That age when not being alone is difficult. Oh yeah? Especially if you are an old gay man with no children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and your family is spread from California to Louisiana to Oregon to anywhere that isn’t close to Texas. As well they might be. I shouldn’t be close to Texas either. A bit of writing for another day. One face to face conversation since Thursday morning. It’s Sunday. I pay him to come to my apartment. Vet tech to give my Chachi his weekly fluid injection. I almost forgot. A five-minute conversation with a nice young man clerking at BestBuy. O yeah, and two minutes with the nice young woman tellering at the bank. . . there to cash a check for enough to get me through a few more days waiting for the bank to send my new debit card because they cancelled the old one for something they thought was fraudulent. . . a whopping $50.03 to a company in Australia from which I had ordered something online . . . not because I approve of that sort of nonsense but because I figured driving to Sydney would be somewhat time consuming, and I don’t know where the gas stations are in the middle of the Pacific. But I could have finally seen the opera house. Writing this post for this blog – instead of another of my five blogs – to try to dump these old man alone feelings of being alone. It’s my fault, of course. I could invite a friend to lunch. Or a walk. Or a movie. Oh yeah? A movie in the time of the plague? But I’m an introvert. Lifelong. “Introverts of the world unite!. . . at home alone!” Or an arrogant son-of-a-bitch (sorry, Mom) who is superior to everyone he knows. Or a crybaby. Or an artist so deep in contemplation and creativity that I forget there are other people in the world. Or an old faggot who’s overweight enough so that even twinks looking for a Daddy aren’t interested. See? Whatever the reason, it’s my own damned fault. I could go on and on, but I know I’ve done something to drive all of my friends away and keep my family in California-Louisiana-Oregon. I see I forgot to explain the title here. I’m not really that old (but I do have a head still). Especially in a society that thinks 60 is the new 40 – so I’m only 16 years old. I wonder if anyone who says that knows where the idea came from. Walter B. Pitkin didn’t invent the phrase, but he made it au courant with his book Life Begins at Forty in 1932. I read some of it – the funny parts – in 1954 when my dad turned forty at a huge party in Pioneer Park in Scottsbluff, Nebraska. Maybe I am an old man. And “affected with, characterized by, or causing a depressing feeling of being alone.” (Editor’s note: He’s been taking anti-depressants for thirty years. That feeling he has might be caused by something else.) (Oh yeah?)