What a difference a year makes, huh? As you may or may not recall—depending on the number of cocktails you enjoyed at my 40th last year, and the brain cells you’ve obliterated since—you gave me a boundless ration of grief over my official entré into middle age. You laughed and ribbed and smirked your way through the evening at my expense, and you were quite funny.

It’s why I like you. Mostly though, I had to laugh to keep from crying.

You might be expecting me to get even, now that it’s your turn to stuff the cake with candles until it begins to implode from the weight of melting wax, leaving your guests with heaps of molten cake lump, given your weed-charred lungs haven’t the capacity to blow out three flames, let alone 40. I do hope yours is a sheet cake from Costco so your wife doesn’t have to watch all her hard baking work undone by your physical failings. Oh, the disappointment. Though, in time, she will come to be very familiar with such limitations and will lower her expectations accordingly. Who’s laughing now, my friend?

Well. I’ll tell you: It’s not me.

You see, I won’t laugh at you or make snarky remarks about the slow process of decline that is about to engulf you like a novice snowboarder caught unawares and goofy-foot in an avalanche. Because, truth be told, there is little to laugh about at this juncture.

If you don’t believe me, take a picture of yourself naked the night before your 40th birthday and compare it to one taken the day after. (And remember: Only one Weinergate per year, please. No tweeting these images.)

If you look at the belly region, Bri, you will be able to see evidence of your slowing metabolism, which will have officially gone on strike about three minutes before midnight on the day of your birth. Even if it comes back to work, it will have a crappy attitude and only do half as much as it used to.

There is very little that’s funny about the disappearance of the fat pockets located around the eye sockets. What? You didn’t know about these? Well, once those go, your eyeballs recede, making peripheral vision a thing of the past, like the second glance of college girls or having sex three times in the same night. You may have given very little thought to those fat pads. But just wait until Fern at Window 19 at the DMV revokes your driver’s license. You will lament those fat pads. Mark my words.

Here is the thing. Or, as e.e. cummings might say, “Here is the deepest secret nobody knows / (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide) / and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart”:

Forty blows.

I’m telling you this as your friend, Brian. Your true friend. And as such, I implore you not to believe any of that other bullshit the optimists in the world tell you. They are liars. They will swear to you that this is the best time of your life and encourage you to embrace all the positives of aging. “Forty is liberating,” they’ll say. Then they’ll offer the over-played, almost-convincing example that—unlike in their self-conscious 20s and settling-in-to-their-skin 30s—they no longer care what other people think of them. Which is compelling, indeed.

My father-in-law—a wonderful man—couldn’t care less what people think of him. He also drops ass in public. Equally compelling, don’t you think?

The truth is more that you simply won’t care what people think of you when you bitch about your ailments. And just you wait. You will have more joint pain, more back aches, more random bumps and rashes, more gastrointestinal discomfort, a possible hemorrhoid or maybe colon cancer. At least, you’ll think it’s colon cancer until some nurse laughs at you on the phone, tells you to eat more bran, pick up some Tucks Medicated Pads and some Preparation H—off brand, though; it’s way cheaper, and not suppositories, unless the hemmy’s internal, then suppositories. Not that this has happened to me. I’m just saying. I know people.

You’ll get toothaches, headaches and hangnails (on your toes, Brian, on your damned toes!); you’ll suffer random, intense skin pain that you’ll believe to be shingles (fight the urge to Google it and just wait for it to go away while imagining the rest of your downhill spiral lived with blistering sores).

You will have more gray hair than you ever wanted, in places that you never wanted it. Though, you’re a guy, so you probably don’t care about the eyebrows or pewbs the way a woman might. And someone is bound to reaffirm your belief that you look distinguished with silver at your temples.

“You’re getting better with age,” a friend might tell you. And go with it. Because, while your bilateral rotator cuff tendonitis might be keeping you awake at night, and turning you into the grumpy guy in his underwear, baby-blue terrycloth bathrobe and Ugg boots who yells at speeding drivers to “Slow down, goddamnit!” while picking up the morning paper, it sure will be nice to fall back on that beautifully perceived exterior. See? Post-40 and you do still care what other people think.

