I am too long in the tooth to think you can make demands on life and expect that they will be granted, like waving a magic fairy wand.
—Annie Lennox
Ash came home and at first he was very weak. He lay in bed, complaining about lying in bed. He entertained his brother, his competitors, various artists he admired. He even entertained me. He had not the least interest in sex. He was probably afraid it would kill him. I worried about that myself.
* * *
No matter what the cheerleading gurus of aging may say, sex among seniors is not what it once was when we were young. Viagra is not for everyone. It gives many people blue polka dots on the retina. It makes others faint. Shots and pumps are unaesthetic.
At least we were alive and together. How dare we ask for more? We had beaten terrible odds and we were still holding hands in bed.
I look around at my friends and I see a world of widows—or almost widows. If I were more entrepreneurial, I would set up a sex shop for widows—someplace they could come, get their needs swiftly taken care of by young studs, and then move on to their grandparently duties, professional duties, filial duties (all their mothers are old-old as opposed to oldish). The rules of old keep changing. We used to think sixty was old. Now it’s the prime of life. But does that mean people want to admit to it? My widow sex shop might not work because the widows would sabotage themselves by falling in love with the studs—the way Isadora nearly fell in love with the personal slaves in Paris. Their hearts would break. Someone would sue, the secret would be out, and the shop would be closed down. It would get into all the papers.
I did not want to be a widow. I was too young to be a widow. At sixty pretending to be fifty, the world was full of unattached women rattling around, looking for a place to put all that unfulfilled sexual energy.
Asher was calm. Denial served him well. He never thought he might die. He simply did as he was told by his doctors. He didn’t argue, didn’t think apocalyptic thoughts. He was so much saner than I was.
Getting older means giving things up—sex and good looks in particular—but Ash never complained. And he always thought he’d get better. I loved him for his optimism. Hadn’t Dashiell Hammett said, “You got to look on the bright side, even if there ain’t one”? Asher might have said that if he were a hard-boiled writer instead of a hard-boiled billionaire with a soft center.
* * *
“I don’t want to be a widow,” I say to Isadora on the phone.
“Who does?” she asks.
“And I have the fear I’ll never encounter an erection again.”
“Ah—‘the old in-out,’ as Anthony Burgess called it. Possibly overrated. Be patient. There are a million different ways to have sex. I’ve already told you that. Maybe you need to think about why you have such a need to hold on to control.”
“Are you blaming me?” I ask her.
“Absolutely not,” Isadora says. “I would just say you are only looking at sex in a very narrow way—as if it were a form of deep-tissue massage. It can be much more. Re-lax. Re-fucking-lax. You are not in control of the universe.”
* * *
What was wrong with my generation of women? We thought we would get better and better forever. We thought war and disease would afflict only people on the other side of the world. Even after 9/11—which was said to have changed everything—we still believed we had charmed lives somehow and that there was nothing Botox couldn’t fix. We should have been preparing for global warming, armageddon, and the loss of our loved ones, but were we? Not at all. We were focusing on surfaces as usual. What would it take to wake people up to the danger we all were in?
Often I thought of myself living at the top of a crumbling flooded skyscraper at ninety. Little boats would be steaming around the towers, trying to save the last stragglers, but I would refuse. Before my tower crumbled, I would jump into the waves and slowly sink. Why would I want to go on living in a world like that?
Ash called out to me from the bedroom.
“I just wanted to see your face.”
“What do you need?”
“Just you.”
“Why are you so cheerful?”
“Here’s how I figure it,” he said. “I had a weak spot in my aorta and it ballooned. They put in a much tougher fabric—which should be good for decades. Besides, what earthly good would it do to worry?”
“That’s true. But I worry if I don’t worry.”
“That’s because you use worry superstitiously—as if it could keep the wild elephants away.”
“You mean it doesn’t?”
We both laughed and hugged. What on earth would I do without him?
“Oh God—that hurts.”
“What?”
He pulled up his pajama leg and there was huge red swelling on his thigh, where they had taken a vein for a graft. Under the incision, there appeared to be pus.
