Stephanie Lessing

This morning I woke up and I wasn’t young anymore. At first I thought I was just bloated, but no. I didn’t wake up 100 years old or anything bizarre like that. It was more like I’d become fifty…ish. I’m really too young for this so you can imagine my surprise when I looked down at my hands and they were all swollen, knuckly and red. My initial reaction was this is kind of cool the way I just puffed up out of nowhere. It was almost like when I got my period for the first time.

After the novelty wore off and the realization sunk in that I’m never going to turn back into the young version of myself I started apologizing to people for my oldness.  “Sorry it’s taking me so long to find the Refresh button on this machine,” I’d say. Or, “Sorry I’m no longer willing to ski. I know we flew all the way out here and everything. It’s just that I don’t feel like bending over to put my skis on.”  I suddenly felt like apologizing for everything. “Sorry for coughing too loud.” “Sorry for burping.” “Sorry I’m sitting like this; my legs just seem to spread apart on their own now.  I think a hinge must have broke in my hip.”

And then boys started looking at me differently. Like something was funny.  I know my chest got unbelievably big at one point while I was just starting to turn old, but no one thinks her own chest is laugh out loud big. Oh, but it can be. And then the thing with the neck happened and the oversized, not-cute freckles. It was just a whole string of bad luck until I finally got so distracted by the physical changes I couldn’t even speak properly anymore. “Did you just make up a word?” my husband would ask me. “No whydge?” I’d reply.

And then I started peeing in my pants a little. Only when someone says something really funny, or when I sneeze, or, for no reason at all. I finally understand Kafka. One day you’re a girl and the next day you’re something else, something that pees inadvertently. What if you just woke up and were like, what’s that hump on my back? That’s exactly what this feels like.

I used to look at pictures of Marlo Thomas and think, I’ll never be old enough to wear those clothes. To dress like a lady. To wear calfskin gloves and tiny waist dresses and big sunglasses. And I never was. I past right by whatever age that was and now I’m too old to dress like that. Who would ever want to wear anything with a waist? That’s why old ladies wear housedresses without a bra.  I used to think it was my grandmother’s way of stopping us from visiting her so often, but now I know it was just a fashion choice, and she was willing to live with the consequences. She’d always leave her bra on, unhooked, and let it just sit there. I begged my sister, if I ever do that, poison me. But I dare you to spend one glorious day braless in a housedress and then tell me if you care if you ever see your relatives again.

But here’s the thing. I like being older. I like that I won’t have to try to look even remotely sexy ever again for the rest of my life. I can dress like a boy without it coming across as an ode to menswear. It just looks more normal than me hobbling around like a chimp in heels. I can eat bread; I can wear slippers outside because someone was nice enough to invent Uggs and let them go so far out of style that they’re in again for people whose feet hurt. I can stay up as late as I want. I can snore. I can even have a chin hair if I choose to, because that’s what old people do.  They have chin hairs and they don’t care!

Life is the longest running gag in history, and getting older is the funniest thing that will ever happen to you, so you might as well learn how to laugh in your own face. It’s only going to get puffier.

Last night I dreamt that one of Kim’s friends called me up to say that the whole math class was mad at me for holding them back.

“What math class?” I asked, feeling guilty and curious as to how I managed to get into Barnard.

“You know which class I’m talking about,” she said.

As I felt that familiar pulsating fear of math failure instantly spewing its hot, inky venom throughout my veins, I could feel my whole head shriveling in shame, as if the skin on my skull was crawling its way down my neck. How could God be doing this to me again?

“Big deal,” I said.

“Well, I just thought you’d want to know that everyone thinks you should drop the class.”

“I don’t even want to be in that class,” I said, racking my brain for clues as to what sort of math I was failing this time.

“Good,” she said.

“I’ll just drop the class tomorrow and then all of you can stop being mad at me.”

And then it occurred to me, as I slowly gained wakeful consciousness, that I was not, in fact, really in math hell after all, and that, more importantly, I will never take another math class for the rest of my life. Never. Ever. Ever. It also dawned on me what a complete and total waste of time school was for people like me, people who function beautifully without any sort of learned pattern of reasoning skills, mathematical or otherwise.

