos and careers will fall. Bids for public office will be aborted once the ugly truth about the monkey-spankers makes headlines. Bill O’Reilly will brand all yank-o-philes as Pecksniffian and challenge us to figure out what he means by that, but admit he once did it, though he immediately cleaned up the mess. Sean Hannity will call it the work of Satan and deny the impulse ever crossed his mind.

In the run up to criminalizing masturbation children will be encouraged to turn in their parents. The remaining male priests will be excommunicated. Not only crime cams in the bedrooms will finally be installed, but local municipalities will debate the economic impact of additional cams for closets.

Many of these measures will be ineffective and hard-core strokers will continue their bone boxing behavior until, at last, separate task forces of local law enforcement agencies are formed to police this activity in organized sting operations. Eventually, America will cum full circle to dependence on a once revered constable long ago relegated to the pages of history -- the beat cop.