“That looks horrible,” I said. “People get the worst infections in hospitals. You could have staph or MRSA. I’m calling the doctor.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. It’s nothing.”
“It is most certainly not nothing.”
He tried to temporize, to talk me out of it, to talk the doctor out of it, but over the course of a week, it got worse and worse.
A week later, we were back in the hospital, having his leg looked at.
“Clearly an abscess,” the doctor said. He opened the flaps of the wound and greenish yellow stuff came oozing out. I looked into the wound; saw the white cells and fluid and ooze, which seemed to me like the primordial matter itself. Dizziness came over me. To my horror, my knees buckled and I slipped down to the floor. When I came to, Asher had gotten a penicillin shot and his gash had been drained and dressed.
“That was the first time I ever fainted,” I said. “I must really love you a lot. There’s nothing like a gaping wound to show the fragility of flesh.”
“Only you would think of it that way,” he said.
We didn’t even try to make love for weeks. Ash was taking all kinds of medication to lower his blood pressure and he was exhausted. But when we did, it was clear there was a problem. Modern medicine had a name for it: ED. Fortunately, modern medicine also had a cure for it: Viagra. The problem was Viagra gave Asher those infamous blue spots, a blurriness that convinced him he was going blind, and the feeling of having been run over by a truck.
“There’s always the pump,” I said, having been briefed on this stuff by female friends.
“What’s the pump?”
“‘Watch your penis grow to amazing size with the sensosensational, silky pleasure pump in blow-up or electronic mode.’”
“That sounds horrible.”
“I’m told it can be sexy.”
“It sounds dangerous to me. Like it would make my penis fall off.”
“There are other things—you can ask your urologist.”
So we began the quest for an erection fixer to fix the erectionless fix we were in.
Clearly we were not the only ones in this situation. The pharmacopeia contained an endless variety of answers—from injections to implants, from rings to pistol pumps. We were the generation that never gave up. Orgasm was in our bill of rights.
I began my online research for sex toys. Not only were there pumps, vibrators, rings, wands, and slithery gels, but there were also environmentalists warning about the dangers of sex toys. Apparently they contained toxic substances. Apparently they were unregulated. Apparently there was a muckraking tome to be written about the dangerous objects people put inside—or outside—their bodies. They leaked gasses. They disintegrated with soap and water, with bodily fluids. No federal agency was testing them. And yet they sold by the millions. Nobody seemed to care about the dangers—except a few killjoy environmentalists.
But Asher found none of these toys the least bit erotic. The dildos were so big they made him feel small. The pumps seemed dangerous. The rings likewise. Maybe he was still too tired to contemplate any of this. There had to be another way.
When we did try to make love, it was clear we were not on our way to holding hands in two side-by-side bathtubs as in that ad for erection boosters. Every channel was full of ads for them. The metaphors were weird: The street falling away and becoming lush wilderness. A couple going up in a multicolored hot-air balloon. A beautiful English girl in the Caribbean reassuring her “honey.” An old couple harvesting cucumbers. And then that absurd image of the lovers holding hands in separate old-fashioned bathtubs. What madman thought that up? We were just lying there and looking at a limp dick.
* * *
Until your spouse nearly dies, you never really believe in your own mortality. Until you give up sex, you never believe you are old. Now I believed I was old, and I didn’t like it. I didn’t like the hairs on my chin. I didn’t like dyeing my eyebrows. I wanted my youth back—even with all its miseries. I envy the young and they don’t even know they are enviable. I certainly didn’t know it when I was young.
I hate, hate, hate getting older. I would sell my soul to the devil to stay young. And then an idea begins to dawn—for a play.
I am in a rage against age. To that end, I have recruited dermatologists, yoga teachers, exercise coaches, nutritionists, herbalists, physical therapists, and doctors—alternative and plain.
