I arrive at the store and start to panic. I don’t see my Genius anywhere and I fear he has taken my computer through some kind of unconventional protocol and it will never be the same. But then I catch his eye as he emerges from behind an Apple paneled door and I break into a sweat. Is it a hot flash? Oh, God. But no, it’s something else. I have fallen in love with AuDum Genius. The story of his affection for his mother, coupled with my being totally dependent on whoever can repair what has become my most essential appendage, has endeared him to me.* He smiles and I can see he’s wearing that same headband and his hair might be a little greasy, but his nails are filed and the teeth are good. The teeth are good, I assure myself. I can live with that.
I’m not on the appointment list projected on the Apple screen, but he motions me over to the Genius Bar. I stride ahead, pushing through the pain from a recent tennis injury so my limp will go unnoticed. (“Recent” meaning five years ago, when I twisted my right ankle playing tennis and the orthopedist told me I had “boomeritis.”*) I sit attentively as AuDum resuscitates my hard drive and reveals more about himself. It is our second date, after all. He studied urban planning. He likes to sketch and takes on small graphic-design gigs because there’s a dearth of work in his field. He shares an apartment with two roommates and he is thinking of going to Norway, where there might be better employment opportunities.
“You should do that. It’s the perfect time in your life to have an adventure. If it doesn’t work out, you can chalk it up to ‘things I did in my twenties,’” I tell him, his head buried in my device. “I have twenty-three years of experience on you, so I know what I’m talking about,” I add with authority. I have now announced my age. He’s a Genius, so he might have figured it out already, but he doesn’t say, “You look young for your age,” which I decide to let pass without comment, even though I have read that Geniuses are supposed to make the customers feel warm and welcome in the store and that would be the warmest and most welcome thing to say.
He’s typing in codes and waxing on about which cities have the best infrastructures and I am fantasizing about his possible Wikipedia entry: After AuDum Genius met Annabelle Gurwitch [we have the same initials—we can share monogrammed luggage and towels], he began his innovative and transformative design work. But I know that’s a stretch. I don’t have the money to become his patron. I would love to be his Peggy Guggenheim; alas, the best I can aim for is to be his Mrs. Robinson.*
This idea has nothing to do with my actual marriage, though I have started to suspect that the timbre of my husband’s burp has been specifically calibrated to annoy me. More than half of our communication revolves around who will volunteer first to pick up our kid, our dinner, or our sex life. If you were to catch a glimpse of my face during the throes of passion, you might mistake my expression for that of a bartender at four a.m., shaking her last martini—one who enjoys her work and wants to please every customer, but is also relieved her shift is ending soon.
All of which is to say that we’re in the middle of our marriage. I have come to appreciate that there are some great things about the middle of a marriage. The way neither of us understands flavored coffees or movies where people exchange bodies, and no matter how angry we are, we’ll stop in the middle of an argument to watch our cats do something cute. But middles can be thankless. Beginnings are always exciting, even if in a car-crash/impending-disaster way. Endings, even heart-wrenching ones, can be energizing. Friends who have gotten divorced go on diets and dates. Even when those end badly they make for good stories.
The historical precedent for the kind of female May-December fling I’m considering isn’t great, especially if you’re looking for something long-term. In fiction, it doesn’t end well for Emma Bovary, Countess Olenska, or Mrs. Robinson, for that matter. Even Samantha’s infamously tireless libido in Sex and the City couldn’t forestall the inevitable breakup with her hunky blond boy toy Smith.
I also hate the term “cougar.” There isn’t a name for men who date younger women; it’s just considered normal. I do have girlfriends who have booty calls with younger men, and one friend who, after two divorces and three children, is happily dating a woman ten years younger. Another, also divorced with kids, leads sex tours of Paris for women who, as she advertises on her website, have already “married, divorced, cut our hair off, and reinvented.” All of that sounds positively exhausting to me. I had plenty of random sex in my twenties and thirties.
