Lady Parts (5 page)

I
n 2003, I was
still
single. I decided to join an online dating service. I really thought I was going to meet my soulmate after one email exchange and suddenly find myself on the top of a mountain in Hawaii, making out with this guy in a bathtub like I was in a Cialis ad. Cialis, for erectile dysfunction. What the hell are those commercials saying? A guy can drag a bathtub up a three-thousand-foot mountain, but his penis he can’t raise six inches? Anyway, after a month of obsessively checking my inbox, pardon the expression, I terminated the contract.

The truth was, I liked being single. I liked my freedom, I liked coming and going as I pleased. I had two full-grown sons who were finally out of the house, which meant I had a lot of free time to sit by the phone, waiting for them to call. Would it have killed them to pick up the phone once in a while? Had they forgotten they had a mother? Who did they
think paid for the bar mitzvah? Why am I talking like this? I’m not even Jewish. This was the kind of message I left for them once a week: “Hi, boys! It’s your mother. ANDREA MARTIN! We met while I was raising you. I thought we really hit it off. Listen, if you aren’t presently seeing
another
mother, would you give me a call?” It was obvious I had to get a life outside of my children.

And then this happened.

His name was Terry. He was twenty-eight. I was fifty-seven. We fell in love.

Other than the time we went shopping together at Club Monaco, where the salesperson asked, “Would your son like to try on the khaki pants?” no one much commented on our age difference. And by “much commented,” I mean to my face. Everyone seemed happy for me. God knows what was said behind my back, what conversations were struck up at Bar Centrale, an after-hours hangout for the Broadway elite. I’m sure many jokes were told at my expense among my close and loving friends. I mean, how could they help themselves? The twenty-nine-year age difference was comedy gold.

In spite of that, I knew my friends were relieved that I had finally met someone. Even my sons, now in their twenties, were encouraging: “Mom, you two seem sweet together.” “Good for you, Mom.” “Who cares how old he is as long as you’re happy.” Somewhere deep inside, they must have felt
the burden of being my sons, my confidantes, my everything, was finally being lifted. They didn’t have to take care of their mother and her feelings anymore. They could have their own lives and not feel guilty that their mom was alone.

Of course, I pretended I had a life. Little did they know that I was home alone, talking to myself, rearranging pillows on the couch, pacing around the living room in my bathrobe, checking my emails compulsively. And knitting. Constantly knitting. For them. In case it ever snowed in Santa Monica, California, and they needed thirty-eight handmade, worsted-wool fisherman-knit sweaters to keep them warm.

But back to Terry. My beautiful twenty-eight-year-old lover. And he was beautiful. Six foot five. Trim, handsome, muscular, an accomplished athlete. Graduated from an Ivy League school. Dear, kind, earnest. An aspiring actor.

We met while performing in a play together in Boston. It was his first acting job. Or to use the more current jargon, the first time he had ever been “booked.” (I hate that word. Every time I hear an actor say, “I just got booked,” I cringe. There is something so inherently ugly about this concept. Actors are artists, creative, fluid beings. Not petty criminals. Actors, show some self-respect, goddamnit.)

In any case, the play in which we had both been (booked) was a Christopher Durang comedy, in which I had the lead. I paid little attention to Terry other than to be polite. As the self-appointed Grand Dame of Legitimate Theatre, I was
busy mentoring the entire cast with my upbeat personality and professional work ethic. Basically, I was way too self-involved to notice anyone, least of all this novice actor.

It had been fourteen years since I had dated anyone. During this time I hadn’t even fantasized about falling in love. I’d given up on having a relationship. I believed the dating part of my life was over. I convinced myself that the one-night stands, the affairs, the orgies I had had in the ’70s and ’80s were more than enough for a lifetime. Hooking up with someone at this point was just plain greedy. And I was scared. In the fourteen years since I had been sexually active, so much had changed.

For instance, the use of condoms had become the norm. Not that I was unfamiliar with condoms. I remember experimenting with every kind of contraceptive when I was in my twenties and thirties, and always came back to the Trojan 4× Lambskin, I think they were called. They were very sheer and sticky and difficult to manoeuvre. They were packaged in a blue plastic cylindrical tube. You had to break open the seal by pulling the two ends of the cylinder apart. Most of the time, the seal wouldn’t break, so you’d have to hit it on a table to loosen it, or use your teeth to pry it open, and eventually the tube would come apart, but by then it would be impossible to get it on a flaccid penis.