But other than that—and some other stuff I have no space to get into—it’s simply peachy over here on this side of four decades.

Happy birthday.

Love,
~aaryn

(As published in San Diego CityBeat on July 27, 2011.)

Without making an itemized list of my various physical and psychic ailments, I’d like to offer this thought on aging: It’s sucky. And just to get in the proper frame of mind for writing about how much I’m not enjoying it, I decided to employ the writer’s version of method acting and listen to some smooth jazz for a bit. That’s right. The words you’re reading have been strung together with country-club-foyer music as inspiration.

“Why smooth jazz?” you ask.

Because smooth jazz is like the McRib and Kathie Lee Gifford: It reminds me that there are things more dreadful and way less stylish than the inability to read a menu in dim light, standing-induced jolting knee pain and the eventual and permanent retiring of all high heels. Be still my heart.

Now, some things can be tackled. Like, when your daughter insists on repeatedly counting your forehead wrinkles, you can create bangs. Or when the Almond Roca and bourbon you consumed during the holidays permanently affix themselves to what was once your waistline, you can use an elastic hair band to button your pants (big shout-out to my once-pregnant friend for that tip).

But “That’s the Way of the World” by Earth, Wind and Fire re-mastered as a piano-and-trumpet convergence by someone named Kim Pensyl? That’s a travesty that can’t be fixed with a nylon zip tie. Becoming irrelevant is small potatoes compared with that, and it is this knowledge that keeps me positive in a fake-it-’til-you-make-it kind of way.

In my efforts to shrug off my disdain for aging and come to terms with the inevitable, I started searching the Internet for inspiration. Obviously, I’m not the first woman to go down this path, and there isn’t very much originality in dreading—or worse, complaining about—the aging process. I knew there was something out there that would stir my aspirations. I simply had to find it.

And find it I did. After suffering the usual plethora of mommy blogs (blech and double blech), I turned to my favorite fashion blogs, most of which are aimed at 20-somethings. But it was through these ladies and a complex labyrinth of links that I struck gold—or rather, Bakelite—when I stumbled across Advanced Style.

Hosted by Ari Seth Cohen, a young street photographer in New York City, Advanced Style is devoted almost entirely to the stylish older woman (though Cohen includes some very dapper men, from time-to-time).

And by “older” I mean “senior.” Cohen has a tab at the top of his home page called “I’m proud to be __ years old,” and all of the stylish women featured on that page proudly claim more than 80 years each. Not only that, but they also make being old look way more fun than any of this “prime of our lives” bullpuckey.

Cohen’s site is filled with wonderful photographs of vibrant, relevant women of very diverse and yet similarly concrete individuality. Most recently, he’s teamed up with a videographer named Lina Plioplyte of Teenage Peanut, to make videos of these women, shorts that are both inspirational and indescribably moving.

One of my favorite stylistas is the oft-featured and wildly bohemian 90-year-old Ilona, who has an insatiable thirst for color and no time to fret about age. She has short, bright-orange hair, the clippings of which she used to make a set of fabulously long false eyelashes that she’s worn like a trademark for 40 years.

“I’m in very good relationship with them, just like with my body. I talk to it. I say, ‘Now listen: I’m very nice to you, be nice to me,’” she says in her video.

We should all be so kind when we talk to our bodies.

Jean and Valerie of Idiosyncratic Fashionistas were recently launched to international fame after Cohen featured them on his site. During their interview, Jean extends an arm stacked with red and black Bakelite bracelets and squeezes—between fingers also adorned with Bakelite rings—Valerie’s homemade stress ball necklace. Their motto is “Growing old with verve.”

