Notes from the Void: …And just like that…

I know what you’re thinking—this is a Sex and the City thing, isn’t it? No, not really…well, maybe yes. Vaguely…in a way? In the sense of birthdays and oversharing, maybe a touch of glamour.  But back to birthdays…

 

 Me ages ago--one of my parents' favorite pics of me

A few days ago I overheard some women at the firm talking about how thirty was right around the corner. They were talking like it was so old. Like they never thought they would see the day THAT happened. It isn’t the first time I have seen people acting weird about thirty. A few years ago now someone I am Facebook friends with posted stating that with 30 looming, she needed people to brighten her day—to help her see what could possibly be good about it. That there was life after thirty. Quite frankly this shocked me. Obviously many of us in her timeline were over 30.  Did she see us all as dead? And why did I find her reaction so alarming?  Growing up, I remember my mother was 29 for years—it was a running joke.  Twenty-nine AGAIN!  I think she finally upped her age a bit when I turned 25. But the idea of 30 never really bothered me. Maybe it’s because, like Janine Turner’s character on Northern Exposure, I kinda always felt that I would come into my own in my 30’s.That it would  finally be MY time. With my cynicism, I felt like I’d always been in my 30s anyway. So there’s that. 

Although I will admit that there was this one time in law school when I was still 29 and one of the traditional law student guys (meaning he was on the three year plan and went right after undergrad, so a few years younger) was hitting on me, trying to make himself appear older by proffering that we should be including our 9 months in utero to our age, and feeling all proud of how it made him already the mature age of 26 over the 25 that he still was.  He apparently was completely oblivious to the fact that if he were adding the 9 months on, I would have to as well…and that put me over the 29 line into 30. I’ve known some guys that are really weird that way about age differences.  Even fairly minor ones.  I briefly dated this 20 year old lifeguard when I was 22 and he would not shut up about how much older and more mature I was.  Dude, really? TWO YEARS. 

Maybe the issue with the whole hitting 30 thing is the loss of the glamour of youth. We feel ourselves so far removed for youth by that time that we can no longer see ourselves as young. Maybe 30 is when we stop being the youngest of our friends, the youngest of our work colleagues.  We cling to those late 20’s, even though the cut off age for youth really seems more like 27. That seems like the age when AGE catches up to us. Your health insurance company certainly thinks so—they cover children on their parents’ health insurance policy through 26 now.  When I was in my 20’s the cut off was 23.

Maybe my lack of whelm over the 30 milestone was because I spent the better part of the first 30 years of my life in school. I took two years off after college working—first in North Boston, then back home before starting law school. I did the 3/4 time evenings approach to law school while working, so it took me four and a half years. Sometimes I marvel at how I was able to do it.  For the first three years I worked full time and went to law school 3 or 4 nights a week.  The last year and a half I worked for a GP as a legal assistant and had a job at a Wicca store in Noho on the weekends so I was still working pretty much full time…I get tired thinking about it.

The only actual plan I made education and work wise was that I wanted to pass the bar and have a job as an attorney by the time I hit 30 and I literally got in right under the wire. (I am not counting my desire to be Nancy Drew in my work plan here, though.  Maybe I should have.) I started a job as an attorney with less than one month to my 30th birthday. I’ve always worked better with a deadline. But with that first thirty years of my life devoted to educational pursuits, I imagine there might be some arrested development regarding other aspects of life. And so maybe 30 was the new 18 for me. Yeah, that’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

When Sex and the City came out on HBO, I wasn’t interested. It premiered that summer after I graduated from college and I wasn’t watching television, certainly not paying for premium channels anyway—I was struggling to make ends meet in a low paying customer service job in a very expensive city. Over the years it was on the air, I didn’t pay too much attention to it until toward the end of the show’s run. I think the show was in season six when I sat down to watch the first season. Which was fine with me. Television on DVD has allowed me the opportunity to marathon many a television show…and quite frankly I prefer it.  Getting to watch a couple seasons in a couple weeks (or maybe a couple days even) is like fast forwarding through the first two years of a relationship!  I’ve always said that if I could just fast forward a relationship to maybe that two year mark, I’d be fine.  It’s just that early part I hate. I remember going on a date in high school and the next day my best friend wanted to know all about how the date went.  She was literally more excited about my date than I was.  “Don’t you just love this part?  Where everything is new and you’re just so excited to find out what happens next?”—Or something to that effect—to which I said, “No. Not really.”

One of my best friends lived in New York City through much of the time the show was on the air and I heard a lot about how unrealistic the SATC storyline was. The show romanticized the life of a NYC op-ed writer. There is no way a woman in Carrie Bradshaw’s position could afford to live in an apartment in NYC, let alone have a closet full of Manolos. It is my understanding that while Candace Bushnell was writing the articles that would be the backbone of the first two seasons of the show she lived on friends’ couches in NYC.

 

Me last week. The tattoo is a semi permanent one I'm testing out.  
I've wanted one here since 1997.  It's already fading.

