Saturday, November 22, 2003
Happy Fortieth Birthday today to the last of the last baby boomers
Of course, I don’t really mean “happy”, but since you’re 40 today anyway, you probably already know that no one saying it really means it.
I’ve picked today to be the auspicious watershed date between boomers and Xers because (i) I’ve long had a gut feeling about 1963 being the year, and (ii) it is, of course, JFK carking-it’s 40th anniversary, and so the day for a roll-out, yet again, of all those “Where were you when . . .?” anecdotes.
Personally, I was a three-week old foetus on the day that JFK died, meaning that my whole in-utero development was poisoned by vicariosity – I knew that there was something going on outside, but I was unable to publicly communicate my yawning indifference to the older generation’s faux-Momentous Event. Which has been the story of my life* ever since – playing eternal catch-up, only to realise, again and again, that their game was stupid and not worth playing, anyway.
Additionally, as for why 22 November 1963 should be the inter-generational watershed date, it conveniently – and just – allows all boomers to have had Sex In The 70s, by being at least 16. (Yes, I know about different ages of consent and that gay sex was blanket illegal most places back then, rah rah rah. I’m a foetus, I’m a foetus.)
My point is that Sex In The 80s was a crock – it was always overlaid with the weight of boomer values (carefree sluttiness as tasty and overcooked as mum’s Brussels sprouts) and, in the case of AIDS, boomer diseases. If you didn’t get a fuck in the 70s, then, getting fucked by fear was all you were ever gonna get.
Meanwhile, boomers naturally did still have sex in the 80s, but this evolved into an interstitial activity; something they did between snorting lines of coke backstage at Live Aid. Every boomer is still psychically stuck in 1985, with the words “We are the world” scrolling endlessly through their cortexes (cortices?), like a mutant, runaway karaoke prompt.
* Life starting at minus nine months, in the full Catholic Church sense, thank you very much.
Of course, I don’t really mean “happy”, but since you’re 40 today anyway, you probably already know that no one saying it really means it.
I’ve picked today to be the auspicious watershed date between boomers and Xers because (i) I’ve long had a gut feeling about 1963 being the year, and (ii) it is, of course, JFK carking-it’s 40th anniversary, and so the day for a roll-out, yet again, of all those “Where were you when . . .?” anecdotes.
Personally, I was a three-week old foetus on the day that JFK died, meaning that my whole in-utero development was poisoned by vicariosity – I knew that there was something going on outside, but I was unable to publicly communicate my yawning indifference to the older generation’s faux-Momentous Event. Which has been the story of my life* ever since – playing eternal catch-up, only to realise, again and again, that their game was stupid and not worth playing, anyway.
Additionally, as for why 22 November 1963 should be the inter-generational watershed date, it conveniently – and just – allows all boomers to have had Sex In The 70s, by being at least 16. (Yes, I know about different ages of consent and that gay sex was blanket illegal most places back then, rah rah rah. I’m a foetus, I’m a foetus.)
My point is that Sex In The 80s was a crock – it was always overlaid with the weight of boomer values (carefree sluttiness as tasty and overcooked as mum’s Brussels sprouts) and, in the case of AIDS, boomer diseases. If you didn’t get a fuck in the 70s, then, getting fucked by fear was all you were ever gonna get.
Meanwhile, boomers naturally did still have sex in the 80s, but this evolved into an interstitial activity; something they did between snorting lines of coke backstage at Live Aid. Every boomer is still psychically stuck in 1985, with the words “We are the world” scrolling endlessly through their cortexes (cortices?), like a mutant, runaway karaoke prompt.
* Life starting at minus nine months, in the full Catholic Church sense, thank you very much.
