PJ O'Rourke: 'Menus have become another intelligence test at which I fail'

In PJ O'Rourke's seminal essay, "How to drive fast on drugs while getting your wing-wang squeezed and not spill your drink" he imagined, aged 32, what it might be like to avoid the obvious temptations of a James-Dean-style exit ("no ulcers, no haemorrhoids, no bulging waistlines, no soft dicks or false teeth"), and get old.

He imagined, that is, falling for the mythical teenage lovely in the passenger seat of the mythical Pontiac Trans Am of fleeting youth and, before you even knew it, being "married and having teenage lovelies of your own, plus a six-figure mortgage, a liver the size of the Bronx and a Country Squire station wagon that's never seen the sweet side of sixty". And he imagined, when old, having to face this particular truth: "that if you'd had just a little more courage, just a little more strength of character, you could have been dead by now. No such luck."