So there I was, years later caving in to peer pressure. Everyone at work was talking about it.  By that time I was closer in age to these characters—well, the early seasons anyway. Obviously as I aged, they got even older. I had also read the book by that time, that included all the articles Bushnell had published in one book, with an epilogue that added in what she had learned from the years of horrible dating and NYC life. It’s been a long time since I read it, but I remember the basic ideas—what the show initially seemed to be about—how was it that these women—attractive, professional, ambitious in their own ways, that seem like they would be perfect dating material, somehow wound up with the absolute worst dating experiences ever? How was it that they never could seem to find a person, and a relationship that worked? I remember the epilogue mentioning that what Bushnell realized through her trials and travails was that society pressured us (no surprise there…look at me watching this show)—told us that to be complete, to be successful, we needed to find that significant other and have a family and even though they rebelled against that, there was such a push by society that they still tried…well, sort of.  By the time the show was renewed for a third season, they had blown through all Bushnell’s material and started making their own—which changed the focus. Now everyone had significant others and the concerns became more about relationships and not so much about being single and dating…For me, the show lost something with the change.  

I am often at Barnes and Noble, and few years ago I remember seeing on one of the new release tables a book entitled Is There Still Sex in the City.  I had no idea Bushnell was writing a follow up. Since I liked the Sex and the City book, I considered giving it a try, but didn’t bother picking it up at that time. I finally read it very recently, to check out before watching the reboot of the series. I wanted to see how the book might be worked in.  If the show was going to be totally different than Bushnell’s actual experiences. After all Bushnell never married her Mr. Big. When he got married to the “Natasha” character, she realized that wasn’t what she wanted and moved on. Neither the show, nor the subsequent movies ever really moved on from Mr. Big. Kind of like how True Blood wouldn’t let the Bill/Sookie thing go, even though Charlaine Harris originally seemed to be all done with that storyline after the first three books. But I digress…

The first essay of Is There Still Sex in the City had me remembering what I loved about Sex and the City.  Unfortunately, I was out of love with it about half way through the second essay.  Sure there are certain writing style choices in which Bushnell partakes that I don’t particularly care for—like constantly giving nicknames and initialisms to things, but the problem I had with the essays in the book had more to do with the topics. Frankly they made me uncomfortable. Candace Bushnell was writing in this new book about life as a single person in her mid fifties. Yeah, not there yet. Not for a while. But hearing about the issues, the less than fun aspects of being in one’s mid 50’s, well—let’s just say that “they” say aging isn’t for the weak, and whoever “they” are, it sounds like “they” may have a point…

And that is the scary thing about getting older isn’t it? There are things we just don’t want to think about, let alone talk about or read about. Maybe after we are further through them (or maybe have become  more resigned to them) we are ready to talk about them—but who really wants to listen? Definitely not people clinging to some semblance of youth, wanting to believe they will never grow old and never die. That’s our biggest lie, isn’t it? We shut out what scares us so we don’t have to think about it. A whole culture that vilifies aging as the final weakness. If we don’t see it up close up and study how it relates to us, we can forget for a time that eventually it will find us, too.

I started reading The Woman Destroyed by Simone De Beauvoir, and I feel a lot of that reading this as well.  It figures that the first thing I would read of hers she wrote at 60, discussing problems of a 60 year old, and particularly the problems of a 60 year old writer.  Her writing is putting me at ill ease in a way that Eve Babitz’s Slow Days, Fast Company did not. And I suppose it makes sense—it is a lot easier to evaluate where we have been than try to understand where we are going.  A lot easier to see people having fun with excess, youth and beauty, than reading about someone who is struggling to break new ground after six decades of thinking in a certain critical way. Sure an understanding of what may be coming down the road might help you prepare for that inevitable future—but, well, can it really?  If we truly knew the future would it help us prepare, or would we just waist time worrying about it? 

I’m pretty sure I’d just spend my time worrying about it. Behold this essay.  We don’t particularly know the form the destructor will take, but we know it’s out there.  We choose to go about our daily lives not thinking about it. Not planning for it. Until we have to and then we act like it is some surprise. Some abstract concept we knew was out there and that we couldn’t hide from forever, but hey, we’ll give it a try anyway. Memento Mori, y’all. 

Carrie Bradshaw loves her pearls
and bling!  And so do I...I've always
been a weird combination of Carrie and 
Miranda...