I have held a special fantasy for one of my exes. He’s the path not taken. A tall, remote, Italian Catholic heartbreaker, the polar opposite of my five-six, adoring Jewish husband. That he dumped me unceremoniously, by all accounts is happily married with kids and has never once in twenty years reached out to me hasn’t stopped me from daydreaming about the call or email imploring me to run away with him. That is, until I ran into him in a restaurant this year. He looked weathered but still had his rakish swagger. We embraced, but before the shock of this reunion could even register as sexual tension, he began recounting the details of his recent hip-replacement surgery.
Dear God, I just want one night of Genius sex before I hit the half-century mark.
But where would we do it? At his apartment? No. There might be hairs of unknown provenance on the soap, black towels, and sheets that haven’t been changed recently. Plus, one of his roommates might be there, and no one can witness this act.
My house? No. What if he accidentally puts on one of my kid’s T-shirts, strewn around the house as they are? We also have kid artwork hanging everywhere and it just seems wrong that we would sneak by the watercolor rendering of a dinosaur pooping as we head into the bedroom. On top of that, my menopausal brain fog makes it impossible to keep schedules straight, so there is a good chance I would pick an inopportune moment to hook up and AuDum would arrive just in time to witness our nightly ritual of haggling with our teenager over homework versus Internet time. But there’s another big problem, and that’s the “ick” factor of having sex in the bed I share with my husband. That didn’t seem to bother California’s governor Arnold Schwarzenegger when he had an affair with his housekeeper, whom he probably asked to make said bed afterward. Plus, at any given moment, a pair of Spanx might be crumpled in a ball at the foot of our bed, a tube of hormone replacement cream on the nightstand, or one of the many pairs of tweezers I hide around the house might have migrated under a pillow. Our bedroom is a minefield of erection killers—just ask my husband.
Cannot go to a cheap hotel. A cheap hotel does not figure into this or any other fantasy I have at this age. It will need to be pricey. I really can’t afford an expensive destination, but it’s the only way. Yes, I’ll need to dip into our savings. Hopefully, I can write it off as a business expense, which it technically is. The business of getting old. Once I find the correct establishment, I’ll go up to the room first, and AuDum will need to wait for a brief interval to avoid being spotted by anyone I know. This will give me time to get ready, and I need it.
It’s been eighteen years since I’ve taken my clothes off in front of anyone other than my husband, my gynecologist and women in the locker room at the gym. I’ll really need two or three weeks, if not months, to get my body affair-ready. I will also need to purchase new undergarments. I own bras and panties that are nice enough for fifteen years of marriage, but fall under the category of “underwear,” and for an affair it will really need to be “lingerie.” Plus, I will need to get the full Brazilian, which I tried once when I was pregnant but it was so painful, I left it half done. My single friends tell me that bare is the new black for men, so I hope the computer gets repaired quickly, as I will need to start acclimating myself to the hairless penis through pornographic Internet surfing.
What will AuDum Genius and I talk about? Best not to let it slip how pissed off I am that my son is getting a C in PE and that he’s definitely not going to Ming-Na Davydov’s bat mitzvah if he keeps it up. Or that I need to get a mole that’s c
hanged shape checked on a part of my back that I can’t see, and would he check it? Safe topics might include movies or books, but not films about senior citizens falling in love at resorts in India, or anything with Meryl Streep, and no mentioning that I am currently reading a book titled Why Men Die First. I could suggest a late-night supper from room service, but he’d have to read the menu to me or I’d be pulling out my reading glasses. Note to self: Don’t say, “In my day” out loud. Also avoid “nowadays.” “Nowadays” is a touchstone used by aging persons to describe things that happened “in my day.” The word “touchstone” is also a touchstone for AARP territory. Talking is out. Drinking is better.