And then there’s Debra Rapoport, an expert thrifter with a pink streak splashed through her asymmetrical white hair. She takes us shopping in her video and tries on a black leather dress that zips down to there and up to here. She throws an orange boa over the top (“Nothin’ like an orange boa! You know how I love orange! Orange is neutral”) and the ensemble instantly underscores her magnetic personality. With all this, plus a body to die for, Rapoport is gorgeous, sexy, smart and wonderfully au courant. I want to be her when I grow up. Scratch that. I want to be her right now.

Perhaps the most refreshing thing about Advanced Style—The Best Website Ever Invented—is what you will not find: Women puffed up by collagen injections or boob jobs; women attempting to deny age; women wearing labels for status; women following rules (you should see the number of 60-somethings wearing skirts above the knee). You will not find Kathie Lee Gifford here. You will not find smooth jazz.

But, someday, if I’m lucky and if I stop my whining and really take to heart the message the ladies of Advanced Style are sending, you may find me.

(As published on January 19, 2011 in San Diego CityBeat.)

However evident my yuckness was to anyone within arms-length, the state of my filth was apparently well shielded by a) my car, b) my tinted windows,  c) my over-sized sunglasses and d) my lip gloss. (Lip gloss has magic powers. Praise the lip gloss!)  All I know is that I slowed, smiled and waved into my lane a car full of wild-haired, teen-ish boys at a two-way stop on Adams Avenue and suddenly, I was Eva Mendes.

On my best day I should hope to look so gross.

And so I found myself crawling along in single-lane traffic, behind a white Honda Civic filled with lanky kids of the male persuasion who probably weren’t old enough to vote in 2008. The driver, wearing Ray-Bans circa Risky Business—a movie he’s probably never heard of—kept checking on me in his side mirror. The two boys in back turned to face me, as excited to watch me follow as my friends’ small daughters, who make funny faces out the rear window of their father’s car whenever our families take our Minis for an afternoon drive. And the guy in the passenger seat poked first his head, then his arm, out his window, waving a cell phone, signaling me to call him. Which required a number, so he set the phone down and began slowly and methodically flashing a series of numbers with his long fingers. It was like the mating dance of some rare, exotic bird that was vaguely familiar and yet incredibly foreign. It didn’t matter that he was of a different species; I understood the language. He was thoughtful and precise, leaving enough time between digits for me to write them all down. Too bad I was DRIVING! Further evidence of an evolutionary gap.

My hands were on the wheel and I was smiling wide at this point. Chuckling, even, as the passenger twisted to flash an eight, a six, a nine. Oh, if they knew, I thought. If they only saw me close up. I imagined the surprise that would register in their eyes if we were to stand face-to-face, realizing their mistake and figuring out how best to get out of this uncomfortable situation. I contemplated what their conversation under such circumstances might be—surely involving several “DUUUde!”s— when I noticed the driver eyeballing me again in his mirror. I held his eye contact and pointed to myself slowly and methodically, making sure the line of communication was open. He adjusted his glasses, rested his elbow casually across the door and nodded at me. He was ready to receive.

I lifted my right hand off the steering wheel and pointed at myself one more time. He nodded: Got it, got it. He was sort of adorable, this man-child. The whole group of them was. But I had to have my say.  I crossed my thumb over my open palm and held my arm straight out toward my windshield. I held it there until the boy in the mirror nodded again. Then, with my fingers touching my thumb, I made a perfect O.

The boy didn’t move.  I laughed and repeated my message knowing I’d undercut myself; flashing my real age would have required both hands on my part and maybe a little too much work on his. He was using a mirror, after all. Plus there was that other hurdle of DRIVING A CAR with which we were both grappling.  I conceded the six months because a one-handed “four” and “zero” were the safest route to the same destination. And anyway, at their age, what the hell’s the difference?

4-0 babe, I smiled. His eyebrows went up and that’s all I saw because I’d arrived at the bar where I’d be meeting my husband. I performed my award-worthy parallel park job, and looked up in time to see the boys disappear into the rain, their four mussed heads a silhouette against the gray day. It had been good while it lasted. It was silly but exciting, I admit this. And I was slightly more dirty when it was over.