Okay, I’ve been having a bit of a bout with writers block. It’s not really the blues, per se. It’s more like the blahs, the sags, the not enough coffees in the world. I don’t know why? I have this new political job that takes an inordinate amount of time especially given that, compared to my old life, I’m making about oh, say, eighty two cents an hour doing it, but it’s fun so that should make me happy. Money’s tight, I haven’t bought a new outfit in months and I’m going twelve weeks between colorings and three weeks between pedicures and Rich forgot to pay the Verizon bill so we had no Internet ALL DAY. But MY GOD, I don’t live in Haiti, I don’t even live in the Bronx, I am not part of the Obama administration, I’m not Martha Coakley( really, really not and never would be with that hair cut), I am not Scott Brown and I am not Tiger Woods wife. So what’s my problem? I want to go somewhere fun and I can’t figure out where that is. Whine. I either drink too much or too little but I can’t find moderation. Whine. And I think I’m finally really aging. I feel it and I see it. It’s winter. My tan has fully faded and my age spots are incredibly apparent. The one on my forehead seems to be developing it’s own forehead and I’ve spent enough time on WebMD to know that the dermatologist, when I finally decide to see her, will scold me about not enough sunscreen and lop it off and put it in a jar. And the winter spiritual clincher? A friend just offered me the chance to appear at an enormous press conference for a product she’s marketing for the cosmetic industry and I would be the guinea pig. They’d shoot me full of this new product and drop ten years off my face in front of the press. Now I don’t mind the thought of being a guinea pig. I don’t even mind doing it in public since, in case you haven’t noticed, I don’t mind telling just about anything that has to do with just about any part my life. And I don’t , frankly, mind the idea of having stuff injected into my face to fill, and I quote my friend, my “fine” lines, if it makes me look better. What I mind is the fact that she noticed my “fine lines”. It means they are really there. I actually have “fine lines”. And I thought it was just me. You know what I’m saying? I was pretty sure everyone could see the age spot on the forehead if the light hit it just right and the coverup was waning but the fine lines? Those I thought were between me and the mirror. My fine lines, not the worlds. The fact that EVERYONE can see them did not help the winter blues. Then, to top it off, I get Facebook “friended” by a guy I knew when I was in my earliest of twenties who basically says that he has read my blog and that he thinks I am possibly way more interesting that he thought then. That’s the kind of “friend” we all need. Someone who you barely knew because they thought you were an idiot when you were young, looking you up and for god knows what reason, trying to be pals with you now that the “fine” lines have set in. Because maybe as you were getting those fine lines and aforementioned age spots you were also getting, hey, INTERESTING. Maybe, in fact, those extra bits of upper thigh and upper arm fat, excessive pigmentation and fine facial indentations brought with them, to the Jen Party, some more interesting aspects that were never there when the bikini bod was rocking and the forehead was vacant of anything especially spots with foreheads. Maybe just being a bit uglier and sporting a jiggly butt makes you worthy of “friending”? What the hell am I supposed to do with that. So, of course, I friended him back. That’s the kind of idiot I am.
Facebook is a bizarre land. My new found friend Eric, for instance. We knew each other in high school quite peripherally. He was a year younger than me, he went out with my neighbor for a while, I suppose he came to our house but I can’t really remember. To say we knew each other would be a huge stretch. HUGE. He, too, read the blog and “friended” me. He, too, I suspect, thought I was an idiot in high school. And, after he friended me, he was so nice I decided he might be a stalker. Who else could be so nice? And so different from what I barely remembered of him from High School? Except in Eric’s case, it turns out he IS funny and interesting and much more than I remembered from good old Wachusett Regional High School, although aren’t we all. Unlike all of my physically present friends, we don’t speak on the phone, I don’t have the foggiest idea what he sounds like, or, frankly, even looks like, but every so often, out of the blue, he’ll send me something smart to read or point me in the direction of something that is interesting or new(like a band called The Propellerheads…don’t ask…just listen…and with your kids). I’m glad that I know him now even if I didn’t know him then. And don’t really know him now. Although I worry a bit that while we correspond cleverly by email and Facebook, the person he thinks he’s talking to does not have the age spot with the forehead on their forehead and still has an ass the size of two small but perfect canteloupes. But I sound bitter. And I’m not. The ass has to go for the intelligence to increase. Everyone who’s anyone over forty knows that. You know what I’m saying? And who cares if his image of me is of me at 18. It’s common ground we both share.
