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The year I turn eighty, which was about eight years ago, I walk into my neighborhood bar, and the bartender says, “What can I get for you, young lady?”
He’s smiling.
I tell him, “Well, I’ll have a glass of red wine — pinot if you’ve got it — but please don’t call me young lady.”
Whether it’s a bartender or a security guard at the airport, or even my doctor — they don’t call a twenty-five year old “young lady,” but they call me “young lady” because I’m obviously not young.
I haven’t been a young lady since Richard Nixon was in the White House.
Now, maybe they think it’s flattering or cute.
Well, it’s not. It’s condescending.
Because of my white hair they make assumptions about me. They have expectations. They deny the wholeness of who I am.
So, the bartender pours me a glass of pinot noir, and he says, “Oh, age is just a number.”
Well, it isn’t just a number. It is the number. Back in the day, it meant I was old enough to drive a car, to walk into a bar and order a drink, to vote. But the year that I turn eighty, age takes on a whole new meaning for me.
I’ve been a writer for fifty years. I’ve been divorced twice, widowed once — but I still think I have a whole lot of living left to do if I’m willing to step outside my comfort zone and take some risks.
So, I sign up for online dating.
I have a pretty good idea of the kind of guy I’d like to meet — a sapiosexual. A man who thinks the sexiest part of a woman is between her ears. I’m not looking for a husband — I’ve had three of those — but I definitely want a lover. Not just somebody to go to the movies with.
I decide not to lie about my age — low maintenance compensates for high mileage — and I write what I think is an intriguing profile. I post some recent pictures — and the algorithms kick in. You don’t smoke. You both like dogs. You both lift weights.
What more could anyone ask for?
So, I start meeting some of these guys for coffee dates, and they’re nice. They’re pleasant enough, but I always feel like I’m interviewing a man I don’t want to hire for a job he doesn’t want to get.
But then along comes Michael. Michael’s an architect. There’s a picture, a photograph of him — silver temples, a good-looking guy — and candid shots of him riding his Ducati motorcycle and strolling through a museum somewhere.
Now, Michael is ten years younger than I am. It doesn’t seem to bother him, and it sure doesn’t bother me. But there is an issue here. I live in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and his home is a thousand miles away, in Lincoln, Nebraska. But I think, Let’s see what happens.
We exchange messages through the website and then on our personal email accounts. And then very quickly, we’re talking on the phone. We have a lot to talk about. I’m talking about the book that I’m working on. He talks about his architectural projects. We talk about the personal stuff, our marriages and disappointments, our enthusiasms and our dreams.
Pretty soon we are talking every day. Every day.
He calls in the morning and says, “Talking with you is a ray of sunshine in my life.”
And he calls in the evening and says, “You are my sweet addiction.”
Oh my God. Yeah, I just love that. Who wouldn’t?
One night — when we’ve been doing this for a while and I’ve really come to trust him and feel comfortable with him — I tell him about the double mastectomy that I had decades ago and how it still affects how I feel about myself as a woman.
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