Robert Dessaix - The Time of Our Lives

The last enemy

(I Corinthians 15)

Itchi gitchi ya ya da da (now were pumping) getcha getcha ya ya here You betcha! Across the lawn from me in the sun, a bunch of hotel guests with their wellness instructor were prancing, swivelling to the music, brown limbs gleaming, boom box thumping by the lotus pond Voulez-vous coucher avec moi ce soir? Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?

Sure, sashay right over, why dont you? I thought to myself as I eyed this perky performance from the divan in the hotels garden pavilion. I felt all jazzed up just watching. At that moment Id have coucherd with practically anyone. Every morning that week, soon after sunrise, the young Balinese guy, Budi, had been strutting his stuff here in time to the music, bare-legged, sweaty singlet sticking to his chest, with a few middle-aged guests gyrating along beside him, punching the air. Against the fall of ruby-red flowers on the coral vine, it was a mesmerising sight. I wasnt tempted to join in, thoughwell, a little, perhaps, synchronised dancing is always seductive, but I know my limits. Apparently theres nothing like energetic dance movements to boost the cognitive functionsor so a nice Englishman in glasses claimed on television recently. Something about synaptic firing, as I remember.

Some days, though, cognitive functions just arent the priority. It was all very mind-body, Budis class, which can be quite cheering when youre twenty-five and still looking good in shorts, as Budi was, especially now the soul is out of fashion. It may lose its appeal when Alzheimers and peripheral neuropathy kick in, but right there at that moment it was very much the plat du jour. There was something about it that reminded me of the Greeks: the smooth, slender, Greek ideal of strong-shouldered beauty, male and female, has more or less taken over the world nownot the actual world, obviously, but minds from Montreal to Melbourne. Even in Mumbai I noticed that the billboards all over the city featured gods and goddesses in the Greek mould, not the Indians you see in the streets or hanging out of buses.

All the same, I was aware as I sat there in that hotel garden outside Yogyakarta that this display of jerking, jiving, jumping bodies, while entertaining and exhilarating, was also at some deeper level unsettling. Yet what on Earth could have been unsettling about such innocent calisthenics? Everyone was clearly right into it, after all. It looked sexy, it looked enlivening, it looked fun. They were publicly thumbing their noses at conventional ideas about what sort of behaviour was seemly at a certain age, and particularly about how an ageing body should display its pale, wrinkled self in public. And who doesnt get a kick out of doing that? Needless to say, like mindfulness and Tibetan singing-bowl sessions, these kinds of classes are a clear class-signifier for usthis whole hotel is a class-signifier, for that matter, as are my shoes and the Brazilian maca-root shaving cream I favourbut thats not what unsettles me.

Renate, for instance, who was well into her sixties, was electrified, she was reborn, it was never like this in Utrecht before breakfast on a Thursday; Malcolm from Melbourne was hovering between euphoria and panic, as dancers often do, amazed to find he had it in him to caper like this in public, yet at the same time unnerved, like a hang-glider coming in to land; while the couple from Kuala Lumpur were literally in an altered state, they were not just spry any more, they really were kids at play again, a little bewildered, but youthfully loose-limbed, bursting with energyfor now, at least.

I was bothered, however slightly, for the same reason Im bothered by gyms, I suspect, not to mention joggers. Neither gyms nor joggers disturb me deeplyId like that to be unequivocally clear from the startI dont think they should be banned. Even with reasonably good health and a mind in working order, its hard to grow old well. Round and round we go, in ever-tightening circles, like water down a plug-hole, and then were gone. So how you deal with your bodys gradual collapse is your business, not mine. All the same, something about these regimens does cause unease. Years ago, I recall, when I was a regular at a gym near my house, something would put me on edge as soon as I pushed open the door. There was always a kind of tense self-consciousness in the air, even when there was almost nobody there. Everyone without exceptionthe women with blonde ponytails pounding away on the treadmill, going nowhere, the swimmers doing lap after lap in the pool, the young men lifting weights, biceps straining, the fit, the unfit, the taut, the sagging, the aged, the youthful, everybody performing these ritualslooked anxious. Each and every one of them gave the impression of fighting a losing battle while pretending to have the upper hand. Against what, though? What were they fighting against? Flabbiness? Obesity? Heart disease? Stress? What?

Death, of course, said my friend Sarah next morning without a moments hesitation when I asked her what she thought all the joggers and gymnasts were trying to hold at bay. What else? Its death theyre afraid ofor at least dying. She gave me a slightly lop-sided smile, not being in her prime any more, and cast a wry Hungarian eye over that mornings group performing its synchronised moves by the pond. This lot is still just young enough to imagine it can win. She laughed in that throaty way only smokers can. She was looking more and more like Maggie Smith that winter, as a host of women of a certain class eventually do.

Perhaps they just want to stay limber.

Limber? Sarah sometimes likes to savour a word as if hearing it for the first time. In reality, like so many Hungarians, she speaks English better than the rest of us. Limber is always good, of course. Covers a host of sins.

And lithe, I said. Im a fan of lithe. Freddie Mercury was lithe. (And Zoroastrian, too, from Zanzibar but my mind was wandering.)

Still, at root, she said, eyes fixed on the group gyrating in the sun, I think they simply want to avoid getting old. And facing what comes next. I cant say I blame themat their age.

But you cant win at that game, can you.

No, its quite futile.

None of it works, I mumbled, half under my breath. Time passes and things fall apart. I studied the merrily cavorting crew, all gleaming in the sun. In the end their brains will liquefy and dribble out of their mouths and ears just like everyone elses.

I suppose they will. At our advanced age this thought does not unduly alarm us. It doesnt alarm the young much, either, because its all so notional, but it frightens the hell out of the middle-aged.

Not everyone thinks it will end badly, though, do they.

Who, for example?

Americans, for a start, I said. Americans seem to have an inborn predilection for happy endings. They confuse life with Singin in the Rain. Everythings going to be just fine.

The beat was from Stayin Alive that morning, and Budi, a mere stones throw away across the grass in his knee-length blue shorts, was our dancin manbreakin and shakin and stayin fetchingly alive. He was drilling his squad of foreigners to fantasise about being as loose-limbed and fit as he was. Ah ha ha ha, stayin alive, stayin alive. (Saturday Night Fever, I admit, ends fairly bleakly: moving to Manhattan is not my idea of a happy ending. All the same, I have a point about Americans.)