Another thing that had changed drastically in the fourteen years since I had dated was the hair on a woman’s vagina. There wasn’t any, or if there was, it looked like a
landing strip of five sparsely cropped hairs. I still looked like an African bush woman down there. This new look on young women seemed aggressive and unwelcoming, like sleeping on pavement when you could be sleeping on grass.

I was clearly out of the sexual loop.

After six weeks in Boston, we finished the run of the play. Terry had been attentive, respectful, and professional. He never overtly flirted with me, or maybe he did but I was unaware. After our final performance, he came into my dressing room to say goodbye. He thanked me for everything he had learned while working on the play, and then said shyly, “I hope we get to see each other again.”

“I’m sure we will,” I said matter-of-factly. “You’re so talented, and I know you’re going to have a long career.”

Terry continued. “Would you like to get a drink sometime? Can I call you when we get back to New York?”

“Terry, are you asking me out?”

“Yes,” he said, “I find you very attractive.”

“Dear God, I’m old enough to be your mother.”

Terry reassured me. “I don’t think of you that way.”

“Oh, okay.” I compulsively lined up my lipsticks while no longer making eye contact with Terry. He kept staring at me. Was it my turn to speak? I could no longer feel my body.

“Sure, well, sure, that sounds good, I mean, fun, sure, I’ll call you. I have to go to Los Angeles for work, but I’ll be back, and yes, coffee. Or a drink, or some food, or something would be good, why not? Call me, or I’ll call you. I
mean, okay, if you really want to. Sure, that sounds like it could be fun.” I wrote down my number for him. Terry left the dressing room. I stood there, giggling uncontrollably. The giggles then turned to tears, the tears turned into giggles, and then, frozen in front of the dressing-room mirror, I devoured an entire box of Godiva chocolates.

After I returned from LA, a week later, Terry called me. He left messages that I played a hundred times, to myself, to my girlfriends. Terry, calm, genuine, confident. Andrea, nervous, shut down, insane. For weeks I made excuses as to why I was too busy to get together with him, until I finally got up enough nerve and asked him to my home. I didn’t have any alcohol in the house. I’d stopped drinking fourteen years before. As much as I needed a bottle of vodka at 8 p.m., Wednesday, September 14, 2003, I made two cups of peppermint tea for yours truly, Miss Havisham, and her twenty-eight-year-old date.

Terry sat on the couch, and I, too scared to sit next to him, sat on the floor. We talked for a very long time. And then Terry asked if he could kiss me.

“
What?
Oh wow, kiss me? Gosh, I don’t know, wow, kiss me, gee … Can I have a minute to think about that?” I walked into the kitchen, held on to the stove, counted to ten, and returned. “Okay, I’m ready, ask me again.”

“I think we’ve lost our window of opportunity,” he said.

“Oh, I’m so sorry. It’s just been so long, and I’m so nervous, and I’m out of practice.”

Terry stopped me. “Why don’t we try this again another night and see how we do?”

“Sure,” I said, “that would be great.” I walked him to the door. He hugged me. It was nice, and awkward, as awkward as you can imagine a thirteen-inch height difference might be.

The next day, I went back into therapy. Ilona, my therapist, was encouraging. She saw nothing wrong with the age difference between Terry and me. She thought it was important for me to keep myself open to this new experience, however it turned out. She coached me. I took notes. We role-played. I felt prepared.

Terry and I had our second date, at my apartment, the following week. Again I made tea, but this time I sat on the couch
with
him, per Ilona’s instructions. I’d rehearsed what I was going to do: kiss him when the moment was right. I wasn’t listening as Terry talked. All I kept thinking was
Is this the right moment?
I had to strike while the iron was hot. I closed my eyes, leaned in toward him, and with the strength of Zeus and the charm of Medusa, I planted my mouth on his.

Terry was not thrown off guard but instead kissed me back tenderly. He held me close to him. We kissed for hours. We never took our clothes off. We rolled around on the floor and kissed some more. Hours and hours, holding, kissing, laughing. Me, a sober fifty-seven-year-old mother of two grown sons, in the arms of the dearest, most caring twenty-eight-year-old.

