Lady Parts (12 page)

S
oon I’ll be growing a moustache. That’s what happens when a woman has too much testosterone in her body. Think Chaz Bono. My gynecologist agreed to give me testosterone after my blood tests indicated that my testosterone was low. He is giving me a prescription for AndroGel in a last-ditch attempt to increase my sex drive. Testosterone also increases your state of well-being. Horny and feeling on top of the world—what’s wrong with that? Not since the 1960s have I walked around with that combination.

I exaggerate. I felt horny ten years ago when I was having an affair with Terry, my twenty-eight-year-old lover, and often times during the day, for a few minutes when my pants feel loose, I am happy. But horny
and
feeling on top of the world? Not since the first man walked on the moon.

The testosterone I’ll be taking is in gel form, which is administered from a multi-dose pump. I am to dispense a
small amount on my upper arm, twice a week, and in no time I’ll be lifting up my blouse in front of the sexy Peruvian doorman.

I think my gynecologist is more perplexed than I am as to why I am not interested in sex, and consequently dating. Each time I see him, for my biyearly checkup, he asks me, barely audibly, “When is the last time you had sex?”

My gynecologist is a frustratingly soft talker. And I’m frustratingly hard of hearing. Usually I answer half-joking but slightly embarrassed, “I can’t remember.” He writes something down on my chart. I’m sure it’s not
She can’t remember.
That would sound very non-clinical, but it’s a question he expects an answer to, and my answer always seems to disappoint him.

At my last appointment, I walked into his office and, hoping to disperse with his regular line of questioning, blurted out, “David”—I call my gynecologist by his first name, more on that later
—“I have not had any sex since the last time you asked me, so please don’t ask again.”

Not one ever to laugh at my jokes or to see the irony in them, he raised his head slightly and asked, “Why?” His pen was poised ready to write down the answer.

“Oh my God, David, I don’t know. I haven’t been dating, that could be the reason.”

“Why haven’t you been dating?” he continued seriously.

“Well, how much time do we have?”

No response from my muted, humourless gynecologist.
He means business. He’s taking my love life seriously, even if I’m not willing to.

“Well,” I say, taking a cue from David, and slowing letting down my guard, “maybe I’m not open to it, maybe I’m scared. Maybe I’m shy. I have always felt like Michelle Williams trapped in Joan Rivers’s body. And I don’t seem to have any sex drive.”

“I think you’re depressed,” David offered.

“That could be. I
am
in between jobs.” Freud said human beings need two things to make them happy: love and work. At the moment, I had neither. So maybe I was a little depressed. But that couldn’t be the reason I hadn’t had a sex drive for over ten years. I’d been continually employed. And in those ten years, I certainly had had episodes of prolonged happiness, albeit with an insipid libido.

Maybe Althea, my astrologer, knew the real reason I was dead inside. Venus, she told me, the goddess of love and fornication, had not appeared on my chart since my early twenties. Back then, when Venus and I were BFFs, according to Althea, I was too young to deal with Venus’s erotic energy. I made bad love choices. I’m lucky, Althea says. I am going to have another chance at love before I die, because Althea tells me Venus is coming back to town—town being my chart. That’s right, for most people, Venus appears once, or sometimes never, but for me, Venus appears twice on my chart. She is coming back in January, by Popular Demand. And she will stay put for the entire year.

I have to be prepared. I need a rockin’ libido when I start dating again. That’s why I’m willing to go the testosterone route even though, in large doses, for most women there are nasty side effects: body hair, acne, increased muscle mass, shrinking breasts. Not that bad, if I just remember to shave.

I love my gynecologist. He is brilliant and kind and attentive. I just wish he would speak louder. Now that I am older, there are many things I wish for, and they all have to do with loss. Testosterone and better hearing are just two things I wish I had more of. Taking testosterone won’t cure my hearing loss, so for now, I have to read David’s lips when he talks, which is challenging when his head is between my legs during my gynecological exams. This intimate act is one reason I call David by his first name. It doesn’t feel right to address a man formally when he’s two inches away from my vagina. The second reason we are on a first-name basis is that I’m a frequent guest at his home for Passover.

As I lie on the examination table with my legs in the stirrups and David’s head lost somewhere in the abyss of my genitalia, I have to tilt my body up and stretch my head over my chest to catch a glimpse of David’s mouth moving so I can make out what he is saying. And boy does his mouth move. That man knows more about a vulva than George Clooney, and he’s happy to tell you everything he knows.

