Lady Parts (13 page)

“Go out and have fun. Have a good time.”

I am trying to. I’m staying off the industry websites. No one knows anything. It’s all buzz and hype. Only “the woman behind the curtain” knows for sure, and I’m betting on her.

W
ell, Althea, my dear astrologer, got it wrong. At least one part of her prediction. CBS announced the series it was picking up for 2012, and my pilot was not one of them.

I was disappointed and sad. The stakes were high for this one. A lot was resting on it. I wanted very badly for this series to go.
And
I found out on Mother’s Day. As I was about to go on for my Mother’s Day matinee of my one-woman show in Chicago, my agent called. He, of course, didn’t know I was about to go out to entertain for an hour and a half. One minute later, my sons called to wish me a happy Mother’s Day. And then I hear “places” and the montage of my opening is running, and I try to pull myself together, my emotions all over the place. Disappointment that the show is not going, sadness that I am not with my sons, dismay that the theatre is not more full, and fear that I won’t be able
to get through my fifth performance in three days. I don’t want to do my show. I’m not feeling confident, or energetic, or funny.

It’s not about me, I tell myself. It’s for all the people who paid, who want to laugh. All the moms who brought their children, all the children who brought their moms. My going out there today is about something bigger. Someone out there, someone you don’t know, has gotten much worse news than you, Andrea. His or her plight in life is much more difficult than a series not being picked up. If you can make just that one person happy, if you can make them laugh and forget their troubles today, then do it. You owe it to them.

So I go out on stage. The house is half full. But they are by far the best audience I’ve had in five shows. Exuberant, appreciative, laughing at every joke. Smiles on all their faces. The show goes great. I get through it, though I am very hoarse and Seth, my pianist (and aforementioned writing coach) has had to lower all the keys. I thank the audience from the bottom of my heart. I wish them all a happy Mother’s Day. I go backstage and begin to gather and pack up all my things. The stage manager asks if I will see a fan. He has been waiting patiently in the theatre. It’s been forty minutes since my show ended and long after all the audience has left. I don’t recognize the gentleman’s name, but I say, of course I’ll see him. He is escorted backstage. He stands looking at me. He is shy and hesitant. He tells me
that he is a huge fan and how important it was for him to attend the show today. He tells me that his partner of thirty years, who died of AIDS ten years ago, watched
SCTV
while he was ill. It was the only thing that got him through his terrible suffering. “And you, Andrea, were his favourite. I wanted you to know what a difference you made in his life. How much joy you brought him before he died.”

He hugged me. “Thank you for meeting me,” he said. I held his hand.

“No, my friend, thank you for sharing your beautiful story with me. Thank you for making this Mother’s Day so special for me.”

The second half of Althea’s prediction was this: If the series isn’t picked up, there will be something better out there.

She was right. Althea, my astrologer, is always right.

L
et’s get this out of the way.

I turned sixty-five recently. I know, I know, I don’t look my age. At least, that’s what you’ll say to my face. Don’t get me wrong, I love hearing it, even if I know you are blowing smoke up my sixty-five-year-old sagging ass.

I am now officially a senior citizen, which means I am entitled to a few perks, the most delicious being $4 off a regular-priced movie ticket.

In New York, you don’t have to wait until you turn sixty-five to get old-age fringe benefits. Sixty-two is considered a senior citizen, so for the last three years, whenever I went to the movies in New York, I approached the box office and whispered so no one else could hear, “One senior ticket, please.” Then, with the hope and naïveté of a chorus girl newly off the bus from Omaha, I waited for the response I longed for: stunned silence, followed by
incredulous scrutiny, followed by
You can’t be a senior, you don’t look like you’re a senior. You look so much younger.
Sadly, this never happened. Every time I had asked for a senior ticket, I was given one without hesitation, without a second look. Since it was so damn humiliating saying my age out loud to a self-involved, uncaring, insensitive, heartless twenty-year-old loser who one day would be sixty-five herself—and I just hope I’m alive to be there to see the devastating look on
her
mug when her age is met with no resistance—I went back to asking for an adult ticket, even though I had to pay $4 more.

But when I turned sixty-five, everything changed. It became startlingly clear how much time I had wasted in my life by indulging in fear and negativity. Now that I was sixty-five, I hopped on the yes train.
What am I waiting for?
became my mantra. Instead of comparing myself to others, I was grateful for my success, my health, all I had in my life, and I now accepted and surrendered to the number sixty-five. After all, I told myself, it was just a number.

So, four days after I turned sixty-five, I went to the movies to see
The Iron Lady,
starring Meryl Streep, at my favourite theatre in New York, the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, where the average age of the paying customer is eighty. This time I walked up proudly to the box office and said loudly for all of Manhattan to hear, “A SENIOR TICKET, PLEASE.” And then the unthinkable happened. I was asked for my ID. “I’m
sixty-five, honey,” I said, laughing and looking around to see if anyone else had heard the young man. “I didn’t bring any proof of my age with me, but I love that you think I’m younger.”

