I See You Made an Effort: Compliments, Indignities, and Survival Stories from the Edge of 50

by Gurwitch, Annabelle

  It’s freezing in here!

  What would I be like if I didn’t have this hormone patch on what was once my bikini line?

  How can my boyfriend sleep so soundly?

  JUDITH:

  I think about what a fraud I am and what happens when I’m found out and whom I could entrust to take and destroy my computer in case of my impending illness and death.

  And then I play Scrabble.

  BRENDA:

  My mind lasers in on revising my living will’s medical directive. Since seeing the movie Amour I realize I need an ironclad agreement with someone.

  KRISTIN:

  I relive the scene when I confronted a friend who was sleeping with my husband . . . ten years ago.

  MARLA:

  I take my age and estimated life span and calculate how much time I have left on the planet. I try it with different combinations owing to various medical conditions, likelihood of automobile accidents and natural disasters and still get the same approximate answer—less time ahead than behind me!

  Will I ever have sex again, and why would God want to limit the amount of sex I have?

  I think about the wrongdoings of the traffic patrol and envision retribution for the two tickets I recently got. I could take that department down. Stage a Twitter campaign—write to John Stossel on ABC’s 20/20. He will want this story! I will become a hero to drivers nationwide.

  KATHLEEN:

  Why did I major in the humanities? I should have majored in the amenities.

  MEREDITH:

  I’m wondering what alternatives there are to elementary school for my kids. Wouldn’t it be way more educational and fun to travel around the world experiencing different cultures? Then I think that’s ridiculous—too difficult, too expensive. I should move to a farm or the mountains, where people are less cynical, but what would I do? I would be bored because I enjoy cynical people. Wait, I’m thinking crazy thoughts because I’m so tired. I should try to go back to sleep, but I’m thinking of all of the things I have to get done and then I’m irritated because I need to go back to sleep or I’ll be a wreck and I try to make my mind go blank. And that’s when I start playing solitaire.

  MICHELLE:

  I will never have hot sex again, or, let’s face it, even lame sex.

  I won’t remember anything funny that my kids ever said that I didn’t write down, because how could I ever forget that?

  What the hell did I eat? Because I have the most obnoxious farts, and I fan the covers so my husband may sleep through it and spare me the indignity.

  Will my kids ever aspire to more than landing a trick on a skateboard?

  ERIKA:

  I obsess on the man who done me wrong. I yearn for him. I stew over him. I imagine his head on the pillow next to me. I see the long curve of his back, I can hear him breathing. I imagine throwing my arm over him and running my fingers through his chest hair. I hear him saying, “Curl into me, baby.” I can see the crease where his bald head meets his neck and I can smell his neck and imagine laying my lips on his cool shoulder. I write letters to him that I will never send. I lecture him, grab his cock, kick him out, roll him over, cry all over him and beg him for more psychological abuse. I’m so riled up, I stagger over to the drawer where I keep my Ambien, bite one in half and swallow it. As I wait for it to rescue me, I may let my mind wander over to my empty bank account, my empty nest, my empty bed and the last episode of whatever TV show I’m obsessed with, and then . . . zzzzzzzz.

  JANE:

  I think about living only five to ten more years and missing Audrey’s high school graduation, Ellen’s first job, and not being a grandmother or being able to attend my daughters’ weddings.

  Was I a good mom? Was I a good wife? Why didn’t I enjoy more of the small things? How do I do that now?

  Why did I end up with two grade-two inoperable brain tumors? Reality sucks.

  I will get through this. I can do it. I can do it.

  SAMMY:

  I wonder if my son will be a genius or end up in prison—because anything other than those extremes does not occur to me. I wonder about my marriage and if it is worth having one at all, even though I love my husband (mostly). I wonder if I will die before my son is old enough to not be damaged by the death of a parent—although I am seemingly in fine health. I am haunted by dying polar bears and children in Haiti to the point that I think there is something wrong with me—I mean more than the obvious.

  I fantasize about what I would look like if I could afford a trainer and Botox.

  I wonder about God.

  ALI:

  I make lists and more lists. I make lists of the lists I need to make. I combine the lists and prioritize them into one master list, but I realize I’ve forgotten so many things that I start the whole process all over again.

  DEBBIE:

  I am so fucking exhausted by my life that I sleep like a drunken whore.

  Acknowledgments

  Every writer should be lucky enough to have an agent like Laura Dail of the Laura Dail Agency and the sly intellect and insight of an editor like Sarah Hochman. Immense gratitude to Bill Maher for introducing me to David Rosenthal and the Blue Rider posse, including Aileen Boyle and Brian Ulicky. Thank you to Mary Ann Naples, Seale Ballenger and Zola Books.