There is nothing more awkward, in my book, then a gynecological exam at my age. Most women, David tells me, are open to it. Forgive the pun. A couple of his patients
are inhibited. One woman wears a red bandana over her eyes during the exam; other women, like me, inch their way slowly up the examination table, away from the stirrups, until their heads hit the back wall. David is understanding. Fortunately, there are cute little
New Yorker
cartoons and “Words of Wisdom” on Post-its stuck to the ceiling above us, to relax and distract us from the physical discomfort of the dreaded
Pap smear.
Just as hideous sounding as it feels.

“Ouch,” I blurt out.

“Just relax,” David says. “If you squeeze, it will hurt more. Stop squeezing and move your body back toward me.”

I’m focused on the Post-its.

I like this quote from Plato:

Between the tenseness of my body and the energy it takes to decipher what David is saying, I’m exhausted after the exam. “You can get dressed now,” David says as he whips off his rubber gloves, disposes of the metal torture devices, and puts my cells under a microscope to take a closer look. “Would you like to see?” At least that’s what I think he asked. He might also have said,
Passover is on a Friday this year.
So I’m just guessing when I reply, “Hell, no, I am not interested in viewing my cells under a microscope. I’m an actress, not Madame Curie.”

“Very good,” says David. I see a smile on his face. I don’t care what my cells are doing now. I got a chuckle from my gynecologist. I couldn’t be more pleased.

It’s bittersweet visiting my gynecologist these days. His office is filled with young pregnant women. Their life is ahead of them. And most of mine is behind me. I think of the births of my two sons many years ago when I was living in Toronto. I wasn’t shy back then, lying on the examination table. I was not thinking about me. I was fixated on the health of my unborn sons and on bringing life into the world. Now I think about prolonging my life when I visit my gynecologist, and although I am enormously grateful for the care he gives me, I wish I were young again, with tons of testosterone and no discernable facial hair.

If the AndroGel doesn’t work, David will come up with another solution to jumpstart my sex drive. This I am sure of. He is relentless in his dedication to his patients. And when I finally get a hearing aid, I’ll know precisely what that solution is going to be.

A
nd now, a forty-six-year-old perspective on
her
lady parts,
*
as told by Libby Wolfson, host of the daytime talk show

“You!”

Music: “You Are So Beautiful.”

Libby
speaks to the camera as she lies sprawled across a mass of pillows.

LIBBY: Hello, my name is Libby Wolfson, and today we’ll be talking about menopause. There, I said it. Is it hot in here? I’m burning up, I need the Mellonville Fire Department to come hose me down. Yesterday on the set I turned up the air conditioning.

The cameraman said, “Libby, please, it’s freezing.”

Meanwhile, I’m feeling uncomfortable.

Next thing I know, they had to be rushed to the hospital for frostbite. I know something is wrong. So I make an appointment with my gynecologist, Wilf Steinberg. Wilf. We’re on a first-name basis.

Please, after all the yeast infections, we should be buying a house together.

So, I go to his office. I say, “Wilf, I will be honest … My friend is irregular. Sometimes it jumps a month.” I make a joke that maybe I’m pregnant. Even though it’s been years since there’s been any action in this vicinity. “A ghost town,” I joke. “Dodge City has more visitors.

“Forget the tumbleweeds, possums could be hiding in there. First you need a can of Pledge to make a dent. Get out the DustBuster.”

He’s not laughing; he looks disgusted, like he could vomit from the possum analogy.

Anyway, I joke a lot. It’s my way to make myself feel comfortable, because please, frankly, after all these years and many men in the ’60s, I still feel violated with this kind of exam.

“Libby, please put your feet in the stirrups and relax.”

Relax? The only way I could relax right now
is with a package of Milano cookies and a Stoli. Straight up.

So, I’m lying there praying he’s going to tell me I have the insides of a nineteen-year-old. Suddenly, he pulls the desk lamp over for a closer look. What is he doing? Mining for gold? And I’m smelling smoke. I think my pubic hairs are on fire. With the gown draped over my knees, I could send smoke signals to the remaining Sioux.

Anyway, he finishes the exam and tells me to get dressed and we’ll talk in the office. He can’t tell me the bad news there.

He has to go back to his office and write in his journal,
Today I told Libby Wolfson that she has one day to live and it doesn’t feel good. She’s a vibrant, beautiful woman. Why didn’t I ask her out when I had the chance?