While I wait for him, I’ll put on mood music. Since he’s about the same age as my nephews, I should put on some dubstep, only I hate its incessant thumping sound. I’m sure it sounds good if you’re sucking on an Ecstasy pacifier at a rave in the desert, but I would rather have my spleen removed and filleted in front of me than be high in the middle of a sweaty crowd ringed by porta-potties. But if I put on something like Fleetwood Mac or, God forbid, Marvin Gaye, I risk dating myself. I’ve got it: jazz. Jazz has always been the perfect soundtrack for doing stupid things. But my son and his middle school band play all the standards, so jazz is off-limits.
A more pressing issue is, what’s the right position? I’m not comfortable with someone ogling my ass if I can’t observe the reaction, so doggie gets a thumbs-down. Missionary seems too same-old, same-old. It has to be something where I can achieve maximum attractiveness and get the most bang for my buck, so there’s really only one choice. Movie sex. Up against a wall. Glamour magazine calls it “Stand and Deliver,” while in the Kama Sutra it’s “Climbing the Tree.”
He leans into me, pressing my back hard up against the hotel wall. I tilt my face slightly upward, always a flattering angle, while his tongue traces the arc of my neck. The wall can be the perfect excuse for not completely disrobing; in fact, a wrap dress would be ideal, providing easy access while covering my posterior. He pushes the layers of my dress open and moves his hand up my thigh. I order him to take my panties off slowly so, as he kneels down, I’ll have time to reach for the small tube of vaginal lubricant I’ve hidden in the folds of the wrap dress and quickly insert a dollop. Balancing on my good ankle, I wrap my leg around his body as I reach for him, but I’ve forgotten about a condom. We could take the half-hour AIDS test and forgo it, because there’s no way I can get pregnant, but he can’t know that; it would take away an element of danger, so I hope he’s got one or the hotel can send one up quickly.
The only thing is, it’s really tough to get the up-against-the-wall thing to work—our heights have to be just right, and he’ll need a certain amount of upper-body strength, which he might not have developed working at the Apple store. I’ll also need to keep my right leg aloft. If I can find a hotel room that has a rock-climbing wall—we are in Los Angeles, after all—I could anchor myself on a foothold. Yes! I wedge my heel into a foothold a few feet off the ground and pull him inside me.
“You’re good to go.”
“Yes,” I whisper. “I mean, yes?”
His voice is louder than I expected. I look down and see that I’m gripping the counter tightly. My mouth feels dry and my heart is pounding when something soft brushes my arm. It’s a strand of hair. I snap my head to the right and see a girl with long straight brown hair. She is standing next to me at the counter. She’s dressed in typical California fashion: sneakers, tight gym pants, and hoodie. She’s a bit fleshy. She might even be pregnant. Her face is unmistakably young and fresh. Her skin is tan, tight, and creamy. She smells fertile.
“My next customer is here,” he says, rotating my computer so I can see the folder he’s created for my retrieved documents. He has named it “Old Annabelle.”
“What?”
“Listen, if you need anything else,” he says as he motions to another Genius, “Logan can take care of you.”
“But, but . . .”
He points to the Apple screen and then to the luscious girl. “I’ve got to move on.”
It falls to Logan Genius to move the items from the “Old Annabelle” folder into a new one that I’ve suggested we name “Vintage Annabelle.” With a swift click, the offending word disappears. I am careful not to engage Logan in any small talk.
As Logan wraps up with tips on how to keep my computer as good as new, I catch sight of AuDum heading toward the exit. His shift must be over. The Apple shirt is gone, a nondescript T-shirt in its place. Out of his uniform, he looks different. His pants taper down his calves and stop just above his ankles in a way I find unflattering on someone past puberty. He has a slight lilt to his gait, as if his feet aren’t solidly touching the ground. He gives me a little wave. It has a slightly reluctant quality to it. AuDum has sorted the clutter on my desktop, skimmed my documents and scanned through my most private emails. He knows everything about me there is to know without being intimate, but I can tell by the wave and his red high-top Keds that we will not be hooking up. AuDum leaves. I feel a bit sad but also extremely relieved.
