by Bobbie Brown
For a while, there was literally no more frightening word in the English language. Men—oh, pause. It reads exactly like the thing that it is. The thing that presses “pause” on your relationship with mankind. (Ignore this analogy if you’re not sexually attracted to them.) All the things that had defined my entire identity thus far were put at risk when menopause entered the picture, from the teen beauty pageants to being a spokesmodel on Star Search to starring in all those hair metal music videos to my current MILF Empress status. My ideas of beauty and femininity were in disarray, and my craving to be desired by the opposite sex was about to go down the toilet, along with the last dregs of my hormones and an old slice of cherry pie.
I never lie about my age, even though I’m truly terrified of aging, and I struggle with the march of time every day. There is a school of thought that says women can and should age gracefully, embracing the various stages as they arrive, celebrating their deepening lines as evidence of a life well lived. But for a long time, I couldn’t even bear to look in the mirror, so alarming were the little etchings on my skin. They felt like notches on a belt I couldn’t take off. Luckily, in this day and age, there’s help for people like me. My friends Botox and Juvederm (as administered by Oksana Fursevich, my trusty injectables doctor), La Mer, Bikram, Pilates, HIIT videos on YouTube, coconut oil, apple cider vinegar, charcoal toothpaste, homemade scrubs, yoni crystals, maca powder, turmeric, vampire facials, emotional support peacocks, butthole exfoliants, and, of course, Clarendon and Sienna—my favorite Instagram filters. These are all tools in the armory of hot, ageless women redefining what “older” looks like, and they are employed with varying degrees of grace. But what about the internal changes? How do we manage those?
I had heard about Bioidentical Hormones from friends who were also in the process of retiring their egg factories. Bioidenticals are an alternative to regular hormone replacement therapy made using yam and soybean extracts and are marketed as “more natural” and therefore safer than regular hormone therapy. They’re controversial because some doctors think they’re actually more carcinogenic than HRT. Who cares? All I know is that Oprah’s a fan, and if Oprah’s on board, so am I.
I went to see my doctor, Gayle Jackson, who’s been my physician for nearly thirty years and who also delivered Taylar. She took a swab of my saliva and confirmed my hormonal shit show. Now I had to decide if I was going to start taking the hormones. There was a possibility of weight gain, the doctor warned me, and I personally knew someone who had gained forty pounds on bioidenticals. Do I grow a bigger butt, or bring sexy back? I pondered. Judge Judy reruns, elastic waistbands, and Candy Crush—those are the images that we’ve been fed about post-menopausal women, and that’s not me. I’m still a teenager. I’m still figuring myself out. I’m not ready for the M-word, even if it thinks it’s ready for me. In the end, it was an easy decision. I started shooting up yam-based bioidenticals and all of a sudden my hoo-ha had reopened for business. It was Black Friday down there, I’m telling you.
My first month of taking the hormones, I was so horny all I wanted to do was play guitar solos on my crotch all day long. Now I understand what it feels like to be a man, I thought, bringing myself to orgasm for the eighth time that day. It felt like I had just discovered my clitoris. Being on the hormones gave me a whole new perspective on the male condition. No wonder they’re pigs! I marveled, lost in the throes of getting off all day, every day. No wonder Josh had his dick in his hand all the time and sent photos of it to hundreds of girls who aren’t his girlfriend! It’s nature! It’s beautiful! When I was pumped full of hormones, sex became an itch that had to be scratched—no more, no less.
I had a friend whose wife had also lost interest in sex because of the changes brought about by menopause. He asked me if I could introduce him to women who might be interested in sleeping with him on the side.
“First, you’re a fucking pig,” I said with full sincerity but also sympathizing with him a little now that I’d had a taste of being a sex maniac. “Second, get your wife on Bioidenticals instead of destroying your family, you idiot.”
It took a few months of tweaking the levels before my doctor and I found the perfect dosage of Bioidenticals for me. My sex drive settled back to normal, and the early signs of—squirm—menopause subsided. Strange thing was, even though I was able to have sex with Josh, I didn’t really want to anymore. This wasn’t because of my hormones or any kind of change of life. My body may have been going through menopause, but my heart was going through man-o-pause. I had to press pause on him.
Game Over
I had blocked Josh on all social media platforms after the last time he’d showed up on my doorstep unannounced. But we did have a prior arrangement for him to watch my dog while I went to Louisiana to visit my family. Nupa was the closest thing to a child we had, and she was very attached to both of us. And as mad as I was at him for all the shitty things that had transpired in our relationship, I figured if he wanted to honor our agreement, I would give him the opportunity.
“Hey,” I wrote. “It’s me. I know we haven’t been able to talk, but I’ll unblock you if you want to watch the dog like we discussed.”
“Okay,” he wrote back.
“This is your last chance to prove to me that we can be friends,” I told him.
“Yes,” he wrote. “I’ll watch Nupa. And we can definitely be friends.”
