How Old Do You Go To Hell*

my last fuckable year! (sorry, Mom)

I’m going to be 50 in November so I’m in my last fuckable year! It’s annoying that the messages our society* gives about women aging are so loud that I can’t hear myself think, so I feel that in the end, I have no idea how I’d feel about the subject without the programming. I have so many mixed thoughts and emotions that I almost never relate to other women who write about this; I’m not “defiantly happy” to enter some new stage, not asking to be called a crone or an elder, also not trying to get a bunch of plastic surgery, look 30, lose weight, have no wrinkles, not desperate for my youth, also not trying to say that I didn’t benefit from or ever miss my youthful femininity because at one point in my life it was my only currency, though I had no idea that’s what it would be called, I understood the power of young and female together, cognizantly, mostly from books. I had read enough female (often European) writers by my early teens to understand the incredible and still not fully understood grip that youthful female sexuality has over many (most?) boys and men. I had no money, dropped out of high school, was in AA by the time I was 16, and what I had by my account was:

A mother and sister who loved me

My looks and youth and intelligence- though that was stunted by trauma

was fascinated with how M.D. wrote about men and women and sex and beauty and her extremes

What I didn’t do was trade sex for safety or money, partly because of my inability to sleep with anyone who I don’t think would push me the way out of an oncoming train (this is not the same as love but is a requirement), and because I was in a position where I was able to get by without doing so. I was known as a cock tease because at that time, the late 80’s and early 90’s, if you were as nice to guys as you were to girls, if you flirted, if you made eye contact, if you were warm and caring as you were with your girlfriends, and in my opinion, if you were considered really attractive or sexy, then unless you slept with the guy you treated this was, you were teasing him. The implication is - one my inner self still believes about most men so dating when I decide to again will be alongside some therapppyyy) - that female male relationships are transactional always, with men waiting for sex, sometimes patiently, sometimes not.

I still think it is truly ironic and funny (I mean actually funny, not funny/fucked up) that I slept with the least men of all my friends, and I was the first to get pregnant, at 18, by an older guy. He was the fourth guy I’d ever slept with and I kept the baby and by the way I am pro-choice. (Baby is now 30 and thriving) (and by the way eight years later got pregnant and had a baby with the same man who again, we weren’t in love, and again, we had broken up when I found out I was pregnant! Humble, I am humbled by myself.)

I didn’t have to use sex but I used my face and body which were conventionally attractive. I can’t EVEN get into the weeds about how uncomfortable it makes me to say ‘conventionally attractive’ and not because I’m humble-bragging and not because I’m stupid but because the idea that anyone but the MOST ELITE BEAUTIES can feel secure enough in their impact and perception by other people on their looks to say, hey, I’m considered really pretty!- I don’t get it. My entire life has been a confusing mix of being told I’m ugly (kid and middle school) super hot (off and on whenever) average (on and off whenever) gorgeous, etc. I have gone out and in the same night, had men falling over themselves to be talking to me and then later had another man tell his friend I was basic. I am thin, blonde, blue-eyed, with fairly symmetrical features, so that is a fairly accurate basic conventional attractive list for the late 80’s.

Some men think MARGOT ROBBIE IS MID!? Did you guys see that, on Twitter? Who the fuck cares, and that’s a whole conversation about internet personality vs. real life, porn and its effect on young men, the internet’s effect, et al, but the point is that I don’t understand being so sure about other people’s perspective on your looks because it’s not 100, and maybe it’s 50/50! I’m not comparing myself to Robbie, the point is that if even a staggering beauty like her gets herds of men in the wild bleating that she’s mid, how can anyone else know wtf.

This isn’t about self-perception. It’s about having a semi-clear understanding of how other people see you as a young woman, and what you do or don’t do with that understanding.