“Oh yes, absolutely, you do not look sixty-five. I can’t believe it. You’re sixty-five? No, really? You look (he paused as he searched for a number) fifty-four at the oldest.”

“Okay, I’ll take it,” I said. “Julianne Moore’s age! Yay, I love her,” I continued. “She’s so pretty with her long red hair and alabaster skin.” By then I had lost him. But I continued. “My goodness,” I said, now sounding like Mary Poppins, “you were brought up very well, young man, and your mother would be proud of you.” Proud of him for what, making an old person feel better? Or maybe, God bless him, he thought I looked younger, and maybe I did, with my hair freshly blown out. Whatever the reason, I had not expected this attention, this lovely turn of events.

I immediately called my girlfriend. Giggling, I said, “You won’t believe what just happened. The fellow who sold me my movie ticket didn’t believe I was sixty-five. He asked for my ID.”

“Congratulations, honey,” my friend replied excitedly.

“Yeah, I’m stunned, I can’t believe it. I couldn’t be more thrilled,” I said, sounding like I’d just been cast in a Scorsese film. Or my mammogram came back clean.

Turning sixty-five is a huge milestone, and let’s be honest, even with its perks, it brings baggage: short skirts are out, dyed platinum blonde hair is out unless you live on the street or in New Jersey, being cast as the wacky girl next door is out, loud restaurants are out, loud music is out, talking about your health and sickness and death are in, old-age pension cheques are in, retirement and golf courses are in, and who cares, ‘cause I hate golf, you make less money, there’s less work, less sex, less fun … holy shit, I gotta stop. I’m depressing myself.

I hate this ageism thing. I hate feeling that everything that I have accomplished in my life is outdated, that I’m no longer viable. This is going to be my life’s mission, to disprove the notion that at sixty-five it’s all over.

But first, a reality check, ladies, and an honest look at the challenges of the mature woman’s body.

Spanx:
These are foundation garments that are supposed to give the wearer a slimmer appearance. They don’t work. If you think you need Spanx, what you really need is a bigger size of outerwear. Don’t waste your money on Spanx when you get to be my age. The fat has to go somewhere; it doesn’t magically disappear underneath the Lycra material. The fat pops up above the waistband, or below the thigh band, giving you the appearance of the Elephant Man.
Take the Spanx off.
Your body looks unnatural in Spanx, and you still look fat.

Eyebrows:
I wish I had appreciated my eyebrows more. They were bushy and Armenian and framed my big eyes perfectly. Now I have five hairs that make up my eyebrows, all growing at different angles. I don’t know what happened to my eyebrows. Yes, I plucked them, but in so doing, did I destroy all the follicles? This is another body part that changes as you get older. Ears get bigger, noses get bigger, feet get bigger, and eyebrows get thinner. I guess all hair on your body gets thinner. Even my “adorkable” bangs can’t conceal my straggly brows.

Hair:
I regret not loving the curls on my head more. I was born with lovely naturally curly hair, kind of like Bernadette Peters’s curl, soft, the silhouette almost angelic. But I wanted, like every other ethnic girl, straight Farrah Fawcett hair. And so for years I have had my hair blown out. Which at my age makes me look like Janet Reno. If I let my hair dry naturally, my curls would now look like Fran Lebowitz’s, or Margaret Atwood’s. Not that there’s anything wrong with their curls, and they seem perfectly content with their heads of hair, but I’m more vain. And I guess more ungrateful. The older you get, the more wiry your curls, the grey roots wanting to aggressively spread to your entire head, making the texture of your hair coarser and dryer, giving you the silhouette of an angelic hedgehog.

Skin tags:
Somebody has to talk about skin tags. Someone other than your dermatologist. So I will. They are ugly little
things. Brown bits of skin that grow out of your neck or chest or face. On me, they pop up right above my breasts. So if a man were to rub his hand around that area, he could slice his palm in two with the brittleness of my skin tags. I have had them surgically removed. And then they grow back again. That’s a lovely trade-off. Skin tags or the smell of your own flesh burning.

Gas:
I think women don’t talk about gas enough. No matter what I put in my mouth, it comes out my ass with the explosive sound of a nuclear warhead or a more delicate, ladylike puff of air. Just thinking of eating ice cream bloats me. And yet that doesn’t stop me from eating it. It just stops me from going out after five.

Snoring:
I was on vacation with my son in Sicily when he was thirteen. We shared a room at a beautifully converted monastery in Taormina. The first morning after I had woken from a very sound sleep, I noticed my son staring at me. His face was white, and he looked like he hadn’t slept for days.

“Hey, honey, how long have you been up?” I asked.

“I haven’t slept, Mom.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, concerned. “What happened? Why?”

“‘Cuz you snored all night, Mom, and I couldn’t sleep.”

“What? I snore?” I asked, incredulous, not to mention mortified. “No one’s ever told me that.”