  Thank you to my tireless readers: Michelle Joyner, Maria Spiedel, Susan Norman, Ben Decter, Sascha Rothchild, Jillian Lauren and the brilliant Claudette Sutherland. S’loners: Sandra Tsing Loh, Nancy Rommelman, Erika Schickel, Amy Alkon and Samantha Dunn. Friends: Tonya Pinkins, Heather Winters, Annie Hamburger, Gia Palladino Wise, Christine Romeo, Judith Newman, Barbara Wright, Marla Englander, Lauren Frances, Heidi Levitt, Stephanie Black, Neil Weisberg, the late great Suzanne Krull and the members of the Four A.M. Club. Robin Shlien, for twenty-two years of friendship. Carina Chocana, Erika Rothschild, Janelle Brown, Heather Havrilesky and the Suite 8 Writers Room. Cathleen Medwick and More magazine. Felicity Huffman and WhattheFlicka.com. Marilyn Freidman and Writing Pad, LA. AKA Talent, Glenn Rosenblum, Kaplan/Stahler, and Andrew Farber Law. Thank you to my parents for giving me so many stories to tell. Thank you and love to the home team, my husband, Jeff, and our son, Ezra Kahn.

  About the Author

  Annabelle Gurwitch is an actress and the author of You Say Tomato, I Say Shut Up, a self-hurt marital memoir cowritten with her husband, Jeff Kahn, now a theatrical play in its third national tour; and Fired! Tales of the Canned, Canceled, Downsized, & Dismissed. Her Fired! documentary premiered as a Showtime Comedy Special and played film festivals around the world. Gurwitch gained a loyal comedic following during her numerous years cohosting the cult favorite Dinner & a Movie; her acting credits include Dexter, Boston Legal, Seinfeld, Melvin Goes to Dinner, The Shaggy Dog and Not Necessarily the News on HBO. Most recently, she starred in the adaptation of Grace Paley’s A Coney Island Christmas by Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Donald Margulies at the Geffen Playhouse. Live appearances include the New York Comedy Festival, 92nd Street Y, Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, and story salons in both New York and Los Angeles. She has served as a regular commentator on NPR and a humorist for TheNation.com. Her writing has appeared in More, Marie Claire, Men’s Health, the Los Angeles Times and elsewhere. Gurwitch is a passionate environmentalist, a reluctant atheist, and lives with her husband and son in Los Angeles.

  *I would never do this now, knowing that everything dumped in a sewer drains straight to the ocean, but it did feel great at the time.

  *I always wash my son’s fruit. It makes no sense, I know. I can’t explain this self-destructive behavior.

  *I am paraphrasing Stephen Cave’s book Immortality. I am very suspicious of this idea that your ancestors greet you in the afterlife. I’ve always envied other people’s families, and surely I’m not the only one, but you never hear, “And when I passed through the white light, there were the Millers, my old next-door neighbo
rs, waiting to greet me.” How come?

  *Though I made up my mind that if I ever decided to adopt triplets I couldn’t do better than those names.

  *It’s a good idea to write down the password before someone comes to your house to help you exit this world. If you don’t do it when you read the meditating chapter, do it right now—stop reading and do it, then email it to at least two friends. If you’re worried about hacking, write the passwords in a separate email from the account numbers. Have I done this? No, but don’t be like me—learn from my life!

  *I’ve been pining for a Cialis spot so I can get the Eli Lilly bigwigs to explain that enduring two-bathtubs mystery.

  *Larry Charles, a Seinfeld writer, is famous not only for his brilliant writing but for wearing pajamas to work. It was rumored that Mary-Louise Parker used to roam the streets of New York in the eighties in a leather jacket that had FUCK ME, I’M A STARLET written on the back—I hope that’s true; she’s always been a take-no-prisoners artist destined for stardom.

  *It’s worth noting that the snack food Funyuns has as much in common with an onion as a bar of soap. The main ingredient is cornmeal.

  *Except by Harry Shearer, who has hilariously given out Best Background Actor awards on his radio program, Le Show.

  *Piercings as well. I am certain there is a wide range of piercings under their clothing, though I’ve never asked for a visible inspection. Even when these women are fifty, there will be forty-year-olds who look visibly different from them—they will probably be tattoo-free.

  *The pink ribbon campaign to promote breast cancer awareness lost any credibility it might have had when KFC introduced the pink bucket, despite the fact that their chicken has been known to contain PhIP, a carcinogenic chemical linked to causing breast cancer.

  *And this was in Florida! No one told me that nothing is certain except death, taxes, and back fat.

  *A lot of research has come out recently about teenagers’ tendency to overestimate their future potential. Perhaps this optimism is needed in order to further the species. Which is why it also makes sense not to share too much about childbirth and aging with people so far from the experience that it would be too frightening for them to keep calm and carry on.

  *If I ran a dating service, I would require notarized tributes from at least two friends who’ve never been convicted of felonies from each candidate in the database.

  *I also anticipated that the Tea Party, the word “synergy,” and the popularity of kale would be passing fascinations.