My life was such that once I started noticing that men were responding to me almost scarily enthusiastically everywhere I went, I realized I could feel more secure and less alone if I was aware of this power. in my relationships with guys, as friends or strangers. The overwhelming attention of men throughout my later teen years and throughout my 20’s was a currency the same way ‘star power’ is one, ‘influence’ is, etc. If it was a male person, I could get most anything free, get in anywhere I asked, get out of most tickets, get extra help for any roadblock if I was talking to a person in an office whether it’s the dentist or the taxman or the doorman, and in general- definite exceptions- men were extremely protective of me, kind, respectful, and made me feel safe. I felt that even in my male friendships, the guys were kinder, more patient, treated with me with more respect- sometimes much, much more- than other girls, in part because: youth, pretty. I think it was the fact that I am and was, even then, a compulsively open person, trusting in most people, speak vulnerably and honestly, and deeply care about other people, that must have seemed to my male friends as an ideal of femininity, and I’m sure this was in significant part a fawning response, because it worked. I WAS kind and sweet, but I also performed it, and this disarmed men. Because of being a bookworm since birth, I also had a very firm and strong idea of innate human worth and that no matter how fucked up I was, I was included in that worth, and I carried and carry that with me everywhere.

At one point, I was so depressed and broke and alone that I might have been suicidal were it not for a few factors, and the way I felt around men was one of them. I could just go to the grocery store and feel better some days, because the stares and smiles of men all around me were some form of a para-social relationship, where I felt less lonely- until something might happen like being followed home (my mom still talks about when a bunch of young men followed us all the way home from the mall when I was 17) and then I felt terrified. And who did I go to for help? My guy friends! For years there were five of us, myself the only girl, and they were, I cannot stress this enough, so pure with me. I don’t know why, after a life of so much misery and pain, I got lucky with this group of guys, but I’m always going to remember. And, at this point in my life I did not view women as kickass. I had close female friends, best friends, and in my family, but I didn’t see women as the really powerful beings they are until later in my life. I looked to men for power, and I allowed myself to feel secretly spiritually and intellectually powerful, while depending on men for security. That’s what I wanted. I didn’t take money from men, I didn’t go out with the guy who promised me a car and an apartment, I didn’t, I didn’t, I didn’t, because I didn’t want things- in fact I scorned money and things on a basic, black and white level, being very baby-intellectual at the time- there were fewer things that disgusted me more than people obsessed with money or fame- but I took their bodies next to mine at clubs, protecting me from the men walking by and screaming bitch and cunt and stuck-up bitch at me when I wouldn’t dance with them. The presence of my best male friends at the club with me allowed me to dance the way I naturally dance without worrying that I would have to pay for it by being groped. I looked to men to pick me up when my car broke down, to fix my car, to walk me home through the dark parking lot. I felt terrified and unsafe around many men but it was men who gave me a sense of safety. In my mind only men could protect me from men. Only men could make me feel safe.

This is part of my experiences being young as a woman in America, and when people say ‘who cares about aging’ I assume they didn’t get anything huge out of being, specifically, a young woman. Maybe they had money or functional parents or very non-conformist features or maybe they were a stunning Black woman in a time when a beautiful Black women didn’t feel the same power in public spaces in general, etc etc and it didn’t impact them the same way. For me, it was a lifeboat. It also made me have less respect for men because most of them, in my estimation, were just desperate to be drawn into a fantasy they had in their head about a girl- but then I grew up and I begin to think this was the state of human beings in general, not just men, that there is a dream, a fantasy, and when they meet someone who is giving all the visuals and vocals, there isn’t too much looking under the surface to see what’s next. I fell in love with and married my husband in part because he was my best friend for so many years before I slept with him, and he held up and admired many of my qualities which other types of guys found gross or off putting or weird. He celebrated my brain, my weirdness, my writing, my late night thoughts and hopes, my fervent and surely at times off-putting and overeager moral explorations and strivings, and I felt, and was, seen and loved. I mean!

*title is a mix of ‘how old do you have to be when you stop being visible/pretty/considered xyz” and me, ie “GO TO HELL” being my interior response