I mean let’s be honest, math? The only thing I ever needed to learn was how to add, and my mother taught me that. I don’t even use subtraction. And aside from the Citgo sign in Kenmore Square, there aren’t even any triangles.

History was also particularly daunting for me as I have no sense of time or direction and I’m terrible with names. The only thing I came away with was that my ancestors were Pilgrims, only to realize much too late to save myself from severe embarrassment, that we were Jews, and therefore, not Pilgrims.

As far as science goes, I would have been better off if they just dropped me in a ditch and said, “Figure out why you’re here and how to get out. Hint: God won’t help.” Everyone knows biology and physics are for geniuses. That’s the whole reason people like me make fun of science. We don’t need it.

If I had my own school, here are the courses I would offer:

First Period: Reading & perhaps some light Addition

Second Period: Hair Removal

Third Period: Manners

Fourth Period: Lunch

Fifth Period: Spouse Retention & Child Rearing

Sixth Period: On the job training of your choice.

Seventh Period: Pet care

What do we really need to know to be successful? A)How to read, certainly, but mostly how to do one thing very, very well (first and sixth periods) and B) How not to offend people (second, third and fifth period). That’s it.

My own school would have saved me from years and years of feeling like a failure, all because I couldn’t grasp the fact that numbers weren’t tiny, little people in costumes. I still don’t really know what they are or what they’re there for. If they were created to express or represent something else, like say, energy, movement, distance or equality, why not just demonstrate those things with hand puppets?

For example, instead of two years of Algebra, you could just hold up two dolls, one with a head and one without, and then rip the head off of the doll with a head and say, “See? Before they weren’t the same. But now they are.”

But no, instead we’re forced to live in a world where we have to sit trapped in a room for five days a week, with a bunch of other morons and try to guess what that manipulative little x is posing as this time, with its tiny hand on its hip and its legs crossed like a little bitch, for no reason. A world where people like me, who know absolutely everything about hair removal, hold the rest of the class back.

By that genius Gary Shteyngart:

“The elephant is aware of his eventual extinction and he is hurt by it, reduced by it, made to feel his solitary nature, he who will eventually trample his way through bush and scrub to lie down and die where his mother once trembled at her haunches to give him life. Mother, aloneness, entrapment, extinction. The elephant is essentially an Ashkenazi animal, but a wholly rational one-it too wants to live forever.”

“He reminds me of you,” Eunice said, “A big nerd.”

All of which brings me to my next post:

Advice for Literary Dating Disasters in a post Reality-Show World

I’ve had Gary Shteyngart’s, spectacularly depressing masterpiece, “Super Sad True Love Story,” in my Kindle since November. I finally got around to reading this not too distant futurist novel about the incredible mess our country is headed for, and Lenny Abramov, a man who wants to live forever in spite of it all, even though doing so requires a very strict diet, a diet he finds very difficult to stick to, especially while vacationing in Italy. What he can stick to is Eunice Park, a pretty, emotionally abused, Asian-American who he has no business being in love with, because, despite her occasional kindness, she finds him gross, and eventually leaves him after several attempts to make him smell and dress better. If the future is just one mega-corporate-conglomerate, yuan sucking, Media streaming, Teen Global texting, Onion-skin jean clad generation ruled by their fuckability and credit rating scores, it’s hard to imagine why anyone thought Indefinite Life Extension would be a good idea, even before they figured out it wasn’t possible. The whole thing is so frighteningly not that far fetched I don’t even like looking at my Kindle anymore, for fear I’ll reread certain passages and continue hoping things will turn out differently if I read them in a different mood or room. And yet it’s impossible not to keep looking. Not only because I’m more than just a little intrigued by the idea of a (HNWI) high net worth individual only society, particularly the New York version, (imagine the shopping!!) but more because it looks as though I, too, have been conditioned by reality tv to make other people’s horrible relationships a huge priority, and Lenny Abramov is the most frustratingly thrilling dating disaster I’ve seen so far.

