I was lingering at Starbucks recently and ended up listening to a bunch of girls (sidebar: when I re-read that sentence during the editing process, I recognized that it made me look a bit creepy, but seeing as I’m gay… I think I can get away with it) discuss their university mid-terms and the logistics of the CGPA.
These twenty-something’s were
complaining about their friend Jessica because she had a 3.8 CGPA and may have
slept with a bunch of dudes on their reading week ski trip. Although I
don’t know her – I agreed on principal: Jessica seems like a total skank.
Anyway… as these girls discussed the
rest of their semester – I couldn’t help but hearken back to my own tenure at
McGill. I contemplated joining in on
their conversation and asking if we had any of the same professors or had taken
the same bird courses (The Chemistry of Food and Children’s Literature were
classics of my day) but soon my memories from McGill started to coalesce into
one. Did the kegger where someone showed up in a rented chicken costume happen
in first or second year? And what was the name of that hot CanLit TA who used
to wear those skimpy white t-shirts which highlighted his un-TA like biceps? If
anyone reading this took CanLit with me in second year (I think) and remembers
who our TA was – I’m totally down for a good old Facebook creep, which I remind
my dearest was a totally foreign concept until my final year of McGill.
As all of these memories started to
puddle together I realized that I have been an alumnus of McGill – a school
Marge Simpson once referred to as the Harvard of Canada (which prompted) Lisa Simpsonto
say: anything that is something of the something isn’t really the anything of
anything, longer than I had been a student there. And yes… I know that nothing
dates someone more than a Simpsons reference.
And so as I sat there, lamenting my
own misbegotten twenties, I did what any self-respecting man sitting alone in
Starbucks does: I pulled out my iPhone (which truthfully, I can barely use) and
texted my best friend, asking her: when did we get so old?
Her reply was frank: somewhere
around 2007.
I didn’t disagree with her; in fact
when a co-worker told me she was turning 23 – all I could think to quip was the
infamous Jessica Simpson line where she says: I’m almost 23, which is almost
25, which is almost mid-twenties
Being the cunning pop-culture
linguist that I am I dropped the J Simp rhyme only to find that my joke was met
with a resounding thud; barely anyone I work with remembered Jessica Simpson as
a poor man’s Christina Aguilera (who herself a poor man’s Britney Spears).
It appears that Jessica Simpson and
Nick Lachey have been sent to pop-culture heaven only to be replaced by Kris
Humphries and that damn Kardashian.
When I was 18, my older cousin
Janice admitted to me she and her husband had finally and quite sadly stopped
listening to Montreal’s modern rock station, realizing that most of the bands
they liked had at some point migrated to the classic rock channel.
I vowed at the time that this would NEVER
happen to me! And while I still listen to Kiss 92 and Mix 99 (sorry –
Virgin Radio) in an attempt to learn the lyrics to the latest Nikki Minaj and
LFMAO song I honestly don’t think I’ve moved past Britney Spears (pre-crazy), the
halcyon years when Justin Timberlake’s music consisted of more than just a cameo
on SNL, and when Lady Gaga was just a speck on the horizon of Avril Lavigne’s
still relevant career and when Lana Del Ray was but a phase in the Mar Del Ray
retirement community where my grandmother lived.
As my friend Brandon noted recently
- we have about 15 years max to learn how to helli-ski before we become too
much of an insurance risk. Suddenly he
noted there wasn’t that much time to learn how to golf, solidify our careers,
become bad-ass boxers, have kids and do all of the things one is supposed to do
before the onset of middle age, abdominal fat and the contemplation of botox.
I think I’ve entered into what a
Canadian marketing team once referred to as Carlsberg years. The Carlsberg Years, a late nineties/ early millennial
advertising campaign, targeted late twenty and early thirty something men with
taglines such as: "You and the bank own a lovely home. Welcome to
your Carlsberg Years." A commercial
from the same campaign showed a group of male friends selling their university
furniture (think street signs as art) before they helped each other move in with
their girlfriends. Another advert showed
a man and woman sneak into a dirty motel, before ending with the tagline: “A friend of mine tried to tell me that the best sex you’d have was with your wife? Welcome to your Carlsberg years.”
Now I know… I know what you’re
saying: 30 is old? Well… it isn’t in subjective terms. However, only as
you get older, and only as you reach your Carlsberg years, do you realize that
we are a culture that fetishes youth. (Groundbreaking analysis, I know)
But while this not-so-earth
shattering analysis may seem obvious to a twenty nine-year-old, you definitely don’t
realize this when you’re 24 or 25. At that time you’re too busy imagining how
amazing life will be when you’re 30 that your thoughts are colluded by thinking
about all of things you’ll have accumulated by the time you reach 29; the stuff
you’ll have done; and picturing the cool Friends-like (I’m really owning these
out of touch cultural references by the way) loft you’ll be living in.
The reality of your Carlsberg years
is that by the time Friday night roles around you’re so tired from the work
week that you have to drag yourself out of a post-work nap to make it downtown
to your friends 30th birthday where people go home early because
they’re responsible adults and want to go to a farmer’s market on Saturday morning
or even worse – they have to put on a finishing coat to their spare
bedroom.
Your Carlsberg Years are when you suddenly
become aware that two-thirds of NFL quarterbacks are younger than you. And telling
people that you think Tim Tebow is hot isn’t just gross because its Tim Tebow;
rather, it’s disgusting because Tebow is 22 and it’s not like if I
randomly met one Thursday night at Woody’s and charmed him with my wit, banter
and thoughts about the Greek debt crisis, he’d show me what he means by tight
end, it’s like: dude – Tim Tebow was 8 when you were 16. Stop
perving.
Let this blow your mind for a bit: Rihanna
is 24. She’s sold more than 25 million albums. Just what pray tell have
you been doing with your life?
But perhaps the saddest self-actualizing
moment one experiences upon entering your Carlsberg Years is related to your
sexuality. Because not only does our
society fetishize youth – our own self conception of sex is wrapped up in that
fetish too.
This situation may be more acute in
the homosexual community wherein both the object of desire and objectifier are
of the same age. Take gay porn for
example, not only are you, the gay man, watching a young man (how do I put this
politely) get buggered – you’re also
objectifying the active participant who is just as young and nubile as the
passive participant.
Unlike straight porn where part of
the arousal comes from the fact that you are watching a fairly nondescript man have
sex with a lady with large breasts (that was originally written as “bone some chick
with large tits, before I thought better of myself) – both parties in the gay pornographic setting
have about as many six packs as you used to buy for a Friday night house
party. In fact both of their bodies look
better then you ever did at your youngest, slimmest and twinkiest.
And while the hottest sex you have
may be at 30 and it may be with your wife (or partner) you will also realize
that society (as a whole) still appreciates the 22 year-old that you will never
be again.
And that’s why the Carlsberg Years
campaign seems a bit trite: you and the bank DO own a really nice… condo or you
and the bank own really nice semi-detached with an unfinished basement and knob
and tube wiring.
So to all of those who are wondering
about how their CGPA is calculated those of us in our Carlsberg Years just want
to tell them that it doesn’t matter, because eventually, they too will be
sitting in Starbucks asking Siri just what the Carlsberg Years actually
are.
