Aging (Not So) Gracefully July 22, 2016

The prompts this time were:

Having an awakening

Well, the only word for it is passé.

I’m terribly sorry, but you’re not going to make love to me tonight.

What I wrote is below.

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At the optometrist, I discover my weakening eyes require a stronger prescription; now it’s harder to read small print in low light. “That’s okay,” I tell myself, “there are some great looking glasses out there now.” But that little part of me that clicks off insults in the mirror is busy with his checklist. “The skin on your belly is soft and flabby, and your neck is lined and red from sun damage.” So begins the nagging voice inside that reminds me I am aging. Daily. Rapidly.

“Try these new lenses,” my optometrist says, taking out a yellow and white box I already hate. “They’re corrective for astigmatism, and yours seems to have gotten slightly worse.” Great, I think. Even my eyeballs are growing more misshapen. “And your feet are dry and cracking,” the shitty little guy inside says. “Better be more consistent about putting lotion on your feet before bed.” Add that to the list of activities I never had to do when I was young. It seems life’s all about maintenance now, all the time.

“Everything dries up as you age,” a friend told me once. “Your eyes, your hair, your skin. There’s less oil production everywhere. Even your body fluids shrink in volume.” Um, TMI? I thought. But thanks for that uplifting information.

After my depressing eye appointment, I stop at Peet’s to get a cup of coffee, too fatigued to make it past four o’clock without a caffeine jolt (or a nap). Everything feels harder now that I’m in my fifties. What is this struggle? I ask myself that over and over and over again. Why can’t I just accept growing older and be happy I’m alive and healthy? These two strong legs, this full head of hair (albeit, with strands of grey, and thinning). Why can’t I love my body as it is right now? It’s only going to grow older.

Some people seem more attracted to me as I age. People call me Sir in a way that sometimes makes me think they want me to take charge in the bedroom. They hold the door open for me and then watch my ass as I walk in front of them. Just yesterday, a young bank teller was giving me the big eyes, flirtatiously chatting me up. The guys on DudesNude and Scruff often refer to me as “Stud,” even after they see my shirtless picture. It seems some younger men would like an older Daddy boyfriend who occasionally enjoys a beer. Maybe there’s a new hotness quotient here I’m missing? Maybe. But why do I still feel like a chubby, middle-aged guy who drives a boring car and is no longer marriage material if so many men keep telling me I’m fuckable and fabulous? How do I learn to see this aging body and this new desirability with grace and affection?

Everyone else seems to understand that this is the most natural thing in the world. Growing older. Becoming more comfortable in your own skin. No one else is comparing me to the younger version of me, 25 pounds lighter with a flat stomach. Nobody is asking me to be younger than I am right now, except me. “Older men are hot,” my close friend Renaldo says. He and I are the same age, and he seems to embrace his older, sexier self. “When are you going to get that through your head?” he asks. Then he adds, “Honey, you’re beautiful. Somewhere out there, there’s a barista lusting over you right now.” When he says this, I believe him. We bubble up with laughter, and I can see the lines around our eyes crinkling up like tissue paper.

Going Higher July 16, 2016

The prompt this time was a guided visualization. I ask everyone to get in a comfortable, seated position, feet on the floor, and close their eyes. Then I guide them through a breathing exercise and ask them to relax their limbs, starting with their toes and ending with their neck, head, and fingertips. Once they are in a relaxed state, I place them (or a character they are working with) in a specific place: the top of a flight of stairs, in front of a gate, on the shore of a large body of water, or in this case, somewhere high. 

What I wrote is below.

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Don’t write about the dying plant, or the essay assignment you have to revise, the exercise schedule you need to keep. The prompt asks you to go somewhere high, but you first have to get grounded.

Two feet on the ground and you’ll lower your blood pressure, the nurse said: two feet on the ground. The hospital, the blood lab, the new phlebotomist. “I’m in training,” he said, his hands shaking slightly. “I’m being observed. Are you comfortable with that?” Everybody’s gotta learn sometime, right? And I’m always looking for another chance to practice compassion, so sure, stab me here, where the big blue vein is. Take two vials of the purple dark blood. I’m always amazed that’s inside of me.

Don’t write about the wasted morning, the $100 grocery bill, the man/boy who says he just wants to cuddle, write about somewhere high. Can you go back there again? Mount Diablo, the green and yellow spring, the winding roads, the clear rushing creeks below. You and Mama, and Baron in the back seat, his big tongue, his pink panting excitement, the summit still thirty minutes away. Eleven a.m. and the mountaintop was yours, no one else around as you took her hands and guided her, walked backwards up the short flight of steps. “One more. Step up. That’s right.” Baron flying up and down the steps ahead of you, behind you, beside you.

At the top, the locked tower, a wraparound deck. The Sierras on the horizon, snow-capped. “Look how beautiful,” Mama said, even when words were hard for her to come by. The cumulous clouds casting shadows over the valley below, light traveling in great patches. The San Francisco skyline with the familiar white triangle of the Transamerica building. That spring before the awful drug that left her in a wheelchair, that spring before you began college, the tearing away that individualism requires, the adult day care, the guilt of becoming your own person.

Before all that or this little life of dying plants and overgrown yards, of new cars and new debt, of text-message flirtations and the battle of the bulge. Just a mountaintop, a loyal dog, a woman with dementia (too young, all of them, too young) and the view. Hawks sailing overhead. The whole world green.

Strange Empathy July 8, 2016

The prompts this time were:                                    

Did we fear being too close?

He/She was never really good at living

Tiny and temporary

What I wrote is below.

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She wants to tell him that she feels his fear—even though a surgeon may never express fear—she knows he feels it. It’s her body he’s entering, after all, her side that he’ll cut into: three small incisions. The blood, the fluid, the air in her lungs. It’s his hands that will maneuver the tiny scopes, the miniature machines, the stapler with the little metal sutures. He’s going to be inside her body. They are strangers, but they are about to get very intimate.

It’s her organ, her growth, benign hopefully, malignant possibly. He has to go inside to find out. Go through the narrow spaces between the ribs, near her heart. “Be careful with my heart,” she wants to say, but she doesn’t. Instead, they shake hands. He asks her about her teaching job, about which dates work best for surgery; he gives her his card with his cell phone number on it. “You can call me anytime,” he says. They talk about millimeters versus centimeters, smooth edges or ominous spiculated edges, lobes and membranes and drainage tubes. Taken out; left in. They talk about cancer: liver, bone, brain. They talk about cancer.

In the elevator, finally alone, she weeps. She allows herself to weep. She realizes she’s about to enter into another intimate relationship. How many hundreds has he had in this lifetime? How many vulnerable, naked bodies have lain under his hands? How many people has he hurt and healed before he met her? How many has he lost right there on the table? She weeps, but she isn’t sure who she’s weeping for. Is it for him and the great responsibility he has chosen? How many can he do in one day? What happens when he is tired or depressed or hungry? He isn’t allowed to be imperfect; he can’t have a bad day at work. She feels for him. How hard it is to tell someone that they might die soon, that he can’t save her—or himself. The reminder of mortality, he is, and the remover of ugly tumors, hideous growths.

“We got it all,” she longs to hear him say, as they begin this new journey together, as they enter this new place, as they hope for a happy ending.