I mean, for crying out loud, Len, it’s quite possible when all this is over that you’ll be the last man standing. You’ve already proven yourself capable of surviving utter chaos and impending doom. You have a very impressive book collection and you’re a very funny guy. There are women who appreciate such things. You even have a nice group of friends, two parents who love you and a bank account. Granted, you’re not cool or even a little sexy, but that’s to be expected of an only child of immigrant parents. The truth is you live and breathe the human condition more powerfully than all of Chekov’s, Tolstoy’s and Woody Allen’s characters combined– and you were willing to settle for Eunice Park? She called you repulsive. That’s a red flag! Eunice Park was nothing but an apparition, Lenny– her beauty a con. She was no better than the promise of eternal life. You never could have possessed her. She was a user, a cheater, a climber and a gold digger. And for God’s sake, she wasn’t even Jewish. What the hell were you thinking? It just kills me to think of all the precious time you wasted with that girl. You even admitted she smelled like food. You know what’s super sad and true, Lenny? Patti Stenger was right! (And not just because we went to the same high school)All you people secretly want to be alone. Forever. You say you don’t, but it seems to me (and Patti) like you do. Why can’t you people ever learn?

Okay, here we go. For the last time. It’s not about getting someone younger and more beautiful than you to agree to stand next to you. It’s about finding someone who genuinely wants to. It’s about mutual attraction, similar values and I have to add this in because I’m almost positive this is the key to a healthy relationship, it’s about having the exact, I mean exact, same sense of humor. You can’t just pick some random, hot, twenty-something Asian and pretend you go together. You’re a thirty nine year old Jew. Which brings me back to Patti. I think you should call her. No matter what year we’re up to here in that weird book you wrote, I’m pretty sure she’s still available.

Whenever I see a movie, I secretly think I could have done it better.

I’ve never made a movie, nor have I ever acted or even held a movie camera, and yet I really think that.

I’ve yet to walk away from any film not thinking I would have played all the parts better, male and female, or that I would have done the make up and hair more accurately, picked a more character appropriate wardrobe and fiddled with the lighting just a bit more until everyone looked a little prettier.

While brushing those little leftover bits of popcorn from my lap I always find myself shaking my head and chuckling as I imagine all the silly running back and forth that must have gone on to make whatever film I just saw, knowing I could easily make an entire movie in one take.

But that’s all changed now that I saw Melissa Leo’s white boots in “The Fighter.” There is nothing I could say that could possibly prepare you for the genius you are about to witness when you go see this movie and watch that foul woman, Alice Ward, walk up the stairs in a pair of white pleather boots. Forget the perfect pitch of Leo's (Alice's) accent and hairstyle, or the way she sits there impaling her lungs with one cigarette after another mimicking the toxicity of her mothering. Forget the fact that Chritian Bale is not a real crack addict or that Marky Mark walks around with that body attached to his neck the whole time or any of the other marvels that are this film. Melissa Leo’s boots have mastered the art of story telling in a way that I actually heard my heart rip when I saw them.

I never thought I would say these words, but I could not have done this one better.

A pair of lips and a cape sip a cup of tea in a Paris cafe and then they leave. Later, a very pretty diamond choker is forced to open a safe.

Re: “Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk”

Dear David,

I don’t know what to say. I thought we were friends, more than friends, really. I even wrote you a letter a while back, and you answered it. Your letter contained a typo, I’ll admit, and now that I’ve read, “Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk,” I’m beginning to think the typo had been deliberate. You’ve become quite a powerful manipulator with that bulging little brain you’ve got packed in there. You know you can effortlessly charm a chuckle out of even the most damaged and disillusioned among us. The chuckle feels like an innocent tickle at first, but it soon grows into some kind of manic hysterical rapture, and then comes the searing loyalty and the constant need to call and repeat your every line to friends and relatives at all hours of the night, just for the chance to relive them.

For years you’ve delighted and embarrassed a desperate generation of truth seekers with your cunning humor, your uncanny female impersonations and your slaughtering insight. And now, because you’ve left us starving for more of your affectionate wisdom, (Your last book was published in what? 2008! That’s two years of sitting and waiting!), we flocked to the bookstores en masse only to learn that your intention all along was to coax us into your little literary lair and then whip us mercilessly with your blood soaked pen. What the hell?

Talk about the pen being mightier than the sword. I honestly never believed it until now. I was more of a “sticks and stones” type girl, but now that I’ve been so deeply wounded, I see how much fun this must have been for you. Seeing us line up at your door like so many hungry little mice, while you anxiously sprung and licked your kitteny claws on the other side. Did you think we would just stand there and take it while you described, in excruciating detail, how that poor bear in a skirt had his teeth hammered out with a rock, or how families of maggots were living in his knees? Did you think we’d just keep on reading and continue paying tribute to your little emotional massacre after that poor baby lamb got his eyes plucked out?