There is no shortage of antiaging specialists in New York—from dermatologists who harvest and reuse your own fat to those who freeze your facial muscles with toxins. There are blasters and scrapers, injectors and fat-suckers. There are skin resurfacers, fraxelists if not taxidermists, pore shrinkers and redness faders for rosacea sufferers. There are plastic surgeons and acupuncturists and even hypnotists who regress you into false youth you dream is real. But I want more. I want magic.
* * *
While Ash was slowly mending, an older actor friend of mine hit town. We had been flirting for decades both on set and off. Heeding Isadora’s advice from lunch the other day, I reasoned that seeing him would be less risky than a Zipless stranger but promising enough to excite me. I was just scared enough of the future to meet him at his hotel—a brand-new boutique-y place way downtown.
He was the kind of leading man who played James Bond when he was young but now played evil Borgia popes. He was English, RADA-trained, and handsome in a semi-spooky way—hollow cheekbones, deep-set green eyes, shaggy brows, and sonorous voice. He often joked that if he got much older, he’d eventually be cast as Nosferatu.
“I’m finally going to play an ancient vampire,” he said, embracing me at the doorway of his suite.
“Am I supposed to say mazel tov?” I asked.
“I think you’re supposed to hold up a cross,” he said. “To protect yourself.”
I knew he had always fancied me and he knew I had always fancied him. One knows these things. Of course, we were both married—to other people—which always helps.
His name was Nigel Cavendish, and we had done a season of Shakespeare a million years ago.
We reminisced together in his suite. Both not drinking a drop due to our membership in various twelve-step programs.
Then we began to kiss good-bye and good-bye turned into hello and he swigged from an open bottle of Amarone his producer had sent and I got drunk on the fumes. Before we knew it we were both half undressed on the floor and stroking each other’s aging skin tenderly.
“Shall we repair to the bedroom?” he asked, indicating it with his handsome hairy head (quite silver by now). And I nodded, and before we knew it, we were on if not in the queen- (or king-) size letto matrimoniale.
“I’ve always wanted you,” he said.
“Me too,” I said.
And I nodded but said nothing more because we were kissing so deeply. And soon he was sucking my nipples and touching my cunt. Then he was licking it enthusiastically. And then he was unrolling a condom onto his beautiful cock—by which time it seemed rather late to object.
“Shall we?” he asked in a most gentlemanly fashion. But, not waiting for my ladylike answer, he began to enter me.
It seemed we made the beast with two backs for hours and hours and hours. We muttered and murmured and kissed and hugged and licked each other wherever our tongues could reach—but neither of us seemed to be getting close to a climax. Neither of us could relax. Neither of us could re-fucking-lax. We both needed to be in control.
“I seem to see my good lady wife, Vivienne, floating through the wall,” he confessed.
“Banish her,” I said, not able to banish Ash. I could never banish Asher. He was in my bones.
Nigel and I were valiant at sliding and stroking and tweaking and making loving nibbles. But nothing seemed about to happen. No wave crested, no sunrise rose, no jagged lightning pierced the place where our bodies conjoined.
“I promised Vivienne I’d never do this again,” Nigel said. “And she’s arriving tomorrow.”
“Don’t worry,” I whispered.
“I don’t want to leave you high and dry,” he murmured.
“Don’t worry,” I said again. “The timing’s not right. We’re both worried about other things.”
“Perhaps next time we meet?” he asked.
“Of course,” I said. “Of course.” Women of my generation lie as easily as we kiss.
Later, we sat in the living room of his suite, nibbling caviar and pâté. He drank more Amarone. I drank mineral water.
“Are we still friends?” he asked.
“Loving friends,” I said. “We’ll have our time.”
But I knew we wouldn’t have our time, because we just weren’t bonded in that particular way. Not every couple can turn into loving lovers—no matter how much they think they ought to be. The stars have to align a certain way. Worry has to be banished. Wives cannot drift through walls and husbands cannot be home recovering from hearts that attacked them. Many conjunctions have to conjoin for a good conjunction. I had known that before, but somehow I had forgotten. Being with Nigel only made me miss Ash more and more! Strange how I had to be with Nigel to realize how bonded I was to Ash. I was so lucky not to have been caught in my various experiments.
