First Posted 14-May-2015
I was asked if I’m being somehow secretly self-revealing in the use of the name SumYung HotTea and the phrase “horizontal bop”. As much as I have written about how I really don’t think it’d work out for she and I, this writer is suspected of desiring her. And I’m accused of being disgusting in my undeclared desire. Yet, one of my friends is fond of saying that SumYung HotTea has an undeniable attraction difficult to ignore.
That’s a porn trope. Older guy and hot young thing. Little god and mortal marry. It must be a thing because it has hung around literature since at least the Greeks if not earlier. Lolita is a much-liked movie. So, there is an audience for that fantasy. I am not immune to it. I have a kind of devil/angel on my shoulder thing working. I get the fantasy of a hot romance with a girl young enough to be my daughter. If it were just that maybe I’d go for it. It’s never just that. The rest of what being with a woman means arrives soon enough to intrude in the short burst of ecstasy hoped for. Total buzz kill.
Hugh Hefner is a bit of a legend. He had a coterie of young women living in the Playboy Mansion for decades. Even Hef has slowed down over the years. The Playboy Mansion’s heyday as a swinging place has faded over time to be transformed into a family home. The yelps of young women in erotic play have been replaced with the squeals of children at innocent play. For every Friday night bacchanal launched there is a Sunday morning hangover recovery. There was a story recently that the Playboy Mansion is for sale. Even Hef has chilled out over time.
Yeah, that happens. Old dumbass and yungin hang out & hookup. A member of my church passed from cancer recently. He leaves behind a wife in her forties, a daughter in her teens, and a grandson. He was in his late sixties. Do the math. This family, though, is the annoying minority to a too oft-told majority of bad choices with relationships between old folk and yungins.
I’ve crossed the midline of fifty-something. A diligent reader of this blog will learn that my choice to not live the life I thought my Dad wanted for me has come out well but the road here has been tough. I’ve learned and experienced things that are hard to translate for SumYung HotTea. It’s as if I’ve made it to the top of Mt. Olympus to walk among the gods. There are some things I’ve become that are hard to explain to the yungins. You kiddies just don’t get some of what I say. I ain’t mad, though. I don’t imagine I’m one of the rare ones who could catch SumYung HotTea and have it work out the way I wanted. She has shallow roots and short wings. She hasn’t been where I’ve been or been beaten down like I have. She hasn’t risen from the dark places I’ve been.
I wouldn’t want that for her. Part of SumYung HotTea’s charm is her naivete. I am the sum of my story, of what I’ve lived in my fifty-something years. It is what will keep me from SumYung HotTea’s bed. It’s worth it, though. *She*, the next girlfriend, needs to be old enough, road-worn enough, that some of my hard times do not trigger a starry-eyed fan-girl admiration of me. Dr. Laura famously said this, that love is not enough. The initial heat of a relationship is great. That nervousness, disruption to a previously calm life, is thrilling. Life, though, includes hungover Sunday mornings with unwashed dishes and stinky laundry. It includes regrets. There are hours where she is riding you about one thing or another. There is so much more to a relationship than dating and bumped uglies.
You need that experience, that willingness to stick it through, for the mornings when it’s that Sunday–the one where your head is killing you, you are about to puke (again), the honey-do list is way long, church . . . CHURCH!? yeah, He’s important so . . . church, her, oy. and you get the needful done. Try to put the ass-spew in the toilet and aim for the bathtub with what is coming out of your mouth. It’ll make the cleanup easier. Just saying. Didn’t happen that way? Yeah. Been there, done that. Sorry. Pinesol. That’s my last word for you. Pinesol. I hate the smell of Pinesol. Too many hours cleaning bathrooms with it. You need it on Sunday mornings like this one.
This is where I want to end. It’s beyond where I stopped the post last time. SumYung HotTea sings melody. Her rhythm is complex and syncopated. I have a hard time finding the root chords, the key signatures, the bass beat. I was all treble clef and melody for a long time. Even married I only gave a small nod on the upbeat to the bass clef and root chords. My life has been a tension between G above the clef and d-minor down on the floor. I’m tired. A lot of Sundays though I can sing tenor I drop into a baritone groove and stay there. I see her, I see SumYung HotTea. I hear her melody. It’s nice. The heart stirs still. But as time passes I like the 4-4 beat in d-minor rocking alone with B.B. and Taj Mahal. I got a good thing working and it needs a good old woman to work it with me.