Okay, fine! I read them all. But I couldn’t help myself.

The combination of your dead on description of an unscrupulous furry creature nonchalantly pulling a burr off her thigh and the lightness and accessibility of my new Kindle, coupled with the fact that I relish every single one of your brutal insinuations, (Yes we are a pack of selfish, complacent, deceptive, racist, animals!) made it impossible for me to turn away.

But I will never forget this betrayal, David Sedaris. I feel like a fool. And yet I’m willing to give you one more chance.

Therefore, can you please tell me when your next collection of short stories is coming out? I’d very much like to preorder it. That is if you’ll allow me to do so. In the meantime, I’ll just reread this one more time.

Love always,

Stephanie Lessing

Recently someone close to me said when she turned 50 she suddenly realized she was comfortable with herself. She knew who she was, and she felt good about that. That’s very interesting, I thought. But what about me for crying out loud? Who am I? Certainly I am not someone who should be allowed to go around saying, “I’m fifty!” A person like that should be taller. She shouldn’t be eating cookies for breakfast, or singing her own made-up songs to her dog, and she should have at least learned how to sew. She should be able to put on a dress and lipstick and look more like a lady than a chimpanzee. At the very least, she shouldn’t pee in her pants every time her husband says something funny, and yet…

Maybe I’m on to something. Maybe fifty is the new five. Maybe it’s okay that I never pay attention to people when they’re talking or that all I care about is watching TV and eating cupcakes. And so what if my favorite color is still pink? All shades.

It’s quite possible that growing up is not for everyone and that it’s time for those of us who run for cover whenever we’re expected to act like adults to come forward and just admit we don’t understand what anyone is talking about half the time. I’m sure I’m not the only one who prefers her pajamas over all of her other clothing. And surely there’s someone else out there in my age bracket who wouldn’t mind a bath toy or two. And forgive me, but if eating Frosted Flakes is wrong, who in their right mind would want to be right? I just want to have fun and write books with spelling mistakes in them. Every year my daughter reminds me, “Hopefully this will be the year you’ll be able to read ‘A Catcher in the Rye’ without crying.” But that year never comes.

I have this vision of myself riding the subway alone, (I’m actually too scared to do that, but the vision keeps coming) casually pretending to be reading the Wall Street Journal when I feel someone staring at me from across the aisle. I turn my head and there’s Holden, carrying his unread books, wearing a very grown up flannel overcoat and a red hunting hat.

“Oh my God, no way! Holden?”

“Yes, it’s me,” he says.

“I can’t believe this!” I say.

“What? What can’t you believe?” he asks me, looking around.

“I can’t believe you found me. I’ve been looking for you everywhere, for my whole entire life. We need to talk. There’s something terribly wrong with me and I think it’s the same thing that was wrong with you.”

“You’re having a nervous breakdown and suffering from depression?”

“No, no, it’s nothing like that. I’m actually a little too happy. It’s just that I keep getting older but nothing inside me develops or changes. I still feel like a child. I think like a child and I have children of my own who have outgrown me. I think perhaps you’re the only character I’ve ever been able to relate to. And you’re a seventeen year old boy. I have a son your age. What I’m saying Holden is that there’s a possibility that there may very well have been a catcher in the rye. And he caught me. I can’t relate to anyone my own age, and I just keep getting older.”

“There was no catcher. I made all that up. If you go back and reread the book, you’ll see it was just a wish. It was something I wanted to be. You may, while reading that passage, also recall that I was out of my mind.”

“I never thought you were out of your mind. I thought…”

“What? You thought I was right? That’s pretty funny if you don’t mind me saying so.”

“At times, I admit, I did. I still do. So go ahead and laugh all you want.”

“Excuse me for being rude, Miss, I mean Ma’am, but I was just saying all that stuff because I was going through a very tough time in my life. I refused to accept the inevitable, and I didn’t want to do my homework.”

“But you saw through everything before it was too late. You knew!”

“Again, I was headed for a mental institution.”

“Tell me, Holden, what do you see when you look right through me? Tell me the truth. I want to know what I look like, inside. To you.”