* * *
Later that night, I had a dream in which I found myself thirty years younger as if by magic. I was with Nigel. We were both between marriages and we were wholly open to each other as we hadn’t been when we’d met earlier that day. Our romantic lives were before us, not behind us. Because aging is not only about flesh—it’s also about our great expectations when we are young.
And that was when I began writing the play. While Asher recuperated, I plunged into a fantasy born of my rage at aging. In it, a woman who is furious at the passage of years finds a way, she thinks, to reverse them. I plunged into research for my play. I read everything that included magical transformations. I saw movies. I read magical spells in grimoires.
My play began with two friends of a certain age—Isadora and I?— at a table on a bare stage:
“Don’t you want to be young again?”
“Are you kidding? I’d sell my soul for it.”
Maybe I could even convince Isadora to work on it with me? It would be fun to collaborate with a real writer.
“I dream of being young again,” my character says.
“Me too,” the Isadora character says.
“All I want is to be thirty years younger, knowing what I know now.”
“I’m there. So how do we do it? Spells? Potions? Magical thinking?”
“Do you know any real witches who can do it?”
“No such possibility exists. I’ve looked.”
“I wonder about that.”
“Because when we were young, we didn’t appreciate our youth. That’s what makes me nuts!”
“We didn’t know the power we had—or how to use it.”
“True. Too true.”
“So you used to know all these wiccans. Do you still have the phone numbers? They probably use e-mail now—wicca.com.”
“Well, find them. Or I will.”
* * *
The idea was to tell the story of a woman getting younger by means of witchcraft.
My heroine was visited by a man who claimed to be Mephistopheles. He could be played by my friend Nigel. He claimed to be able to grant her “the wish that dare not speak its name.” It was of course the wish to grow younger, the Faustian wish of all Faustian wishes.
So I invented these wiccan characters out of a Halloween pageant—two possibly gay warlocks and an ancient female witch—who came to tempt my heroine with dreams of reversing age. And she fell for it—even signing away her soul in blood. Miraculously, she became young again. Or did she only believe she had?
I’d never written a play before, but I really got into it, filling it with all my campiest fantasies of magic and time travel. My warlocks wore long capes and had elaborate body piercings. My ancient witch dressed like Lady Gaga on steroids.
I had very little idea of what I was doing. But maybe I had some beginner’s luck. The dialogue began to flow.
“How much do you want it and how much are you willing to pay?” Meph asks.
“What sort of payment?” asks my heroine.
“We’ll get to that later,” says Meph. “What is magic but the deep intent to change?”
“Time,” my heroine says, “was once my friend. Now it streams by faster and faster.”
“So how much do you want to stop it?” asks Meph.
And so it went. I was having fun playing on the page—something new for me. I totally let go and allowed fantasy to take over. Isadora told me that every book she had written was a complete self-analysis. I began to understand what she meant. Fantasy can lead you to reality, but you have to be open.
As I saw my heroine transformed, I worried about the dues she’d have to pay. Her soul? Her child or grandchild? I went on clattering over the keys with panic pounding in my chest.
Meanwhile, my phone kept beeping with new potential lovers on the line. I had long, flirtatious talks with some of them, phone sex with some of them, but illness, death, and my play kept interrupting. My play had got me by the scruff of the neck. It was teaching me a new kind of freedom. Besides—I didn’t think I wanted the distraction of Zipless anymore. Asher’s illness had thrown me because I had taken his love so for granted.
Who were my fictitious witches and what did they mean? Never ask that of yourself while writing. It may stop you cold. Just trust that if you believe in your characters, others will too. I learned that the hard way. Whenever I thought too critically about my work, I couldn’t write. Isadora had said that too.
In most Faustian transformations, the dabbler in magic is punished. We’re not supposed to play with time and the devil. Challenging the gods shows a lack of humility that often proves fatal.
I thought I was just fooling around with an old story. Why then did I feel so scared?