It didn’t occur to me at the time that this relationship couldn’t last. In the moment, in all the moments we had together, we were perfect. We dated for three months before we made love, another order from my therapist. In that time, we got to know each other, and out of that knowledge came trust. Terry waited patiently for “the day.” We both agreed to take tests for sexually transmitted diseases, which came back negative. We were free to experience intimacy, and make love without having to break open a blue plastic cylindrical tube.

I think the first thought that pops into anyone’s mind when they see a younger man and an older woman in a relationship is
What do they have in common? What does he see in her? How does she relate to him?
Terry and I were both innocents in many ways. Stuck in the same time zone. I had stopped growing emotionally by acting out in my twenties. And Terry, in his twenties, had a lifetime ahead of him to grow. He came into my life when I was ready to accept love. I came into his life when he was ready to give it.

After almost a year together, the relationship ended. It was inevitable. Eventually, the romance died down and the realities of a twenty-nine-year age difference appeared. Terry wanted to have children. And even though I fantasized about being pregnant at fifty-eight by carrying an egg from a donor fertilized by Terry’s sperm, I knew we were meant to go our separate ways.

I was heartbroken when it ended. For one thing, having
sex while sober and present is powerful, and it created a profound bond between me and Terry. And I loved him. He was decent and kind. We had fun together. Terry wanted to remain friends. I needed time apart from him. I knew that one day we would reconnect.

I didn’t sign up for a long-term relationship when I met Terry. My therapist made sure of that.
Stay in the moment. You’ll know when it’s time to move on.
It took me two years to get over Terry. Two years of reading poetry by Mary Oliver, two years of mourning over this young man.

I saw Terry again, four years after our relationship ended. He’d been “booked” in a play on Broadway, and I went backstage to say hello. He told me he was married and had a son. It’s what he always wanted. Just recently I heard that he moved to Los Angeles and had given up acting. He’s a fireman now. I love that. I hope he’s happy.

As for me, I’m open to love again. I pray it doesn’t take another fourteen years. But if it does, I still have several alpaca sweaters to knit for my sons.

O
n an April morning in 1992, at 10 a.m. in broad daylight, I was held up at gunpoint in front of my house in Pacific Palisades, California. Pacific Palisades is a sought-out and, for most people, financially prohibitive, affluent neighbourhood snuggled between the more trendy Malibu and the diversely populated Santa Monica. It is serene, relaxed, and beautiful, if you’re a Stepford Wife. Families with children love it. Little leagues abound. The air is clean because of the proximity to the ocean. There are churches on every street corner, and AA meetings in the corners of every church. But seldom do you
see a person outside walking anywhere, or for that matter, outside at all.

I had just driven home after hiking for an hour and had parked my red Mustang convertible on the street in front of my house. I sat in my car while I listened to a pop song on the radio. I can’t remember the exact song now, but I’m sure it was about a breakup, and it was sad and schmaltzy, the kind of gut-wrenching song I can listen to for hours. Don Henley’s “Heart of the Matter” comes to mind. Whatever it was, I was singing along at the top of my lungs, drowning out my sorrows because of my own recent depressing breakup with a young and heart-stoppingly adorable boyfriend, and didn’t notice a car had pulled up a few feet in front of mine. When I finally did look up, I saw a well-dressed young man, maybe eighteen or twenty years old, walking slowly toward me. He was smiling and seemed friendly. His companion waited by their car.

He approached my open window.

“Hi,” I said cheerfully, like the spokesperson for the Pacific Palisades chamber of commerce. “What can I do for you on this fine day?”

“I like your car,” he replied.

“Well, thank you,” I said. “I like it too.”

“I really like your car,” he continued.

“Well, thank you. That’s so nice of you to say.” I was about to ask him into my house so I could draw him a map to the dealership when I sensed something was wrong.

I started to close the window, and as I did, the man pulled
out a gun. He stuck it through the opening and pointed it toward me, a few inches from my head.

“Get out of the car,” he said.

“What?” I said.

“Get out of the car,
now.
”

Wait a minute. This is crazy,
I thought.
Why is he raising his voice at me? What’s going on? What have I done?
I was just being friendly, and now I was about to be on the evening news, the local evening news, but how bad could that be? I was in show business, after all, where any PR was good.

The young man held his gun to my head as he motioned to his buddy, who then menacingly walked toward us.

It was like a scene out of
CSI
or
Law and Order
:
SVU
or any of those episodic crime shows that I had never been cast in but had watched enough to know that had
I
been hired to play the girl in the Mustang convertible, my guest star arc was about to be over. These guys were not house hunting in the Palisades. They were not out for a morning drive. They were not lost. They did not need directions to the nearest Gelson’s to buy chicken tenders and barbecued ribs. They were not selling chocolate bars to raise funds for their high school prom.