AuDum goes home, heats up some ramen and takes out his sketchbook. He lies on his bed and starts to draw a woman. It’s a woman with brown hair. The brunette in the hoodie. He’s captured her inner glow. I have also made the picture. The side of my head hugs the corner of the frame, just out of focus. They will meet tonight for a drink. If that goes well, in two weeks they’ll be at a rave, dancing to dubstep, somewhere in the desert. I hope they don’t go and fall in love. After all, she might be pregnant and he really should move to Norway.
“Since you went away the days grow long, and soon I’ll hear old winter’s song.” I hear the sound of the walking jazz bass line coming from my son’s room. “But I miss you most of all, my darling, when autumn leaves start to fall.”
WHEN BROWN WAS GOING TO BE THE NEW BLACK
Dear God,
Please don’t let me blow my entire 401(k) on expensive moisturizers.
I’ve gotten dressed up. Dressed up to walk into a store.
I’ve assembled my most fashionable outfit to ensure that I will be treated with deference by people who are being paid to take my money. I’m wearing one of my corporate board meeting ensembles: a pinstriped wool skirt in chocolate, paired with a coffee-colored cashmere sweater. I purchased these investment pieces back when brown was going to be the new black and money was lubricated, back before everyone in America was vying for minimum-wage jobs just to stay underemployed. Two holes in the sweater are located at the waist, a small conciliatory gesture, perhaps, from the closet moths that are waging a war against my wardrobe. I have cleverly placed a belt over the offending area and am striding past the alluring displays of expensively packaged products hoping that the Krazy-Glued soles of my decade-old Miu Mius will hold for the brief amount of time it will take to run this errand. I have an entrance and exit strategy planned. It will be surgical, just like the U.S. involvement in Afghanistan.
I’ve come for a concealer. I’ve written down the manufacturer, product name and number so I don’t make a mistake and purchase the incorrect shade. This product not only promises to restore the under-eye area to a refreshing brightness, but dotted across my chin, it will serve to cover the stray broken capillaries and little bumps that I am loath to admit are, in fact, hair follicles. Hair has fallen out of the top of my head, but its cousins have migrated lower, taking up residence on the lower part of my face. It’s so unfair. But I know it’s not personal. Facial hair is an equal opportunity offender. I have, on more than one occasion at a red light, looked across traffic lanes and seen women driving BMW SUVs and Honda Accords alike checking for chin hairs. I’ve taken to hiding tweezers in handbags, in my husband’s car glove compartment, and in our earthquake emergency kit. My sister and I have also made a pact: if either of us should fall into a coma, we’ve pledged to pluck each other’s stray chin hairs while awaiting implementation of o
ur DNRs.
I approach the least intimidatingly attractive salesperson on the floor. She has a sweet, open, honest face, and she’s either Mexican or Eastern European. I can’t place her accent, because it’s hard to hear her voice over my inner monologue.
“I’ve got a list,” I repeat to myself like a mantra. “Stick to the list, stick to the list.”
But before I can stop myself, I’ve announced to her that I am turning fifty this year. The admission of my age is an invitation for her to tell me how great I look. This is terrible, because I know that she knows that the better she tells me I look, the more she’ll be able to sell me. This is a directly proportional equation that has played out with increasing frequency in recent months. Somehow, the phrase “You look great,” offered with a convincing amount of enthusiasm laced with a tone that suggests “. . . but it might not last,” is the currency that gains entry into my bank account.
Marte, maybe her name, tells me she’s forty-five. She confides that she has been using an amazing fruit exfoliant* that makes her skin glow and that she always gets compliments when she uses it.
“The one thing I don’t need is a scrub,” I say firmly. “But you look great.”
Now we’re the best of girlfriends, we compare diets, and although I regularly lie awake wondering whether the hormones I’m taking are speeding me toward an early demise or just slowly poisoning my inner organs, I’m speaking with authority when I say, “You really need to be taking both estrogen and progesterone, as well as massive doses of vitamin D and calcium.”
I See You Made an Effort: Compliments, Indignities, and Survival Stories from the Edge of 50 Page 2