What I didn’t know then was that for anyone who writes, a story is not just a story. It’s also an amulet. As someone who had spent my life mostly speaking other people’s words, I was innocent about that. Oh, I had written made-up screenplays, but never had I written a story that came from my own soul.
* * *
Gradually, it dawned on me that I was trifling with matters of life and death. I made copious notes on how to end this play. Beginnings are easy but endings are hard. Was it a comedy or a tragedy? Was my heroine really given another chance at youth—or was she deceived by her own fantasies? Was the tone to be satirical or sad—or a mix of the two? While I pondered these things, I planned a long trip to India with Asher. He probably wanted to go because he thought he was dying and it would be his last trip. India strikes everyone differently, but many of us associate it with Hindu ideas of reincarnation.
* * *
Isadora and I are on the phone again. I’m in my apartment and she’s in hers. Belinda Barkawitz is sick and I don’t want to leave her.
Vanessa:
I’m writing a play and you’re not writing anymore. What’s going on here—this is nuts!
Isadora:
Well, I have something to tell you. I haven’t told anyone and I didn’t want to talk to anyone about it because I was afraid to jinx it. I’ve been writing fantasies.
Vanessa:
What do you mean by fantasies?
Isadora:
I have no idea what I mean. My characters go to these other planets. They discover Goldilocks planets. They get away from our poisoned earth and create utopias on these virgin worlds. They get away from the Koch brothers and evil companies trying to destroy the earth and instead of Goldilocks planets being so far away, they are suddenly near enough for us to populate them with humans. But there is a fine-tuned selection process. The chosen people have to be kind, love the environment, dogs, trees, flowers,… especially dogs! Especially poodles!
Vanessa:
I think it’s wonderful that you’re writing, but do you really think you can screen people? And only have good people on the spaceship?
Isadora:
I said it was fantasy.
Vanessa:
Well, it certainly sounds like fantasy to me ’cause we know it’s impossible to screen for the good people…. It sounds impossible to me.
Isadora:
It’s probably impossible but I told you these were utopian fictions. I really don’t know where I am going with this. I’m scared to death because it’s not what I’m known for. I’m known for writing honestly about women and sex … blah, blah, blah—and I’m sick to death of it!
Vanessa:
I can certainly understand that—one does get sick of whatever one is known for. It’s typecasting—who doesn’t get sick of it? We all get sick of it! They kept wanting me to play Blair the bitch over and over again. It made me ill! I wanted to play King Lear as a woman and nobody would finance it. I wanted to play Macbeth as a woman with Lady Macbeth being the man and nobody would finance it. I wanted to do a female Hamlet, do you remember that?
Isadora:
(Laughs).
Vanessa:
And do you remember the time I tried to get a movie made of one of your books?
Isadora:
Which one was that?
Vanessa:
Oh, you know the one. It was set in ancient Rome. I think it was called Livia and was about Hadrian’s wife. You remember … he had a wife named Livia who had an amazing villa with murals of birds and flowers. The frescos are in one of the municipal museums in Rome. They’re unbelievably beautiful. But nobody wanted to finance a movie about Livia. They kept telling me it should be about Hadrian because he was the emperor, and who would give a shit about his wife? Although she was brilliant and beautiful and a force in Rome at the time—but nobody wanted to finance a movie about a woman!
Isadora:
Yeah, I vaguely remember. That was a while ago!
Vanessa:
So, I do get it…. You’ve been writing these fantasies and have told nobody. Who’s the heroine?
Isadora:
Heroine? Hero? Who cares? We’re human beings. Some of us are ruled by what happens below the belt and some of us are not, but we’re ambivalent, stumbling, grumbling human beings. Far too smart for our fragile bodies. Far too clever for our mortality. So I basically wanted to imagine genderless people smart enough to know that they would eventually die and act accordingly.
Vanessa:
Would you let me see some of these pages?
Isadora:
Absolutely not. I’m just writing them for myself. They’re not for publication. They’re not for reading by friends.
Vanessa:
Darling, just think about it….
Isadora:
I’m thinking….