Thanks to LAHomeDog for advice on writing, life and edits to this story.
17 August 2021
The pale vanilla thickly painted cinder block walls that framed a small high window above the twin bed reminded me of the inside of a prison, but to my son his new dorm room was freedom -- at last.
I almost didn't even get the brief glimpse of where he would be living for the next year. At first, he insisted he could carry up his boxes and suitcases himself, as he didn't want to introduce his new roommate to his newly single, middle-aged mom. I even promised not to dance or sing while there, but maybe it was the fact that I mentioned those possibilities for ultimate peer embarrassment that got me dismissed shortly after the luggage entered the room.
My son was about to test out his suburban survival skills, and at 18 he was ready. Somehow, amid or maybe because of my many mistakes, he had turned out well. There was nothing else to say that I hadn't told him already that he would be willing to hear. So I gave him a discreet hug in the stairwell with no other students around.
"I love you, honey."
"Love you too, mom."
And he jogged back up the stairs to his new life, while I retreated back to the car and the four-hour drive home.
With the green blur of trees in my peripheral vision and nothing but an endless, straight two way freeway ahead for the next 80 miles, I turned up the end of Joan Jett's "Bad Reputation," just before it segued into the next hit on my 80s dance music playlist. I remembered dancing in the bathroom to Madonna's "Like a Virgin" while putting on too much eyeliner ahead of a college party with my best friend Wendy back when we were virgins. But truth be told, I managed to stay one all through college too.
Wendy and I were on the phone last month as she celebrated her 48
th
birthday, wondering why we tried so hard to be perfect, rather than having more fun when we were in our 20s.
She was always prettier than me -- at least guys thought so -- with her highlighted shoulder length blonde hair, blue eyes and high cheekbones. So experiencing the inevitable part of aging of becoming invisible in public was hitting her harder than me. Her blonde highlighted hair was about 5 inches shorter than college and she still had her high cheekbones etched with the outer edges of wrinkles near her eyes. Like me, Wendy had probably only gained about 5 pounds since college, but unlike me, it looked to be mostly muscle from her part time job as a yoga instructor. If she had cellulite, I had yet to see it.
But like most women, Wendy could be her own worst critic even while protesting the unfairness that women are so judged by their looks.
She said, "I was in the customer service line in Home Depot last week, but the clerk came around the desk to show some gal in a short tennis dress to the hardware aisle for the right size wood screws for her project. Hello -- it's not as if I wasn't already standing there. Am I invisible?"
"Maybe you need to wear a short sports dress for errands. You could still carry it off," I said. "Yoga dresses are in style now."
"That's not the point, it's about fairness," Wendy said.
"Hey we got that attention when we were her age and didn't complain," I said.
"Yeah, we made quite a pair. But unfortunately we didn't do anything with it! Not really," she said.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
"We were too good, too uptight, always trying to do the right thing, stupidly trying to have morals," she said. "Don't you ever think about it and wonder why?"
"Yeah, if I had known I would marry my college boyfriend three years after graduation only to get dumped as our kids reached whatever age he considered viable so he could leave to fuck a zillion others. Yes, I would have said a yes a few times instead of no to any number of other guys in college," I said.
"We followed the rules. But for what?" she asked.
"For the nice, appropriate boys who deemed us marriage material," I said. "But what was the alternative? "
"Rob Winslow."
"You always did fall for bad boys."
"Yeah," she sighed, nodding unseen against the phone. "He was gorgeous, but there was not enough penicillin on the planet to make me want to really find out how he managed to have a different voluptuous babe every night of the week."
"Well you ended up well -- or at least you're not divorced."
"True," she said, but quickly changed the subject to our kids, and we spent the rest of our call rattling on about this and that.
But that call stuck with me. I couldn't get it out of my head. Ever since then, I began to notice not getting noticed. In stores, restaurants and the occasional music venue, I was 48 and invisible. Maybe Wendy was right. Maybe we should have been less careful and more care free in our youth if this was where we were headed.
I starting thinking, "So what is stopping me now?"
Was it maybe the disbelief that a guy would not care about stretch marks he had no role in creating, or the extra five pounds? And what about my butt? It still felt round and muscular, but the wrong light highlighted the cellulite that no amount of dieting seemed to fix.
I didn't mind some wrinkles like the happy ones around my eyes, but not the ones around my chin. Those wrinkled just showed I gritted my teeth at night, the tension of getting through the last several years revealing itself. Maybe I needed botox.
My next insecure thought was my house. I had moved to a smaller home, a townhome, after the divorce and I had not even invited anyone over for dinner yet.
The thought of having some unknown new person in my home was daunting let alone my bathroom. I'd need to store sex toys elsewhere for starters. I had too many of those really. I guess I kept thinking that with the right one I wouldn't need to actually go on a date. But so far it hadn't worked.
I was also hesitant about going from a 24-year marriage into some new serious relationship. I had needs, yet no experience with casual sex.
It's one thing to jump into the deep end with casual affairs at 21, but how does one even do that at my age?
It would take courage to be naked with someone now. Courage I wasn't sure I had.
