Day One - San Francisco to Santa Cruz

Boardwalk - Santa Cruz

Santa Cruz Pier

On the road...

Sig Other Rides Out...

There is a preponderance of homosexuals here...

Our regularly scheduled program of introspection and musings regarding step-parenting and middle-aged sex is interrupted in honor of the tenth annual AIDS/Lifecycle ride and my chronicling thereof.  Sig Other announced several months ago that he would be embarking on this weeklong adventure and it never occurred to me at the time that either a) it would actually come about or b) I’d be roped in.  But suddenly there we were, at the Cow Palace in San Francisco – standing in line after line to prepare Sig Other for the 545-mile ride. I will not be joining on two wheels.  Rather, I will follow on four – playing unofficial “soigner” on Sig Other’s ride.  We walk toward registration and Sig Other notes with some surprise, “there is a preponderance of homosexuals here.”  Yes, I remind him.  This is, after all, an AIDS ride.

Sig Other is not homophobic.  But he is filter free.  Five minutes in and already he is wandering around the Cow Palace saying things like, “this is SO gay” and “there are a lot of gays here.” Generally, Sig Other likes to think of himself as living in a “post gay world” – a world in which labels are unnecessary and equal rights prevail for all.  Of course, that is NOT the world we live in.  And in our world, our gay friends are denied basic rights – the right to get married, etc.  So Sig Other is riding in support of a cure for a disease that, without activism, would have otherwise gone unexplored.   Sig Other was aggressive and successful in his fundraising – he’s in the top 10 percent of donors on the ride.  He cares about justice and ethical behavior and feels a responsibility to do tzedakah.  But what he LOVES is riding.  What he loves is the bond between bikers, the obsession of the road.  I remind him, as he wanders and makes his comments, that in fact he would have been just as happy riding in support of virulent toe fungus were that a cause he could raise money for.  But as this is for AIDS, he should be aware that there will in fact be a number of gay people present and not all will share my deep appreciation of his filter-free style.

As much as Sig Other loves riding, he has an equal and opposite response to large groups – large groups make him a bit queasy.  Large groups of people ordered from one area to another, standing in lines and shuffling about make him feel that he’s reliving a scene out of Schindler’s List.  He bore up well through the first hour or so of registration - 2500 people going from medical check to e-ticket to the waiting area for the orientation/safety video.  I, on the other hand, was starting to feel like one of the cows for which the palace (a misnomer if ever there was one) was named.  We waited on cold concrete in what looks like a cavernous metal barn, were herded from one line to the next, from waiting area into the video room.  Doors closed, we were seated, asked to turn off our cell phones and told that if we left the room for any reason during the video we’d forfeit the bright orange wristbands proving we’d seen the video and have to start over from the beginning.  That’s when Sig Other leaned over to me and whispered, “See - this is when they turn the gas on.” 

Sig Other rode out first thing this morning.  With his friends Mark and Max and 2500 others.  I’ll meet them at their first stop in Santa Cruz later today.  More then…

Berries and cream please.

Child One did not like me when we first met.  Child Two takes every opportunity to remind me of this.  It gives him great pleasure.  “Maybe,” Child One said to me last night, ”it was because you tried to serve me strawberries with balsamic and basil instead of sugar and whipped cream.  I was only ten.  Who serves a ten year old their strawberries with balsamic?”  I remind her then she was not exactly a typical ten year old and already had a remarkably sophisticated palate.  She considers a moment, agrees and says perhaps she’ll try it again soon.

This observation did not come out of nowhere.  We had come home late from a movie, both starving, and I’d whipped up a quick dinner of scrambled eggs with shaved ricotta salata and sautéed baby zucchini with fresh sage.  For dessert, she grabbed a nectarine from the fruit bowl and asked if I thought it would be good.  “Better,” I said, “with a drizzle of thick balsamic and some chopped mint.”  That’s when she wrinkled her sweet nose and reminded me of the berries.