Well, fuck him. He had plenty of opportunities. So I go into his office and say, “Wilf. Wilf, please, what’s the diagnosis?”

He asks me how old I am, and I tell him forty-six. He tells me I’m premenopausal.

I say, “But I don’t look forty-six. Do you think I do?”

He tells me I’m not going to get my “friend” anymore. My “friend.” I need the support. They don’t call it “friend” for nothing. I don’t want
it to go. It’s the one thing I could count on every month. I can live with the cramps. They’re life-affirming. And PMS was never really a problem. I shot my boyfriend once but got off with the Twinkie defence.

He tells me he can put me on hormones. What am I, Mr. Ed? Am I running the trifecta?

I can live with the mood swings. I’ve lived in this body (
Crying.
) for forty-six years. I can live with the (
Stops crying, starts laughing uncontrollably.
) mood swings.

He tells me intercourse will be different. He tells me this is what I have to look forward to … that my vaginal lining will need something called Astroglide. What am I, a ride at Six Flags?

Where did my thirties go? I don’t even remember enjoying them that much. What if, God forbid, I met a man who I was attracted to and he had a good car, and I wanted to conceive his baby? Now if I want a child, I have to go to Malawi and buy one.

No, I want one from my own loins. I feel cheated. I was this beautiful flower who could reproduce. Now I produce missed opportunities. This is the nail in the coffin. Everybody knows it.

Men don’t understand. What, they lose their hair, big deal.

I leave the waiting room, and all of these pregnant couples are sitting there, holding hands, looking blissful. Fat but blissful. That’s the part of blissful I could do without.

Music up. Libby continues.

Is someone frying onions in here?

No, it’s the unscented Mitchum mixed with the few drops of estrogen I have left.

We’ll be right back after a word from our sponsor, Modess Sanitary (
Libby can barely get the words out.
) Napkins.

We hear Libby crying as the music fades, and the show, as well as Libby’s reproductive life, is over.

E
very six months for the last eight years I have gone to Althea, my astrologer, to have my chart read. Althea is not a gypsy. She is not Romanian or Transylvanian, nor does she travel the country in a caravan. She doesn’t steal babies or sacrifice cows. She’s a small, round, single white woman, about fifty years old, and stands four feet, ten inches tall. And my life’s decisions depend upon her every word.

Althea lives in a fourth floor walk-up. I’m always nervous to ring the buzzer when I visit Althea, in case she’s in the middle of an appointment. I don’t want the interruption to cause bad karma for me. Not before a reading. I usually wait until the client before me finishes his or her appointment. Hopefully, the person will exit without making eye contact with me. Making eye contact after an astrology reading is like making eye contact after a therapy session or an appointment with your dermatologist. It’s always better to
leave through the back door, if there is one. You don’t want anyone to recognize you with mascara running down your face or to see you with your newly injected lips. You don’t want to make small talk with a stranger when you can’t move your mouth.

Althea ushers me in. She is wearing a loose, faded cotton housecoat. No shoes. Her toenails have not been cut for months, and the polish on her toes has not been changed in years. Think Gollum with a pedicure.

Every time I look at her feet, I am reminded of Howard Hughes and his closet full of toenails that his servants stored in jars. Althea’s hair is thin and sparse, having not grown back from her last traumatic brain surgery, her second in a year. Her two-room apartment is dark and cramped, and the blinds on her one window are always shut. There are no beads or curtains hanging in her doorways. There are no tarot cards, wind chimes, or burning sage. What there is is a dog crate, which sits in the middle of her cluttered living room. Books and papers are piled up the walls. Manuals, charts, journals teeter on tables. There are flowers that have been dead since the ’70s, in vases which are nearly falling off the mantel, which sits over a fireplace that has never been used because bags of clothes and shoes, instead of logs, lie piled up behind the fireplace screen.

Althea is a hoarder. Her miniature sheltie, named Buzzy, holds a stuffed toy lobster in her mouth, and every time someone enters the apartment, Buzzy excitedly
jumps up and down within an eight-inch radius, the only uncluttered space in which she can move. Each time I visit Althea, I notice that the walkway from her front door to the chair I will be sitting in gets narrower and narrower, and that what used to be a three-foot path is now only twelve inches wide. When I first started seeing Althea, the show
Hoarders
had not become the cult hit on cable TV that it is today. I never knew that compulsive hoarding had a name, and a diagnosis, until I started watching the show compulsively.

