Let's Not Talk About It

We need to talk about it.  I've shied from the topic, but there's a threshold that each of us, ladies and drag-queen fakers, will cross.  That's when we will cry like banshees—releasing our pain into vacuous winds.
I want to be clear that I haven’t seen 'it.'  But--, it is throb, throb, throbbing on my horizon like a neon sign in a border town, short'd-out.  Everyone knows that I'm moving toward it.  This moment of matriculation waits, sandwiched and dormant between my smile scars.
Younger friends don't linger as long as they used to. That prompts me to fear that 'it' is obvious. So, I'm not sure what to do or how to dismiss or contain the anx that my young friends have for me... and for themselves (eventually).  'It' is a hateful thing, it is.  And, it will have me.

I'd only been back to Austin a few weeks when a strange guy from Cuba (literally off the plane from Miami, and then coming from a free night's stay with Austin's finest officers) said at the bar, in the boy's bar, “What was it like?” I knew exactly what he meant.  “I haven’t crossed that threshold, yet—thank you very much!”  And then his boyfriends distracted this country’s visitor with a sugary shot of something fruity that he didn't need (more of). 

         Since I know that I’m headed to the other side of Promise Land—, I’m not sure what I think I can do about it.  Did I ever, in the course of the last 30 years, receive a courtesy call on the 27th day?

         "Hell no!" 

         And, it’s not like I get to check a box:

⃝ go

⃝ NO GO!

…somewhere, and send my mandate to the Comptroller of my biological ecological order. If I'd ever had such an option--, it got lost in the mail that was forwarding from Baton Rouge.  Anyhoo, it's probably too late because I’ve begun to glisten.  (NOTE: I said ‘glisten’, not break out in hot hives.) 

         I can always date someone who might show me how to get through it.  She can reassure me of life on the other side. 

        “I’ve always dated women a bit older than me—two weeks, four years, and eight years older,” I tell myself.  “And it’s not like it slowed any of the other, older, women in my life.” 

        But, I feel like a vampire with a heightened sense.  Their blood flow has a different rhythm—I can feel it ooze, trudging uphill as if it doesn't have enough iron to get all the way up to the heart and freshen their systems.  Healthy bloodflow is like those pantyliner commercials where butterflies dip down to dance on sundropped hillsides. 

        “Why does the voice change?” I ask my mom.

        “I don’t know,” she says politely.

        She’s been a nurse for 30 years.  She knows. So, I present my question another way.
       “It’s not like my ears can detect that extra bit of bass in real life. But, there's a difference when we're on the phone.”

       “I don’t know,” mom repeats.

       She’s known me long enough.  It's not safe to follow some of my thoughts into the tunnel of despair.  She sits quietly until some other random stimulus interrupts our car ride and brings us to the junction of ice cream or margaritas or something yummy.