Once or twice, when the reminder comes that Child One did not, in fact, like me when we first met, I suggest that perhaps her not liking me had nothing to do with me.  She did not like the girlfriend that came before me (nor did I for that matter), or the one before that.  I suggest that perhaps ANY girlfriend who would come into her father’s life would not be received with open arms – that the girlfriend would be a threat to her own relationship with her father and a threat to the possibility that Sig Other and Ex Wife would reunite.  Child One dismisses this without a thought, “No,” she says, “I didn’t like you but that’s not why.  Maybe because you were bossy and I was afraid of you.”  She pauses there.  I agree with her.  I tell her I agree with her.  And then she continues, “But now I’m sort of bossy too and I love you so much!”  We laugh and leave it at that.

But I know – I will always know – why Child One didn’t like me.  I know and will always know why, even now that she truly does love me, she will remember those first years as difficult and fraught.  No child wants a third parent.  No girl child wants a woman to threaten her special relationship with daddy.  No boy child wants a woman to take his mother’s place.  These delicate relationships – the tenuous spiderweb dance we do as blended families – take constant attention – constant observation – which child is comfortable – which is feeling insecure – which is taking advantage, and which simply does not like balsamic on her strawberries and would prefer a simple serving with sugar and cream…

Buy you a drink?

As the 45^th year rapidly approaches, I find myself increasingly frustrated with my own physical limitations.  In sheer defiance of aging cells and waning hormones, I want nothing more than to kick-start my sex drive and recapture the vivacity of my 30s.  I wouldn’t mind ironing out some wrinkles and subtly lifting parts of my anatomy, but really I’m much more focused on revving up my energy level and turning up a slightly dimmed porch light.  I want this for myself, I want it for Sig Other, I want it for my marriage. 

So what’s a girl to do?  Where is the magical elixir meant to rocket body and soul back a decade?  In search of answers, I went to various shrinks and doctors, had hormone checks and blood work done and started talking to girlfriends of similar age.  My malady, it turns out, is not at all unique.  And there is no magic pill, no special formula.  Almost every woman in her 40s feels the exact same way – we like the idea of sex.  We just like the idea of sleep more.

But surely this has to be resolvable.  Surely, I can overcome.  And so, a hit and miss combo of potions and pills, trial and error have become part of a life spent trying to recapture something I likely wasted years ago.  Mornings now begin with massive handfuls of vitamins and supplements, washed down with a vile shake of protein powder, super greens, flax seeds, chia seeds and a magic potion called “maca powder” which is meant to kick start the libido.  I try to work out regularly and fail miserably as something else (anything else really) always gets in the way.  I’ve seen shrinks to determine what deep-rooted pathological disturbance is clearly hampering my sex drive.  But frustratingly, head doctors, vagina doctors and general doctors all agree – there is nothing wrong with me.  I love my husband.  I’m attracted to my husband.  I like sex.  I’m like sex with my husband.  I’m just tired.  And middle aged.  And overworked, overwhelmed and overscheduled.  Even more frustratingly, these shrinks and doctors and soothsayers all have the same advice: make a date night, check into a hotel, get away for the weekend.  Are they kidding? When would I possibly find time for any of those things?  Sig Other and I are lucky enough if we get to spend one whole day on the weekends together.  Between his travel schedule and mine, between schlepping children and realizing our precious time with them is ticking away, between being engaged in the world in a way we feel both responsible and life affirming, WHO HAS TIME FOR DATE NIGHT?  Add to this the special cherry on top of my particular situation: a career spent sublimating my femininity in a business gone deaf and blind to women of a certain age.  I am neuter – a sexless dame in a young man's game. 

I never understood women who were offended by wolf whistles and catcalls.  One of the things I miss most about living in New York is walking down the street and getting a look or a smile or even a whistle from a construction worker, a truck driver, a guy in a three piece suit.  I don’t mind having a door opened for me.  I don’t mind a jeer every now and then.  I’m a girl and want to be treated like one.  I am certainly the girl at home.  Sig Other is flawless in his recognition of my femininity and never fails to notice, to compliment, to support me as a woman. 

But every now and then, a girl needs to feel cute to someone other than her husband.  Every now and then we need to be reminded that we are sexual objects to someone who still finds us mysterious and alluring and doesn’t know what we look like when we sleep or that we snore or don’t look cute when we cry at bad movies.  Every now and then, we need a flirt.