Since Althea lives in a spiritual world, not a material one, I believe I have no right to judge her clutter. It would be like judging Jesus’s nursery. If you didn’t know He was the Son of God, you might be appalled by the grazing livestock, or the frankincense stuck to the manger floor.

I wish I could be as carefree about my living quarters as Jesus or Althea. I am an obsessive cleaner. I don’t know if there is a name for my obsession, but I know for sure it would not make good television. No one wants to see me fluffing pillows on my couch week after week, or positioning picture frames so they line up with each other, or polishing the marble on my kitchen countertop, or sharpening pencils so that the tips peek out uniformly from the pencils’ container, or reorganizing my spice drawer alphabetically, or placing my TV and DVD remote-control wands evenly side by side in their own little remote-control box. On second thought, maybe I’ll pitch my household cleaning
habits as a Web series to Proctor & Gamble, a reality program geared for women with too much time on their hands (making a note to call them).

The truth is, I would no more have a dead flower in my apartment for one day, let alone generations, than Althea would have a Swiffer.

Back to astrology. Before every session, Althea asks if I want a cup of tea. I always decline. She makes a cup for herself and never drinks it. I guess this is just part of her ritual. We face each other over a round wooden table. She opens the cover of a tape recorder that she’s had since the ’80s, inserts the ninety-minute cassette I have brought with me, and turns on the machine. It runs for three seconds and then stops. She takes out the tape, and with a pencil that she places in one of the holes in the middle of the cassette, winds the tape back to the beginning. All the while that she is fiddling with the recorder, Buzzy is barking and clawing my lap and trying to jump up, but there isn’t enough space in which to get a running start, so she just keeps turning around and jumping anxiously in one spot. Althea is yelling, “Bad Buzzy. You’re a bad girl. Do you know that? You’re a bad Buzzy. Are you going to behave?” Althea explains that Buzzy is a Leo with a Libra moon. Buzzy wants attention.

Who doesn’t?
I’m thinking.
Just read what’s on my chart, Althea. The hell with the tape recorder. I’ll remember all the important stuff anyway.
Of course, I don’t say this out loud, because I don’t question anything Althea says or does. She is
my mystical soothsayer and can predict my future. I’m not messing with that.

Althea hands back the tape to me. “It’s not working,” she says, like it’s my fault. It
could
be my fault. I bought the tape at a 99-cent store. She asks me if I have an iPhone.

“Yes,” I say.

“Oh good,” she responds. “Let’s use that.”

I’m thinking,
Hmm, really
?
Why didn’t we use the iPhone in the first place?
But again I don’t question The Right Honourable Mrs. Yoda.

“Do you have a mic on the phone?” Althea asks.

“I think so.”

“Is there an app for recording?”

“Oh boy, Althea, I don’t know.” How does this woman even know the word “app”?

“Well, let me see it.”

I hand her the phone. She stares at it like she has never seen a phone before, like she would stare at a can of Comet. Buzzy is quiet because she is now on my lap. I picked up Buzzy when Althea wasn’t looking, to keep her from barking and to keep Althea from yelling commands. All that exertion can’t be good for Althea’s delicate brain.

Althea finds the Record button on my iPhone. She presses it. She speaks into the phone as a test. It works. She gets my chart out. She lays it on her master astrology chart
so that my planets line up with the universe’s planets. She commands Buzzy once again to get down. Buzzy retrieves her pet lobster and quietly goes to her crate and lies down. Althea presses Record and with a reassuring smile asks, finally, after twenty minutes of my session has now elapsed, “Are you ready for some good news?”

“Yes, yes,” I say. “I am really eager to hear some good news, Althea. It’s only been four months since my last appointment. But I have a very specific question to ask you today. Thank you for seeing me. What do you see in my chart?”

A famous fashion designer introduced me to Althea. He had been seeing her for years. He made all his decisions, personal and career, based on her readings. He swore by her. From what I could tell, he was successful, happy, financially secure, ambitious, and thriving. How could I go wrong?

When I booked my first appointment with her, I did not know what I was going to hear, but I knew I was open to receiving what Althea saw. I wanted to put my total trust in her, because I had to. I needed positive reinforcement and direction in my life, which was fraught with anxiety and indecision. I needed to know what day to sign a contract, what agent to leave, what job to take, why I wasn’t in a relationship, and how I could be a better parent. Althea answered all my questions with conviction. In fact, she has never been wrong. She is not afraid to tell me the truth,
even if it is difficult to hear, but she always ends with good news. When she was learning astrology as a young girl, her teacher, renowned in the field, told her to always find something positive in a chart, and if she couldn’t find anything positive, to look at Kronos, the planet of power, success, and recognition. Kronos always made a person feel good.