“Why should that matter? Are you in love with me or something? Because that would really be something. You being in love with me.”

“I never said I was in love with you. I said I could relate to you, which troubles me at this point in my life. I should be over you. I should be over everything. And yet, I’m not. And I believe it’s because I was caught. I’m perpetually teetering on the verge of adolescence, despite my jowls. It’s a curse this never growing up thing. It’s also a little embarrassing at cocktail parties. I always think people can tell I’m faking. I don’t even like wine. And I despise conversation. Small talk embarrasses me and yet adults seem to really enjoy it. They have such a flair for reveling in the obvious.”

“You give adults too much credit. They don’t ‘revel’ in anything. They’re incapable of real emotion. They’re just a bunch of phonies.”

“Oh Holden, that’s just the kind of thing I always imagined you’d say. But the truth is I wish I were one of them by now. It’s time.”

“Well, here’s something. You asked me what I see when I look at you and I see a middle aged lady. I see someone I can’t trust.”

“Really? That’s awesome!”

“Is it? Is it really awesome?”

“Yes, it is! All this time you were holding me back, I felt some kind of strange loyalty. You did this to me. It wasn’t the catcher. It was you. You made me like this because I believed you. You made me afraid of what I’d become. You made me afraid to grow up. Even though you were just a kid. Just a messed up kid.”

“If by messed up you mean barely functioning for most of my life then you are correct. That is exactly what I was.”

“Just a messed up kid who couldn’t relate to anyone his own age,” I mumble.

“Exactly! And guess what else I was.”

“What?”

“Lying.”

“I don’t believe that, Holden. I believe you are only saying that to me now because you think I’m an adult and therefore you want to hurt my feelings by trying to make me think everything I believe is a lie.”

“Look Ma’am, I don’t know you from a hole in the wall. Therefore I have no interest in hurting your feelings. I’m telling you the truth. I made it all up. I don’t even like to talk about that book. It ruined my life.”

“What about your brother? Did he really write a story about a little kid who didn’t want anyone to look at his goldfish? If that’s not true than I’ll just get off this subway and never talk to you again.”

“That part was true.”

“Seriously?”

“Cross my heart.”

“Well, that’s good. I really liked that story. I mean I liked the idea of it. Mostly I liked that your brother wrote it and how much you loved it. My sister and I are the same way. We both love anything the other one makes. Take her Brussels sprouts for example. I love them.”

“I miss Phoebe when you say that.”

“I know you do and I’m sorry.”

“I miss her because she’s unencumbered. They didn’t get to her yet.”

“I know. And one day she’ll be fifty.”

“And then what?”

“And then this,” I say, pointing to myself. “She’ll be the same as she was that day you slipped into your own house in the middle of the night, and she was all spread out in that great big bed of hers. She’ll be a little girl trapped in a woman’s body. Because of you. Because she believed you.”

“I’ll always love her for that.”

“I know. And it’s terribly unfair.”

“I can’t help myself.”

“Neither can I.”

“So now what?”

“I think you can go.”

“Do you want to see me again?” Holden asks.

“Yes and no.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means I want to, but there’s no point. You’re a dead end.”

“Not if you believe that time is a continuum. Run away with me, Ma’am! We can live like this forever.”

“I’m already living like this forever! And I can’t run away with you. I have a wonderful husband, and two extremely interesting and intelligent children whom I love and adore. And I have a dog who needs to be walked. And I have more books to write. And I have a million and one errands!”

“Oh, brother. I guess that’s it then, for us.”

“For now anyway. I’ll probably see you again next year.”

I was just browsing comments that I hadn't seen on old posts and I think someone put some kind of Japanese porn on my site.  I'm dying.  I have to go fix this little problem immediately, but in case you were wondering, none of those girls are me.

I’m only blogging because I lost my twitter password during a computer malfunction and also because something that takes more than 140 characters to explain finally happened.

A friend of mine from middle school was over last night and we got a tad inebriated, as old middle schoolers are known to do from time to time. While she was checking her email, I decided to check mine and there was a letter from some nice person who somehow found my blog and wanted to know how she could get my books in Canada. So I told her to check amazon.com or iuniverse.com for “She’s Got Issues.” I don’t remember what else I wrote. I could have said, “I love you,” for all I know. So then the girl sends me another email saying she has a bookstore called Chapters and how much would it cost for her to buy my books directly from me. So I read the email a few times not quite getting it and then I read it to my middle school friend who is a big time business person, but like I said she wasn’t operating with a full deck cause of the inebriation I spoke of earlier.

