The Coast of Sciatica

Jackie Gleason as Minnesota Fats  in The Hustler (1961)

"The women come and go. Talking of Michelangelo" are the famous words from "The Lovesong of J. Alfred Prufrock." One might say that Metrosexuals talk about love and work and occasionally millenarian ideologies, to which they are drawn, that often verge on being cults. But there’s another demographic for whom the fourth and fifth vertebrae are the subject of discussion, along with Gleason and glucose scores. You probably knew that the spine was like an office tower with varying floors, but it was not until you reached a certain stage of life, when psychohistory became a thing of the past (since the narrative is drawing to its end) that you really began to understand that the Sciatic was not one of those charming little regions of Italy which have not been overrun by tourists. Can you imagine a period of time when all your hopes are not being channeled into love objects or the possibility of hitting the jackpot with the idea du jour, but rather getting an appointment with a specialist? OK so you’ve now left your old life and are trying to adjust to the exigencies of the new and what better name for a piece of equipment you’re likely to come across— to quote the poet “midway upon the journey of our life” finding yourself “within a forest dark”— than a reformer? Yes worse things could happen than for your foundering vessel to come aground on the shores of Pilates. Tennis and trysts are a thing of the past now that you’ve begun to accept that the fact that you’re a bunionaire!