do it. Dyed hair. Moisturizers and exfoliants and wrinkle removers and toners all lined up in my bathroom drawer. My thinking has been misdirected. Somewhere, something is holding the sides of its head and screaming. Still, I went out that afternoon and bought more. Things made with hormones and placentas and who knows what all. The woman behind the counter said “Well, my dear, the effects of aging are not entirely inevitable. It’s just a matter of taking care of yourself. It can be done. Look at Sophia Loren, doesn’t she look great? You can bet she uses everything. Why shouldn’t you? I always say, ‘You don’t have to be a star to look like one.’”
I bought everything that insane woman told me to buy. I spent two hundred and thirteen dollars and forty-seven cents, I remember. And then I went to the bookstore, to the poetry section, to find something about the beauty of older women and I found nothing. I drove home, and when I got in, I threw the bag of stuff away. With the receipt. Shameful. That is shameful. I should confess it. I should kneel down right now and say I am sorry, I regret this awful waste of things and I regret this awful way of thinking.
There, I just did it. I got on my knees and I said that. I closed my eyes like I was praying but I let my hands hang loose and open at my sides. Because it is only me talking to myself. And it felt good. Though the carpet is awfully dirty, I must say they don’t knock themselves out cleaning here. There were rings on the night table, and I had a vision of some businessman sitting at the edge of the bed in his underwear, smoking, drinking his beer, flicking the TV through all it offered. There is a sex channel here. Martin watches those channels when he goes on business trips, but he won’t pay. He watches for a minute or two until it starts blinking and then he switches channels. From blow jobs to the home shopping club. Some similarities, actually. I asked him, Don’t you get nervous, waiting for it to start charging you? I imagined the checkout clerk’s lips pressed tightly together the next morning. But he said no, he pretty much knew by now when the blinking would start. I said, “But you … so fast?” “After,” he said. “You do it after.”
My friend Janet once told me how when she was on a trip she watched one of those movies for a while, masturbated to it. But what turned her on was the women. She is not interested in women sexually, but she said the men’s penises were all throbbing and purple and veiny and who wants to watch them come? Apparently they do. But anyway, the next morning all it showed on her bill was “movie” and she was so relieved. Imagine a motel at night, its walls suddenly removed. How many guests would be watching movies whose dialogue is “Oh baby, that’s good, that’s good, oh yes.” Is there a director on these films? Does he slam his clipboard against his thigh and say, “Cut! Cut!” Did he go to film school? If you stood behind him at the grocery store, would you suspect anything?
Martin and I have tried those movies. It works, which is a sad thing. Of course, we never watch the whole movie. We laugh at the music, make many nervous snide remarks about the dialogue, then get a little quieter, watch a bit more and then we’re at it. I wonder what he’s thinking. I wonder if he’s making me the woman in the movie. For myself, I am thinking, well if she can do that, I can do this! I don’t know when sex changed for us. For me, anyway. It used to be a natural completion to a natural attraction. Now I am so ashamed of my body, I don’t want any lights on, I don’t want to call attention to anything. I need a jump-start to have sex, the excuse of a movie or a martini. Sometimes, even when I’m loosened up, I’ll suddenly think of how we look, two middle-aged people, going at it. I’ll feel like I’m floating above us looking at our thickening middles and thinning hair and flabby asses and any desire I had will feel like it’s draining out the soles of my feet. I’ll think,