Well, today all eyes are on you, Kronos. Today I am here with Althea to ask if the pilot I just shot for CBS will be picked up.

Today I would like the misery of uncertainty to stop. I’ve been in the dark for months as CBS decides what it will order. Without this knowledge, my life is on hold. My agent and manager and industry websites—
Variety, Hollywood Reporter,
Deadlinehollywood.com—are just speculating. No one except the network executives behind closed doors know anything, and they’re not talking … yet.

The stakes are high. Althea knows this. I came to her four months ago. I had been offered a Broadway musical and I was unsure about taking it because I wanted to get back to television, something I had stayed away from for the last nine years. I had been living in New York, working on the stage, on Broadway. I wanted to go to Los Angeles again for pilot season, even though I knew I was off the radar of TV casting directors, writers, and producers. I would have to reintroduce myself to Hollywood and basically start all over again. It was now or never. What was I waiting for? I had to get back on the horse. I was scared. I was stuck. So, four
months ago, I booked an appointment with Althea. I asked her what I should do. I brought two ninety-minute cassette tapes, a pad of paper, and a couple of pencils and pens. I didn’t want to miss a word. I wanted to get everything down: predictions from Althea, and words of encouragement and reinforcement from my buddy Kronos.

It was December. Pilot season was about to begin. Althea looked at my chart. She hesitated. “This is interesting. Do not take the Broadway play. Go to Los Angeles. I see a contract for a TV show, but it will be difficult along the way. Try not to get discouraged. There will be a lot of rejection. Do not take it personally. Do not let it affect your self-esteem. Persevere. You are going to get what you want. Work for it. Be patient. It will happen.”

Well, I’m here to say, everything Althea predicted
did
happen. I went to Los Angeles. It was difficult. I had to put my ego aside and audition like I was a newcomer. There was a lot of rejection, but I persevered because I kept remembering what Althea had predicted.

Just when I was about to give up at the end of my two months in Los Angeles, I got a pilot. A good one, one I was proud of. Melissa McCarthy was the executive producer, and her husband, Ben Falcone, wrote and starred in it. Judd Hirsch and I played his parents. I loved the show, the part, the cast, the experience, and being in Los Angeles. I loved hanging out with my sons, who live there, and loved feeling visible again in an industry I had shied away from for so long.

I returned to Toronto. I waited. Nothing. Not a peep from the creators, the director, the studio, the network. I flew to New York. I called Althea. Usually it took weeks to get an appointment, but Althea heard the urgency in my voice and scheduled me in for the next day.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” Althea asked.

“No, thank you, Althea.” Today I was not feeling patient or polite.
Just read my damn chart!

“What do you think, Althea? Is my show going to get picked up for a series?” I am literally on the edge of my seat. The iPhone is on. I’m writing on a pad of paper for backup. I’m repeating everything she says.

I let her know the day that CBS is going to announce its fall lineup. May 16. “How does May 16 look in my chart?” I ask.

Althea rummages through her books and looks for my day aspects for May 16. “Ah,” she says. “This is funny.” Oh boy. “Funny” isn’t necessarily the word I wanted to hear regarding a series pickup. She continues. “May 16 on your chart is showing me success, expansion, and recognition. It’s almost impossible for the show not to go. But if for some reason it doesn’t, and I think it will, but if it doesn’t, it means something better out there hasn’t shown up yet. I see a lot of success here. Ongoing success. You can never know for sure, but it looks good. I think it will go.”

I’m elated. I don’t ask her to elaborate. I don’t want to tempt fate. I don’t want the gods to be angry by further
questioning. What she said is good enough for me. She covered it all. The series will probably go, but if it doesn’t, there is something better just waiting for me. I have good reason to believe her.

This is Althea’s track record with me so far:

I don’t ever remember Althea being wrong. Sometimes her readings are general: You are coming on a financially lucrative few years. There is a person you know who will be
offering you a job. Your self-esteem issues are holding you back. You don’t really want to meet a man. You need to let your children live their own lives; stop enabling them, they will be fine. She has been correct on all counts.

Other times she has been freakishly specific. I hope she is freakishly correct this time. I would love to do a TV series. I would love to be nearer my sons.

Before I thanked Althea for her insight and encouragement, just as our session was ending, I asked her what I should do while I was waiting to hear.