So it is with great gratitude that I send a thank you to the young man who offered to buy me a drink in a bar – who wasn’t daunted that I was waiting for a male friend, or that I’m married or that I’m much, much older than he and who, in spite of my protests handed me his card.  I will find him a girlfriend – an age appropriate, single girlfriend – as a token of my appreciation.  But he will never know that, at least for a day or two, he was much, much better than a cocktail of maca powder or a facelift could ever be…

LET YOU KNOW MONDAY...

“My stomach really hurts,” Child Two declares as he gets into the car.  Its 10:30 on a Saturday night and we’ve just picked him up from the third in a series of what is known as the Bar Mitzvah Circuit – the social season for the tween set.  Every private school kid in southern California inviting every other private school kid to his or her bar or bat mitzvah.  They don’t all go to the same temple or even the same school.  And these temples are not close together.  Like every other activity in a Los Angeles child’s social calendar, there’s a lot of schlepping - weekend after weekend of driving to the temple for services, back from the temple after services, to the party in the evening, picking up after the party.  On and on, an endless cycle of sweaty, nervous hormones in khaki pants and blue blazers – an endless cycle of pasta bars and photo booths, of disco bands and empty dance floors. 

“My stomach hurts,” he says.  “No,” he continues, “it’s more like my kidneys.  My kidneys hurt. “  He pauses and then, “Actually, I’m vibrating.”  Child Two did not eat a bad piece of sushi.  He did not hit the dessert table one too many times.  And he wasn’t stealing sips from the grown up’s table.  No.  Child Two had just asked a girl out.  His first girl – the girl he’s been pining over since the beginning of the school year and the most sought after girl in his class. 

For thirty-five minutes – the time it takes to drive from the temple at the beach all the way to our house in the valley – we hear, in detail, the blow by blow of the approach – what he said, who was around, the specifics of the physical manifestation of hormones and nerves as only a love torn twelve year old can describe.  And what does she say?  This vixen, this whore?  “I’ll let you know on Monday.”  Monday!  Seriously.  A 48-hour wait for a twelve-year-old boy who has worked up the nerve to ask a girl out.  Torture.  

He proceeds to tell us what it would mean if she said yes.  Apparently, “will you go out with me” means more than just a date.  It means a date AND it means you’re now a couple.  So we spend a few minutes talking about what they’d do together (I suggest a movie, he counters with “we should start slow – I’ll take her to the Coffee Bean”).  And we talk about what it would mean if she says no (social suicide, everyone will know about the rejection and there’s no one else to ask out for the next six years).

 

When we return home, Child One is there with a gaggle of her friends – all seniors – boys and girls who had their own experiences on the circuit and who listen raptly as Child Two shares, once again, the story of exaltation and humiliation.  The boys offer up congratulations and words of advice.  The girls high five him – tell him how cool he is.  And Child Two trundles off to bed still jittery but a little more sure of himself and with a little less of a stomachache. 

Now, we all know what “I’ll let you know Monday” really means.  Nothing good ever comes with a delayed response and an answer on Monday.  If something is exciting, intriguing, enticing, you jump on it right away.  If you need a moment – if you have to sleep on it – if you delay the inevitable until Monday likely you are just cruel.  And so I hate her.  I hate this little twelve-year old bitch I’ve never met.  Just as I imagine I will hate girl after girl who might disappoint my sweet boy.  But I’m so proud that he asked – so proud that he had the presence of mind, the confidence and the balls to approach a girl at all (much less the most sought after girl in 6^th Grade).  And now I’m buckling in for a year full of Saturdays, and battening down the hatches for the rest of the tweens, the dreaded teens and what I hope is a future of more yeses than Mondays…

Sorry...

It turns out that the best way to start writing again is simply to start writing again.  The 45^th year approaches rapidly and I realize I’ve abandoned computer for pursuits all work related.  And while work is a flourishing and happy place at present, my inner life may be atrophying at a pace too rapid to notice.  Certainly I am less interesting at a dinner party than I was in the blog prolific days of the 43^rd year and when hours were spent contemplating navels and books and articles rather than screenplays about superheroes and monsters.  Still though, Child One and Two grow and remain fascinating fodder – the world of being the Evil Step challenges daily and Sig Other remains the present and entertaining love of my life.  So I will attempt, in spite of the continued onslaught of work, to return to The 43^rd Year, as I approach my 45^th…