  *Most of the people who hit the jackpot in Hollywood, if not everywhere, end up with a long list of family members to support: ne’er-do-well cousins, siblings who live in trailer parks and ex-spouses with large monthly overheads. They don’t need their friends to be on the gravy train; that’s why the famous seek out other, equally famous folks for friendship.

  *Only in L.A. would a freeway closure receive a nickname that connotes the end of the world!

  *I can only hope that my new insistence on always having flowers in our home is adding to the warmth of our place and not making it resemble an assisted-living facility.

  *And it’s even cheaper if you can afford to travel to have work done in the third world.

  *Right after I wrote this, the New York Times published the results of the first human study indicating that sunscreen prevents photo-aging. I’m so gratified that something I’m doing should prove useful.

  *According to those noted humanitarians, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, who lobbied and successfully killed what became known as the Bo-tax, a failed effort to balance the U.S. budget on the faces of American women, over half of the American women who seek plastic surgery earn between $30,000 and $90,000 a year.

  *That is something I imagine to be true, but I hopefully won’t be able to personally confirm for at least another thirty years.

  *I worked the door at exclusive nightclubs, and besides the cash salary, I walked away with an ability to recognize good shoes. I was taught that this was a reliable and quick way to assess our clientele. I’d say this doctor enjoys bespoke shoes from London and I’ve footed the bill.

  *A recent survey indicated that people who’ve had plastic surgery appeared to have shed only three years on average off of their age. Which three years, I wonder? Fourteen to seventeen were relatively breezy but I barely slept for the first three years of my son’s life and if I could reverse that damage, it might be worth it.

  *In UFO lingo, a close encounter of the first kind is seeing the UFO, the second kind involves some sort of interaction, the third kind is getting on the ship/pod mode of transport. It’s beam-me-up-Scotty territory.

  *I had the opportunity to interview an admissions officer on NPR about current standards at NYU. She assured me that with my grades, scores, and crying I would have absolutely no chance whatsoever of being admitted to the school today.

  *That performer, the multitalented Gayle Tufts, is now a prominent chanteuse in Germany.

  *My immediate goal became to get listed in the New York phone book. I thought you had to do something really great to get in there.

  *As a parent, when I see that movie, circa 1978, it doesn’t make sense that Dreyfuss would leave his kids behind without so much as a good-bye, but Steven Spielberg’s first child wasn’t born until 1985, which might explain that story point.

  *Nobody wanted those flyers. I would throw them in the trash and sit out the rest of my shift in an alley, crying and working my way through my dog-eared copy of Tess of the D’Urbervilles.

  *The question and exclamation marks are not my commentary; they are, sadly, part of the title.

  *Two months after that meeting, the papers are filled with the UBS two-billion-dollar trading scandal. This is the new, more transparent firm my guy has switched to.

  *Ironically, when the senders of chain mail went to the post office instead of the Internet, far fewer annoying missives were sent; at least it took some effort and the cost of a stamp to send that crap.

  *In February 2012, billionaire hedge-fund managers Bill Ackman and Dan Loeb entered into a billion-dollar wager on whether Herbalife is a pyramid scheme or a multilevel marketing business.

  *Statistics sadly report that is the most important determinant of success, though my husband and I like to say we’ve purposely middled out so at least he doesn’t have to worry about not doing as well as us, which can be a burden, too.

  *I resent the word “juggling” almost as much as I hate the word “entitlements.” As a younger person, you can find yourself happily juggling part-time jobs, relationships and belief systems. Whenever you employ the word “juggling” at this age, it’s code for “things I’m failing to do well,” in the same way that when politicians throw out the word “entitlements,” you know the implication is “things we don’t think you’ve earned.”

  *We live in a town where a service industry exists that offers friends, paparazzi and even rabbis for rent at a moment’s notice, but a work-for-hire spiritual leader might be a red flag. One can only hope that the same people available as instant paparazzi aren’t also the same ones who can bar mitzvah you.

  *There is a prominent humanist organization in the military now, Atheists in Foxholes, but I’m not sure about the quality of their snacks.

  *The day my son introduced me to six-second Vines as “the most entertaining things in the world” was when I started pricing llama farms.

  *I’ve been holding on to my Steely Dan and Crosby, Stills and Nash 8-tracks, thinking they might make a comeback someday. Last time I checked eBay, 8-tracks were listing for $6.50. I should have saved the vinyl. Wrong again!

  *In Western Europe, the decline of the euro is likely to push the retirement age to between seventy and eighty, and to think, only a few years ago, Greece was an ideal place to retire.


  *“Lengthening morbidity” has a catchy ring to it, no? No. It does not.

  *This division of labor never fails to remind me of how I’ve failed my own son by not having other siblings to share the responsibilities one day.

  *It’s really horrible that women who’ve just lost a breast have to then learn how to “milk” the drainage. Couldn’t they think of a name for this without the sorrowful connotation?

  *I have since found some drainage systems do come equipped with clips. I’m not crafty but it seems like a wound care system that requires sharp pins operated by someone who just had surgery and is on strong painkillers is a design failure.