I’d even throw in my Edith Prickley hat.
Birthdays
May 4 is my youngest son’s birthday. As is customary, this year I bought him way too much and flew him round trip from Toronto to New York for a jam-packed, fun-filled, overly indulgent weekend. I bought him theatre tickets, wined and dined him at his favourite restaurants, slipped him some cash, and bent over backwards to honour his special day. I made his bed, bought him clothes, cooked for him, and never let him touch a dirty dish. I came very close to putting him in the bath and splashing him with bubbles. A bonded slave. What a martyr I am.
While he was opening his gifts, I asked him if he could remember his favourite birthday party over the years. He thought for a while, then said, “No, not one really stands out.” I flashed back over all the years. Years of plastic cowboys on cakes, Chuck E. Cheese’s outings, Disneyland, Knott’s Berry Farm, sleepovers for way too many boys, pool parties where I worried all night that someone would drown, Jacuzzi parties where I worried all night that someone would pass out, and then once, one kid actually did. (Thank God his mom was a close friend or I’d still be dealing with a heavy lawsuit.) Years of making small talk with parents as the kids arm-wrestled in the backyard, in the living room, on their beds, in the garage, on top of the car, and inside the trees. Years of bulk buying at Costco. Years of winning my son’s approval. Did our family throw the best birthday party? Was the $50 videogame that each kid received in his bag of goodies a lovely parting gift, or a desperate, tacky plea for love and acceptance?
Birthdays. I tried to recall one of mine. And only two stood out. My twelfth, when Mark Finks, the freckled, redhaired Jewish boy who I had had a crush on for one year, finally kissed me, and my fiftieth, when one of my close male friends came to my party as a woman. He had just written to all his friends, his wife, and their two kids that he had been living a lie for fifty years. He had felt like a woman all his life, and he was finally going to have the operation to be one. My party was his first public outing. I was honoured that he felt safe enough with me to know he would not be judged, even with his stuffed bra, painted nails, and long, blown-out blonde hair.
Other than those two birthdays, every one is a blur. The routine dinners. The occasional family gatherings. These days, the trend among my wealthy friends is to throw elaborate birthday parties, renting a fabulous space in New York, hiring an orchestra, having original music written to commemorate their life, inviting top celebrities to sing about them in front of 250 of their closest friends, and paying hundreds of thousands of dollars for the memory.
At Sarah Jessica Parker’s extravagant black-tie party at the Plaza Hotel, the women wore ball gowns, the men wore white tails, and twenty violinists serenaded us as waiters handed out buckets of caviar, lobster, and champagne. Then we all sat down for a six-course meal. At my darling Nathan Lane’s black-tie dinner at the Rainbow Room, Mel Brooks, Elaine Stritch, Patti LuPone, and Matthew Broderick all performed. At Jane Fonda’s sixtieth birthday extravaganza, Ted Turner, her husband at the time, gave her a cheque for a million dollars. Okay, yes, it would be hard to forget those birthdays. But even if I had an unlimited budget, I don’t have that many friends. Twenty-five people in the Rainbow Room is pathetic.
My son is right. Not one of his birthday parties really stands out. In spite of all the hard work, the planning, the organizing, the gifts and gift bags, the entertainment, the money spent, the fretting over what would be the perfect party, I remember the details of only one: 8:31 a.m., May 4, 1983, St. Mike’s Hospital, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Dr. Wilfred Steinberg delivered our beautiful son, Joseph Martin Dolman, in natural childbirth, no complications. Weight: seven pounds, twelve ounces; length: twenty and a half inches.
Happy birthday, Joe. That day I will never forget.
Dating #1
In 1991, I was a single parent with two young sons, ages six and eight. All my friends were married or were in relationships, and they constantly pressured me to date.
“Why aren’t you dating? Why aren’t you dating?”
I had no time for anything, least of all dating. But they persisted.
“Why aren’t you dating? Why aren’t you dating? You’re attractive, you dress well, you’re in show business. Hell, you had your own sitcom for two or three episodes. Why aren’t you dating? Why aren’t you dating?”
One morning, frustrated at the never-ending barrage of questioning, I sat down at my desk. This is the rant that followed.
Why Aren’t I Dating?
Why aren’t I dating? Why aren’t I dating? Here’s a typical day in my life. You be the judge.
(To be read without pausing.)
I get up at 5:00 a.m. I pour myself a cup of coffee, which is set the night before to brew at 4:45. I listen to my Deepak Chopra tape to release the powers of creativity and compassion within me. I open my chakras, I bless my toaster, I bless my ex-husband because if I don’t the resentment will kill me, I breathe, I try on my jeans, I take off my jeans. I drink another cup of coffee. I walk around the block for a half an hour. I lift a couple of weights. Get the kids up. Make the kids breakfast. Help them with their homework, which they should have done the night before but I let them watch four hours of television instead because I’m a single parent and I’m guilt-ridden. I bluff my way through US history. I lie and say that Florida is one of the original colonies. I don’t know. I never knew.
“Mom, Florida isn’t one of the original colonies. What’s the point of learning anything if you forget it when you’re old?”
“Just suck back those Froot Loops,” I say, “we’re leaving in ten minutes, and call your father if you wanna know about history. Ask him about the date he left me.”
I have another cup of coffee, I pack the kids’ lunches. Wash the dog’s bowl, the cat’s bowl. I read aloud from the New York Times to secretly test the kids on their vocabulary. They know nothing. We’re spending $30,000 a year on private education and they know nothing. Oh sure, they’ve been taught how to express their feelings. “Mom, don’t humiliate me!” They just don’t know how to spell it.
I breathe, I try on my jeans, I take off my jeans, put on my sweatpants, load the kids into the car. Pick up another two kids. Drive in traffic for thirty-five minutes. Drop them off at school. “I love you boys! Have a great day!” Nothing. No response. A grunt. I blow them a kiss and they give me the finger. I put gas in my Isuzu Trooper, which I am driving because my Mustang convertible was stolen at gunpoint in front of my house. I stop at Starbucks. The woman in front of me orders a grande non-fat free-pour extra-hot no-lid cap. I say to myself, That can’t be better than a goddamn cup of coffee. I drive back home. It’s only 7:45.
I burn some incense. Ommmmmmm, I chant. I try on my jeans again. They still don’t fit. I confirm the orthodontist appointment. The saxophone lesson. Cancel my massage because there’s a conflict with my boys’ baseball game, and I’m in charge of snacks so I have to be there. I plan tonight’s dinner: chicken piccata in a pita and rice pudding. Possibly a fruit on the side. I read somewhere that a child has less chance of becoming a serial killer if you sit as a family and have dinner. I call my agent. He’s in a meeting. I call my manager. She’s in a meeting. I try on my jeans again. They still don’t fit. I wear them anyway! I drive for two hours into the city for an audition for the voice of a spoon, which I don’t get. They go with a blonde—go figure. It’s not even noon. I’m hungry, angry, lonely, and tired. Why aren’t I dating? If Brad Pitt came up to me and asked me out right now, I’d say, “Fuck you, asshole! Go inside and wash your hair!”
Dating #2
In 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.
Lady Parts Page 4