A few days later, I was ready and packed with a few hours left before check-in. Josh had arrived at my house and this time, I let him in. We hugged, a little awkwardly. I told him how much this meant to me and how glad I was we were able to rise above our issues and be good dog parents for Nupa. I had stocked the fridge with four days’ worth of groceries so he could make himself feel at home. I figured this would be a nice break from sleeping on the floor of his studio. I walked him upstairs to the bedroom, showed him where her food and medications were, and set some money on the side table so he could take her to get her nails clipped. Her leash hung on the bed post for when he took her on walks.
“So as we discussed, you’ll stay here at night and sleep with her?”
“Sure, babe. I promise.”
I made a mental note—if this goes well, and if he’s up for it, he can come back in a few weeks when I have to go to Portland for Headbangers Con.
He sat on the bed, lay back, and stretched out. Nupa jumped up next to him and nuzzled at his chest. I knew she missed him a lot. He looked at me and smiled.
“Take your clothes off.”
“Excuse me?”
“Let’s fuck before you go. It’ll be hot.”
“No! I have a plane to catch!”
He sat up. All hint of sweetness had evaporated. “Well, fuck you if you think I’m going to watch your dog.”
Months and years of bile, anger, and outrage exploded out of me, splattering all over my bedroom thanks to Josh, who seemed to think it perfectly reasonable to expect sexual favors in return for dog-sitting services. I screamed at the top of my lungs that I had to catch a fucking plane and that if he didn’t follow through on his commitment, I would never, ever speak to him again.
“Fine, fine. I’ll watch the dog. Just quit yelling.” He rolled his eyes, and I had never hated him more. But there was no time to find someone else to watch Nupa, and both my roomies were out of town. We would just have to make do. I peered under the couch, where Nupa was hiding. She hated it when we fought. “It’s all right, girl. Mommy will be home soon. Uncle Shitface will take care of you.”
•••
When I arrived in Louisiana, I messaged Josh.
“How’s the dog? Everything okay over there?”
“Sorta. She had diarrhea and got kinda sick. You know how she reacts to your emotions.”
“Did you clean it?”
“I’m cleaning it in stages because of my queasy stomach.”
“So is my dog is sitting
in her own shit right now?”
“I won’t take this abuse, Bobbie.”
Then he stopped responding to my messages. I tried calling him, but it rang and rang without going to voicemail. The asshole had blocked me. My daughter was sitting next to me as all this was going down. She gave me an “I told you so” look, pulled out her own phone, and sent him a series of well-composed, venomous messages.
Hello, asshole. My mother is crying right now. She’s very worried about her dog. Would you please let us know what’s going on?
I wished I had my daughter’s composure, her ability to rise above and remain calm in emotional situations. She definitely didn’t inherit that from me or her father. Josh wrote back to her that he refused to be verbally abused by me any longer, and assured her that Nupa was fine. He even sent a cute picture of the two of them together to underscore the point. Taylar showed me the photo and shrugged.
“Seems like she’s okay, Mom.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. “Thanks, Tay.”
The next night, I took the red eye from Baton Rouge back to LA. I had popped a Xanax on the plane to help with my jitters (I hate flying) and arrived home just before sunrise. Groggy, I walked into my dark bedroom and called for Nupa. There she was, waiting for me on the bed. Bleary-eyed, I cradled her in my arms. My little girl. I was pleasantly surprised Josh wasn’t there trying to get in my pants again. Maybe he finally learned some manners, I thought. Exhausted, I passed out on the bed with my dog, happy to be home.
•••
I woke up, stretched out. Something didn’t feel right. My face was all…itchy. I got out of bed and looked in the mirror. My right cheek was swollen and covered in hives. I looked back at the bed, where Nupa was trembling, a look of profound guilt and shame in her eyes. I pulled open the curtains, and when I let in the light of day, I saw the dried crusty shit stains on my pillow cases and all over the bed. Where I had been lying for the last eight hours. A whole world of shit.
In the corner of the room, the teeny tiny waste basket that I use for makeup was stuffed with shit-covered paper towels. The carpet was covered with oddly placed wee-wee pads, magazines, and little mounds of clothes. Underneath each, a patch of dried up dog shit. In the closet, dog shit under my shoes.
As I cleaned and scrubbed my room, my face covered with pink calamine lotion for the hives, I noticed the money I had left him to get her nails clipped was gone, but her nails were still long. Her leash hung beside the side of the bed, where I’d left it—he hadn’t taken her for a walk once. This was so negligent, so irresponsible, so mean, it seemed out of character, even for him. That’s when I realized this neglect was his payback for not sleeping with him. It was in this moment that I finally realized that I was truly done. We were no longer lovers, and after this, we could never, ever be friends.
He must have felt guilty because he tried to call me from Facebook. I blocked him there. Same on Instagram—I blocked him and had my daughter send him a message telling him to stop trying to contact me. This time, I wanted to truly shore things up on all fronts. His behavior with Nupa was the shit straw that broke the camel’s back.
A few days later, I got an email from an address that wasn’t in my contacts. “Oh, you want to fucking play mind games, huh? Well, get ready.”
It was Josh. What he didn’t realize, though, was that there was no game. This was it. Game over. I composed my reply.
“There’s no need for you to threaten me. Nobody’s playing games with you. I want nothing to do with you, ever again. Goodbye.”