So my friend decides to google Charters or Chapters, or whatever, and it says it’s the largest bookstore chain in the universe. So we start thinking, and we get the idea that somehow this person wants to buy my books directly from me for her largest chain of bookstores in the entire universe. But at the same time I’m thinking that the email is a set up to see if I would break the law and sell my books on my own instead of through my publisher. That’s how not normal I am. I really thought that. So she starts looking at my contract to see if I’m allowed to sell my books, even though I tell her I know I can’t, and then we decide that I’ll just have to buy thousands and thousands of copies of my own books so I can legally sell them to the girl who emailed me(most likely from one of the offices in her large bookstore chain.)

And then we had a few more drinks and continued to think of ways we could become billionaires off of my old books. But then Dan came home and read the email and explained that it was just a girl who wanted to buy one copy, to read, and that she was simply mentioning the name of her local bookstore to let me know they don’t carry my books.

So, as it turns out, I won’t be needing my own printing press (we were considering that possibility as well, as part of our plan to become billionaires), nor will I need to reread my contract so see if I can store and sell my own books en masse. I just need a couple of stamps.

Lately I’ve been trying to create that air of mystery associated with women of a certain age. I’ve actually been trying for years but I can’t quite get it so I’ve decided the only way is to stop telling people embarrassing stuff about myself. No more blogging is number one on my list of New Year’s resolutions. Number two is stop telling people what I just ate and number three is stop reenacting my dreams in excruciating detail, particularly when they involve celebrities. But last night I dreamt I punched Jerry Seinfeld in the chest and I’m not about to keep that to myself.

Let me reenact it for you.

It’s late at night in some hotel lounge and I’m standing near the bar with a friend laughing hysterically while waiting for Jerry Seinfeld to come over to buy us each a drink. Since he doesn’t come over right away– because he doesn’t know us– I come up with a clever idea to get his attention—I’ll race around the room and accidentally crash right into him! I’ll apologize and he’ll say, “Oh, no, don’t be silly, it was my fault. Let’s have a drink together and forget about it.”

My friend likes my idea so I start running. As I’m going around in circles, trying to time it just right, suddenly there he is. But as soon as I come face-to-face with him, much to my surprise, I punch him. Not like a hard punch across the face or anything, it’s more like a playful, best-friendsy, punch on the chest.

It gets worse.

He yells out, “Do not touch me.”

You’d think that would bother me, but it doesn’t. I think it’s funny, and I look back at my friend to see if she thinks it’s funny too, and now we both can’t stop laughing because I hit someone.

At this point in the dream, I sort of realize I’m not acting right, but I’m in too deep to be embarrassed.So then, while I’m still laughing to the point that I’m making such ugly faces, it looks like I’m crying, I wait until I know Jerry Seinfeld is in the Jacuzzi so I can sneak up on him. While he’s in there quietly talking to his friends, I go and get a little handful of crushed cereal and sneakily put it in the water behind him. And then my friend and I nearly pass out laughing over it back at the bar.

I know.

The thing is in real life if I did run into Jerry Seinfeld in a hotel, I’m more the type to turn my head and pretend I didn’t see him. That’s what I did when I found myself sitting next to Ashton Kutcher at Kim’s summer camp. Kim was there the same year as Rumor, so Demi and Ashton were visiting and they got into the same van that Dan and I were sitting in. When I first realized it was them, I pinched Dan’s thigh and then I looked right at Ashton, put my nose in the air and turned my head. No reason. I just wanted him to think I didn’t like him. And the funny thing is I love him. So much so that I would put a poster of him on my wall right now.

That’s why the dream confused me at first, but I soon realized that my subconscious is simply making up for the fact that I’m trying to be more reserved during my wakeful hours. It makes perfect sense. Eventually it will all balance out and I will emerge into a woman of serious intrigue with little need to reveal things about herself simply because she can’t keep a secret. Until then I will simply have to ignore my impulses.

Okay, fine. One more. . .I once wrote a letter to David Sedaris.