But Facebook. What a brilliant idea. Everyone is always wondering what happened to their past, or in some cases, in their past. And Facebook has found a way for those of us muddling around middle age trying to find our glasses to find our past. Or at least a few chuckle worthy little parts of it. I’ve been Facebooked by almost everyone I’ve ever slept with for more than one night and if they didn’t Facebook me, I Facebooked them, just to spy . There are a few I’m missing, like the dim restaurant chef with the mohawk and the tongue piercing from ‘86 or the drummer from the rock band who had me hook up with him for a six month period of intermittent tour dates and then disappeared off the face of the earth. Or at least I told myself he’d left the planet. He doesn’t seem to be on Facebook although he gets more Google hits than imaginable. But then again, if he left the face of the earth, his presence on Facebook would be unusual but at least his Google presence indicates that he was real. Facebook works better for people with fine lines as opposed to kids with baby fat who have barely left their past long enough for anyone to be in it. My stepdaughter is Facebooking from a semester in Italy and I love to hear her tales of time in the Alps and cheap Florentine dinners and to spy on her budding long distance romance with a boy on the Indiana border. But when my first NY city roomate, the woman with whom, at 20, I shared a seedy hotel room on 28th street complete with a paranoid schizophrenic neighbor, mice running across our beds while we attempted sleep and the incredible wonder of being grownups (so we thought) in New York, found me this week and it was like finding gold. These great, self proclaimed middle aged, sisters from Texas who have a hilarious blog http://www.themidlifegals.com/ Facebooked me cause they had read my blog and liked it. I was so proud. Friends of mine who have stores send messages to tell you about some cool sale, a friend who’s an opera singer just Facebooked me an amazing event she’s performing in at Lincoln Center. Politicians and politically active friends post good stuff to read to help you figure it all out. My friend Mary posts versions of her “To Kill A Mockingbird” documentary, a work in progress, for everyone to comment on. She even posted the story we wrote about sleeping with Tiger Woods, something I never would have thought of. Oh, you didn’t know we slept with Tiger? He didn’t mind the fine lines.But, then again, he wouldn’t.
Now I’m not saying Facebook is a perfectly oiled machine. Facebook keeps suggesting I friend a fellow I have known for years. What Facebook doesn’t seem to know is that he died eight months ago and so I’m not going to friend him. Doesn’t seem like a good use of time. Facebook also allows people to imagine that you are a little more interested in their lives than you really are. GQ this month has a brilliant piece on this. www.gq.com/entertainment/humor/201001/scary-facebook-friends-profiles#slide=1The people who give you the day to day, moment to moment, synopsis on every cup of coffee and bit of exercise they’re indulging in. Now I can see if they were letting you know every time they were getting a blow job, a colonoscopy or if they hit a wild turkey with their car. It’s not that I WANT to know this but at least it’s sort of interesting information. ”I’m getting ready to go ride my bike in the rain” is not interesting. ”I’m having my second latte of the day” is not interesting. ”I’m getting a blow job from a hooker near Times Square.” may be too much information but at least it’s interesting. Particularly since there are no visible hookers in the Times Square neighborhood anymore. Occasionally Rich will leave his Facebook up on the computer and he is Facebook ‘friends” with a huge number of attractive twenty somethings, not cause he’s Tiger-esque even though he might want to be, but that’s who he works with. They update him on cool twenty something activities that they all are indulging in and fab new twenty something songs and their lives don’t ever involve updates on kids school plays, exercise routines or clips from old near obscurity musicians. I point this out as a downside of Facebook NOT for him, but for me. Because, unlike me, they all still do look like what my old but new Facebook friends imagine I look like. Although I would NEVER post about my kids school play.
It’s a new communication world out there. I don’t actually have an ipod but I think I might want an iphone. ipods just get in the way of hearing properly, which seems to be increasingly difficult enough, but that iphone is full of cool things that i still think i can figure out with a good tutorial from my kids. ee cummings would have thought the ipod people rocked. And I love Facebook. How else would I know that a woman I logged more naughty all-night behavior with in my twenties would grow up to own her own mega business and live a respectable Philadelphia life. Last time I’d seen her, her drunk boyfriend was peeing in the sink and she was crying because she never imagined she would work in a bank. Or have a boyfriend who peed in the sink. How else would I know that someone I know now, lived with someone I knew then. Two people from two different worlds who popped up as mutual friends in that weird little Facebook box to the left of your screen. How else would I know that a Canadian boy I once thought was dreamy would move South and marry a Texas girl. Or that my next door neighbor from childhood is still grieving her mother, long gone. Or that my other next door neighbor Pattys uncle still feels guilty about the time he dropped us at the entrance to Dulles for a plane from DC to Boston and we couldn’t have been much more then 12. Dropped us at the door? I guess I had repressed that. The only thing I remember is that we saw the real Colonel Sanders. Who remembers we were all by ourselves. Or that a friend who I’ve thought about often over the years just became a dad for the first time at our VERY advanced age. And twins, no less. Congratulations. Facebook is really fun. Facebook is really great. Whoever invented Facebook deserves all of the millions of dollars that they have surely made and will continue to make. And now a suggestion. If they can figure out Facebook, they can surely figure out a way to deliver at home, do it yourself wrinkle filler that doesn’t involve a press conference. And a little something for the age spot with the forehead?
The article discusses a recently released study by some doctors at Case Western who took a look at a bunch of photos of identical twins to see how they were aging. They came to conclusions, some of which seem obvious and some of which confuse me. I’ll begin with my concern about the two photos at the beginning of the article. Two sisters, side by side. One looks good, the other, not so much. But here’s my question. The one who looks good has a sly sweet smile, some pink in her cheeks, a light in her eyes. I look at her and wonder, maybe she really does look younger in real life. Or maybe she’s a woman who, just before they snapped the shot, had a nice glass of a red wine with a good friend (thus the pink in the cheeks)and had, immediately afterward , been pinched on the bottom by the UPS man delivering her package from Victorias Secret(both resulting in the sly smile). Her sister on the other hand looks at bit scary. Downturned mouth, sagging cheeks, a deadness behind her eyes. But here’s what I wonder. What was going on in her life that day? Was she jealous her sister had gotten the pinch and the thong? Had she given up wine for Lent? Had she been at the neurologist waiting for bad news or good news about her husband? Or perhaps a five foot ten, twenty year old had just left a script for her husband in her mailbox. I don’t know? I’m just saying….