The next day, I registered Nupa as an emotional support dog, and when I went to Portland to do the autograph signing at Headbangers Con the following week, she came with me, sitting happily in my lap as I signed autographs with fans. We were fine on our own. We had no need for Josh or his dog-sitting services again.
Breadcrumbing
and Other Sins
I was finally getting over my habit of zeroing in on the cute (young) bird with the broken wing. I wanted a happier, more secure future with a grown-ass man who would love Nupa as his own and never let me sleep in dog shit. A man who understood what it felt like to stand on a stage, deconstruct the anatomy of a joke, take life’s tragedies and turn them into laughter.
A man like Jamie Kennedy.
I had been going through the online episodes of Jamie’s podcast for days, fanning the flames of my crush. I watched him interview guests, talk about love and relationships. He wasn’t frightened to go deep and ask the tricky questions, which I loved. He had this ability to really make people open up. If only he could open up to me. I could see us now, the comedic Beyoncé and Jay-Z, King and Queen of the Comedy Strip.
“Are you dating anybody?” I wrote him.
“Miss Brown! Why are you asking me that over text?” he responded. “That’s something you ask in person.”
“I’d be happy to,” I said.
He never responded.
I didn’t know what to think anymore. Drawn-out text conversations that went nowhere were really taking the wind out of my sails. Sharise told me to chill out. Be easy-peasy. Don’t message him so much. She knows how to play this whole flirtation game. I don’t. I don’t do easy-peasy.
Maybe I need to be on his podcast, I thought. Then he’ll see how perfect we are for one another. I sent a message saying that I should be on his podcast. His response was less than excited: “Don’t be such a bulldog, Bobbie! Jesus!”
Bulldog? For daring to expect a direct answer to a direct question?
I pushed Jamie a few more times about the podcast, but the time between responses to my texts kept getting longer…and longer…until FLATLINE. He was ignoring me.
The Predict A Pen had been right after all. I just wasn’t his type. Still, the not knowing was making me crazy. I just couldn’t take it any longer. So I told him,
“I give up.”
Immediately, a response.
“Don’t give up.”
•••
“He’s breadcrumbing you,” Sharise said after reading the thread of text messages between me and Jamie. “It’s when they give you a little bit and they leave you hanging, and then they give you a little bit more and they leave you hanging some more. They leave you sitting on the bench because they might need you in case something better doesn’t come along.”
“How dare he engage in breadcrumbing at our age?” I fumed. “I just want to say, ‘Look, are we doing this or not? How big is your dick? Do we have a future together or not? If not, then just tell me and I’ll just move on.’”
Sharise shook her head and told me to calm down, that things aren’t so black and white anymore. That no one is upfront and that they do have baggage and schedules and prior hurts that they are juggling alongside multiple dating profiles on various apps.
“Love’s a game, Bobbie,” she said. “You’ve got to study, learn the best strategies, think a move ahead, or you’re always going to lose.”
“Okay, Sharise,” I said. “Show me how it’s done.”
Sharise sat me down in front of her computer and pulled up an article on self.com. “Knowledge is power,” she said. “Read it and weep.”
I scanned the article. “Benching” means “putting someone on the back burner, continuing to date them in a low effort way, because while you know you’re not interested in them, you think they might have potential.”
“Breadcrumbing,” as the author defined it, is “flirtatious but noncommittal text messages to potential mates every now and then to keep them interested without exerting much effort.”
Sharise was right. Jamie was totally breadcrumbing me!
I kept moving down the page. I knew what “catfishing” was, but what the fuck was “cushioning”?
“That’s when you’re flirting with a few different people while you’re in a committed relationship,” said Sharise. “So some
one’s there to cushion your fall if things go downhill.”
“Deep Liking” is when you go far into someone’s social media profile and like old posts.
“Is that bad?” I asked Sharise. “I do that all the time.”
“Yes, Bobbie, it’s bad. It makes you look psycho.”
Oh.
Modern dating vernacular astounded me. “Dick Sand” is “the emotional quicksand that someone gets stuck in when infatuated with a guy.” “Draping” is wallowing because you miss your ex. “Gatsbying” is posting on social media because you hope to get a single person’s attention. Guilty, as charged.
A “Kittenfish” is someone who looks more attractive in photos than they do in real life, and “R-bombing” is reading someone’s message and not responding to it. That, along with “phubbing” (when you pay more attention to your phone than to your date) is just plain rude. Freezing, tuning, penguin, shack pack, situationship, textlationship—truly, the new language of love lacks poetry.
I knew what “ghosting” meant, when someone just disappears, but I’d never heard of “haunting,” which is when you ghost someone, but then pop back up on their social media. “Submarine-ing” is when you resurface without explanation after ghosting a person.
“Cuffing Season” is the time of year when perpetually single people get in a relationship during fall or winter because they don’t want to be alone for Christmas.
“And then you break up just before Valentine’s Day so you don’t have to deal with buying flowers and chocolates for someone you don’t really care about. Or you could break up just after, if you don’t mind Valentine’s with someone casual,” said Sharise. “That’s the uncuffing season.”