“This is how your snoring sounds, Mom: it’s like a freight train coming, you hear it in the distance and then it comes around the bend full force. Every two minutes you’d rev up, stop, rev up again, and then the freight train would arrive.”

“Oh, Jack, I am so sorry and so embarrassed. I don’t know what to do about it. Was my mouth open?”

“Yeah, Mom, you looked like you were dead, except snoring.”

“Okay, I’m getting you another room tonight.”

Call me superficial, but a woman snoring is not attractive. Did Sleeping Beauty snore as she was waiting for her prince? Was she drooling as he bent down to kiss her? Every grade school child would have been traumatized for life if they saw that. Like my son has been since witnessing his freight train of a mom drooling around the bend.

Arthritis:
It’s really hard to disguise your age when your fingers look like Darth Vader’s: spindly, swollen, and your knuckles two inches in diameter. You can’t get your ring on and off unless it’s sawed in two by a friendly jeweller.

Hearing:
My dad lost his hearing when he was fifty. He wore hearing aids until the day he died at age ninety-two. Without them he was totally deaf. I have inherited my dad’s hearing loss, even though I tell people that I lost my hearing playing in a band. That story just sounds better. But I won’t get a hearing aid. It really seems like the ultimate destination in
getting old. Most of the days I am angry at young people who don’t articulate. The truth is, I couldn’t hear them if they sounded like Dame Judi Dench.

Here’s how I compensate. I read lips, but I have to be in a bright room. I can’t hear (read the lips of) my dental hygienist because she wears a mask when she’s cleaning my teeth. Luckily, I don’t have to respond to her questions, since she has a sharp instrument in my mouth as she’s asking them. I think she’s used to no response. She just keeps talking in her muffled way to distract me from the pain she is inflicting on my overly sensitive gums. And while we’re on the subject of gums, after my last teeth-cleaning appointment, the dentist confirmed the hygienist’s suspicions. “Andrea, I think the time has come for you to consider a gum graft.” Now, that term
no one
had ever mentioned to me, not one of my elderly parents, or friends, or late-night infomercials. There are ads for overactive bladders, but not yet for receding gums, thank God.

Feet:
Every day I’m forced to look at my feet because it’s summer and I have cute little sandals on—until you really study my feet, and then my overpriced cute little Jimmy Choo sandals don’t look cute anymore. They look like receptacles for old feet.

That, and I have a hammer toe.
That’s
a pretty sight. Even a toe ring in the shape of a daisy placed strategically
over it can’t conceal the hump. Instead, the daisy looks like it’s growing out of a crag.

Eyes:
It takes me an hour to get my contact lenses in. I can’t figure out which is the wrong and which is the right side. And I need my glasses to see the contacts as I am putting them in my eyes. Why do they make the contact lenses so flimsy, like phyllo pastry? It’s like putting a lambskin condom on a penis, which I would definitely need contacts for. Both have their rewards. Seeing. And seeing a hard penis.

Wisdom:
I hate people who say they like getting older because they have more wisdom. Fuck wisdom. Isn’t being stupid so much easier to deal with? You know what wisdom means to me? The undeniable knowledge that I’m going to die. Too much knowledge is wasted at my age.

No matter how many years I’ve been driving, how much knowledge I have, I’m really bad at driving now. I’ve actually turned into one of those women who I used to make fun of. First of all, I’ve shrunk. So my five-foot-three frame (which is still nothing to brag about) is now five foot one. When I drive I’m hunched over the steering wheel, all the way forward, with my head just barely seen above the wheel. When I make a signal, I move my head so much in every direction to see if there is an oncoming car that I look like a Muppet. I’m
the stereotype of an older driver, anxious, impatient, slow. Yelling at cars, not good at directions, not wanting to drive at night. I cannot tell you how many times I make a wrong turn during the day. I was never good at directions, but now I’m worse even with the navigation system I have had installed. I can’t program it. I need tech support just to get in the car.

Memory:
I don’t have one. Although my memory now is better than it was at the beginning of menopause and for that I’m grateful. Those were hideous years. Covered in sweat. Unable to remember my sister’s name. Now I’m cold all the time. Fortunately, I love knitting. So that’s nice. It gives me a project. Makes me feel useful and warm. Keeps my arthritic fingers moving. It enhances my eye health. The sweater I’m making covers my skin tags. Knitting is good. Knitting is this sixty-five-year-old’s best friend.

Gratitude:
Anyway, my body. Here’s what I’m grateful for. I’m healthy, my insides seem to be working, and most of what makes me feel old no one else can see.

So, I’m gonna make the most of what I have. I’m going to use my new eyebrow pencil, which cost a reasonable $48, to draw in some lovely eyebrows. I’m going to put a hat on my wiry curls and gloves on my arthritic fingers. I’m going to put on some loose-fitting sweatpants. And I’m gonna go out for a run. Then I’m going to loudly and gleefully pass gas each time my Nikes hit the ground. The body is a terrible thing to waste.