But Yeah, I’m pretty sure I don’t want to know specifics. I can say that because of my track record in the category of pontificating on my own mortality through aging milestones. I blew the last few years of my 30’s living that. My first freakout came at 35 1/2.  My brother and I were in the bar at a local Olive Garden waiting for our parents to show up. Dad’s birthday was that weekend and we were all out for the occasion. I just remember my brother and I talking about getting older and mentioning that I was now officially closer to 40 than 30. That is when it hit me. Soon after that, every ache, every pain and I was on WebMD or at least Google looking up symptoms convinced that I was getting some horrible dread disease. Every year after that was just bringing me closer to that ominous 40 and each year I was more and more freaked out about it. I knew that it wasn’t like I was going to wake up in the morning on my 40th birthday and all of a sudden look like Estelle Getty. My entire life I’ve always looked young for my age. I was carded in the Spencer’s at the mall at 17 when I was looking for a birthday card with pictures of penises on it for a friend. “I’m sorry, you have to be at least 13 to look at those cards.” “Would you like to see my driver’s license?” I was carded at 26 going to see Queen of the Damned at Showcase Cinemas. At 36 I got carded at the local packie.  “Oh my god, you’re only two years younger than I am. God bless you.” Although I generally  don’t count alcohol cardings like the others. More on why I don’t count them later…no, on second thought I’m going to explain that one right now.

One of my jobs as an attorney is attending Examinations Under Oath given by opposing counsel. I was at one of the insurance company’s attorney’s offices and one of their attorneys and I got to talking about getting carded. I don’t even remember how we got on the topic.  Don’t much care. Anyway, he told me that when he was in law school, he worked as a bouncer at night and obviously they checked out the women as they came in. He said he would find a woman that looked a bare minimum of 30 and card her. She would be so grateful that she was carded that she would sleep with him. This is a whole new level of asshole as far as I’m concerned. The side effect of me learning about this men behaving badly moment is that I am incredibly skeptical of anyone who cards me. To the point where my hand clenches and I see a flash of red.

But going back to my point, knowing that I could pass as younger, didn’t mean I would ever actually do it. I always said that I would rather look good for my age than barely passable as someone younger. But as I got closer and closer to that 4-0, I questioned the wisdom in telling the truth about my age. I started removing my birth year from my social media accounts like Facebook and Twitter.  I actually announced I was taking my birth year off Facebook in a post—“I am now timeless”, I told my friends. Unfortunately, people don’t have the same sensibilities today as they at least pretended to have previously, when it came to asking about one’s age. I thought society deemed it rude to ask a woman her age. No one seems to follow that any more. Men have NO PROBLEM with asking me my age. And quite frankly, I still find it rude. I barely know you. Why is this a topic? Why would I tell you? Can I apply age discrimination to dating in a similar fashion to how potential employers aren’t supposed to be asking your age? Although let’s be honest here—they can easily find out the basic ballpark anyway.  All they have to do is look at your resume and see how long it has been since you graduated from college or post grad.  I definitely have had quite a few conversations with lawyers at law school alumni functions who think they are all clever by asking what year you graduated as their way of determining approximately how old you are. Yeah, bud. I see you.

And why all this talk about how old we are? Because as far as we have come with Cher, Madonna, J Lo and Shakira rocking costuming that is essentially lingerie on stage, age still matters for the grand majority of us. People still want to put you in a certain category based on your age. How desirable you are, and maybe if you are old enough, even though you may look great today, you could wake up tomorrow looking old. Sure women who are older than 35 can still star in movies, and still be seen as sexy onscreen—but please tell me about a female actor who made it to the big leagues at 40 —who did NOT originally become famous much younger… And of course there are still milestones we are supposed to have hit by a certain age—those wonderful external measures of your success.  It apparently doesn’t matter whether you are happy in your family, in love with your significant other, love that prized job, etc etc, just that you did what you were supposed to do—got married and had kids, become a productive member of society. So no one has to “worry” about you. You’ve taken your place in the great circle of life.

A Facebook meme I saw recently circulating states how if you don’t feel differently than you did when you were younger, you haven’t grown. And I understand the sentiment, but I am against blanket statements like that. Some people have older souls. Sure some of my opinions have changed, and I would like to believe I have grown, but I guess I would have to quote that Wallflowers song as to how I see things: “I ain’t changed, but I know I ain’t the same”.  Some of the early essays in my blog I actually moved from my now closed LJ account.  One of those essays I actually wrote back after the season four finale of the X-Files aired.  I originally wrote it for  the X-Philes Forum of the TVGuide website, but I kept a copy of it and put it in my private blog, too. When I go back and read things I wrote, even back as early as the mid 90’s, I’m always amazed at how much my writing still sounds like me. I’m a bit less naive now than I was then. More educated. I’ve certainly experienced more…and right now I’m considering using all my acquired knowledge to put together a Scott McCall OG Equalizer reboot/spin-off fanfic spec script…our passions take us to fun, interesting places indeed. Well, I ain’t changed, but I know I ain’t the same.

So here I am, another year older. Another time around the sun. And that’s all it is—some arbitrary way we categorize ourselves, viewing age as a weakness instead of seeing ourselves as survivors in this game of life. Today I’m wiser in some ways. Maybe not as wise as I hoped to be in other ways. But I’m still out here, finding my voice, getting out of my comfort zone and fighting the good fight. Writing the good fight, too, apparently…And just like that, I’m closer to 50 than 40. But you know, I’m ok with that.