They wanted my car and, it seemed, were willing to kill me to get it.

I opened the door calmly and stepped out, and as I did, I noticed my Starbucks grande latte on the dashboard.

“Excuse me,” I said politely. “Would you be kind enough to hand me that cup of coffee? I don’t want it to spill all over my leather seats.” That morning before my hike I had
taken my Mustang to the Palisades car wash, where it was hand-cleaned and polished. “Detailed” in car-wash speak. It looked brand new, the tires sparkling, the dashboard smelling like California lemons just picked from a neighbourhood tree. It made me sick to my stomach to think that in a matter of minutes, my seats would be stained and soiled by my freshly brewed Ethiopian dark roast.

Shockingly, the gun-toting but accommodating car thief opened the door and obediently handed me my lukewarm skim latte. It was then that I saw my purse in the passenger seat. The next two hours flashed before me. I thought of all the phone calls I would have to make to cancel my numerous credit cards and the multitude of irritating recordings I would have to bypass in order to talk to a real human being, and likely not one with a compassionate ear. Then I’d have to phone and muddle through the bureaucracy of the Department of Motor Vehicles to reapply for a new driver’s licence, even though, in a matter of minutes, I would no longer need one.

“I’m sorry to disturb you, sir,” I said. “Can I ask you one more thing? Would you mind giving me my pocketbook? It’s right beside you.”

At that point, the second obliging hoodlum handed me my purse as he jumped into the passenger seat. Someone had taught these boys manners. I stood holding my latte in the middle of the street in the upscale neighbourhood of the Palisades, and before the director could yell “Cut!” they were off. Yes, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid sped
away in my red Mustang convertible and disappeared over the horizon forever.

It was 10 a.m., not a soul was to be seen, no witnesses to the crime, in this godforsaken ghost town. I ran into my unlocked house. I called the police. They arrived a few minutes later.

I told them the entire story. They said I was lucky that I had not been shot.

“Never ever engage in conversation with a person with a gun,” the officer instructed. “You should have given them what they wanted and not said a thing. You were too trusting and naive. That was a stupid thing to do. You’re lucky to be alive.”

That afternoon I had all the locks to my house changed and a $2,000 alarm system installed. I used it responsibly for a couple months but never learned how
not
to set it off every time I opened a window, so I stopped using it completely.

My Mustang was found a few weeks later in south-central Los Angeles during the Rodney King riots, stripped of anything that could be sold. The young men—not experienced thieves, the cops had told me—had followed me to my home, where they had planned to steal my car, and then had taken it for a joyride and abandoned it. There was nothing left of the car to salvage. It was beyond repair.

Over the years, I have shared this story with a few people, and the first thing they say to me, surprisingly, is not “Thank God they didn’t kill you” but “Never buy a red car. You’re a moving target, for both thieves
and
cops.”

The next car I bought was an Isuzu Trooper. It was red. I
couldn’t help myself. Until I sold it, though, I stayed under the radar. No traffic violations, nor was I ever held up at gunpoint again while someone helped himself to my shiny SUV.

I loved my Isuzu Trooper. It was a roomy, robust, family car and functioned for many years as a carryall for my two growing sons. After my Mustang was stolen, I settled into being a practical mom with a practical car. The days of driving up the coast of Malibu alone in my sexy red convertible when the kids were in school, my hair blowing in the wind, me wailing along with Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody”—those beautiful little escapades were over. That terrifying incident robbed me not only of my Mustang but also of the youthful exuberance that went with owning it.

I live in New York and Toronto now. I no longer have a car. When I visit my sons in Los Angeles, I rent one. I always rent a convertible. Of course, I ask if they have a red one, but they always seem to be out. I load the boys, now in their thirties, into the car and we drive up the coast, laughing and singing and having a glorious windblown time. In fact, no matter what’s going on in my life or theirs, the convertible has always provided us with an instant bond, and an intoxicating distraction.

I miss my car. I miss my youth. I miss being a naive, free-spirited mom.

But I’m grateful. As the cops said, I’m lucky to be alive … but never more alive than when I can get behind the wheel of a red Mustang convertible, pack up all my troubles in an old kit bag, and drive, drive, drive.