She started making a strange gesture. She was desperately trying to hold down her chin, which kept rising. “You want to pull your chin back down?” I asked, and her eyes wordlessly answered in the affirmative. Using my thumb and index finger, carefully, to avoid breaking her delicate jaw, I tried repeatedly to push it down. But her jaw pointed resolutely upward, immovable. There was nothing more I could do. It was my favorite of her angles. It accentuated her beautiful neck and flattered her already-slim face. She cried out with an animal sound.
“What now?”
She was pulling the hem of her skirt down, and I tried to help her. The knee-length skirt of her dress was shrinking upward with incredible force. Stiletto heels were sprouting from the soles of her shoes.
“Not me,” I said, shaking my head at her as she grimaced in pain. “I’m not that kind of man.”
“Stop trying to defend yourself. This is what you wanted!” A man I didn’t know yelled at me, and a flying rock grazed the side of my face. When I looked toward where the voice had come from, an old man was slowly getting backed into a corner by an old woman, who was wearing fishnet stockings and a skirt with a hem far north of her knees.
“We have to accept that we’re responsible for the physical effects they’re experiencing!” He bent to pick up another rock, and then made an appeasing gesture with his other hand to distract the old woman’s attention.
“But why now? Why all of a sudden?”
“Sudden? Hardly. This could have happened at any point since humans first appeared on this earth.”
“Exactly!” It was a young man sitting behind me, being stared down by a woman in a police uniform. “Life’s not worth living if you’re not tending to the whims and demands of a high-maintenance lover!”
Everywhere I looked, each and every woman was transforming into a legendary beauty of unbelievable gorgeousness. I turned to my girlfriend, still wiping off the lipstick that kept staining her lips.
“I know you were worried about my ex. It’s true that being with her was exciting: I was always on tenterhooks. But I forgot all about her long ago. If you got the impression I found you in any way lacking, there’s no truth to that at all.”
Her black-rimmed eyes opened wider as she heard what I was saying. So she had been feeling insecure. Of course she’d never really wanted to duel at all. I continued to wipe off the lipstick.
“Don’t change. I just want you to be yourself.”
The old woman growled and leapt onto the old man. The old man shuffled and fell back. He held up his rock, but as he was about to strike, he stopped himself and slowly lifted both hands above his head.
The young people behind us had started too. I took my lover’s hand in mine, and we resumed walking down the riverbank. The stilettos growing out of her shoes seemed to have given her the ability to move much faster and more dynamically. I thought she might have broken some of my fingers. I stopped us every once in a while to wipe off more of the lipstick.
She was no longer out of breath. Her nose was growing ever more beautiful in the light of the setting sun. Her eyes gave me chills. Her chin was held proudly aloft. Of all the women at the river, she was the most devastating beauty. I was continuously swabbing at the lipstick now, but I couldn’t keep up. “I’m sorry,” I said, crying again.
It came into view as we approached the bridge, a classic location for a duel: several hundred couples engaged in a melee defying all imagining. Battle cries rang out into the distance, screams, the clash of weapons, men begging for their lives from lovers who seemed beyond language, belated confessions of love . . .
“Don’t change. I love you just the way you are,” I said.
There on the riverside, with tears streaming down my face, I picked up a barbed wrecking ball from the ground near my feet and swung as though my life depended on it. My girlfriend leapt high into the air and evaded it easily, so I tossed the wrecking ball aside and ran into the river. She chased me with superhuman speed, even though the water came to her waist. Just as I thought I had reached the other side, she grabbed a fistful of my hair from behind and yanked it out of my head. A wail of pain escaped my mouth, but I managed to clamber onto the shore and acquire a stun gun from a man who almost mowed me down. When I looked back, my girlfriend was right behind me, coming at me with a ferocious expression I’d never seen before. I pressed the stun gun to her ribs and released the current. She opened her eyes wide and stumbled backward. I followed, maintaining the pressure of the gun against her body. She staggered and nearly fell. I was about to press the button again when she weakly said, “Stop. Please. No more. Help me.”
Weeping, I swung at her head with a club I’d taken off a man I’d kicked to the ground. She fell back into the river with a splash, and drifted slowly downstream.
On the way home, I slowly recited the list of our special places. “The amusement park. The movie theater. The park with the unusual swings. The public petting zoo. Our parents’ homes. The courtyard at the college where we met . . .”
I knew then that she’d let me defeat her. When I told her I loved her the way she was, it must have gotten through to her somehow. I couldn’t stop crying. I walked past the old man, who had expired with his arms still outstretched in entreaty. My sweet, kind lover! I’d rather die than ever lose you.
Q&A
In my decades as a columnist, i have been honored to have had the opportunity to respond to the worries and fears of so many women everywhere in the Q&A format, but the time is fast approaching for this celebrated series to come to an end. As you all may have started to suspect, I have reached the limit of my living ability to blithely continue spouting phrases like “your feminine radiance,” or “a natural lifestyle,” and so forth, not only mentally but also on the purely physical level. As of this issue, I am writing to you from a hospital bed.
When I expressed my desire to retire from this column, the editorial team was kind enough to ask me to reconsider. It’s a reader favorite, they said; it’s been running since our very first issue; you’ve made it this far, so you may as well make it your life’s work; you still have a niche as a grandmother hot in pursuit of beauty beyond age. All much appreciated. Sadly, it is not within my power to live up to these kind expectations. However, in this issue, my last, the team has gone all out on a fifty-eight-page extravaganza of a feature, under the title “If You Can Do It, We All Can!” I myself intend to do my part by responding to as many of your questions as humanly possible. Without further ado, let’s start with some from the editorial team: Thirteen Things We All Want to Know, But Thought It Was Probably Too Late to Ask.
Thank you, as ever, for reading.
Q. What do you think people think of when they think of you?
A. (1) Both men and women find me attractive; (2) I have a great deal of integrity; (3) My age, and the experiences that have come with it, have refined me as a woman; and (4) I keep my promises to family.
Q. Tell us about your thirties.
A. Having just made my start as a cover model for women’s magazines at that age, and because of the media interest that went with it, I felt under pressure to say things that conformed to the image of a “desirable woman.” My main memory is of women my age who welcomed me, as someone who had already borne and raised children, as a manifestation of the hope that they, too, could continue to enhance their feminine radiance. I enjoyed living up to everyone’s ideal, and I believed I was doing a good thing. I probably had some innate talent for it, and soon enough I was in constant demand as a spokesperson and an arbiter of taste—a position that was cemented by my advice column, which first appeared in this magazine.
Q. What did you find difficult about being in the spotlight?
A. Expectations about me soared. I was someone who knew all there is of love. A connoisseur of the finer things in life. A woman who could take a joke. A lifestyle to aspire to. Style you’d want to copy. Frank views on sex. I could barely keep up.
Q. What’s the total number of questions you’ve answered over your career?
A. Thousands? Tens of thousands? Even people I met in my private life couldn’t help but spill their troubles to me within the first sixty seconds of our acquaintance. This magazine’s main readership is women in their twenties and thirties, so most of the questions are about love relationships. Your concerns when it comes to love are much less unique and interesting than you imagine. The majority are variations on the following: How can I get the person I’m interested in to talk to me? He’s having an affair. He won’t have sex with me! My boyfriend is an asshole. And so on.
Q. Problems that come with being an agony aunt?
A. I started to feel that I was continuously giving advice in my daily life, whether I was getting my hair done, or having a meal, or walking a pet. If I was at lunch and dropped my knife under the table, I would ask myself, “Does the classy woman pick it up herself, or does she call a waiter?”; walking down the street, it would be, “Does the sexy woman turn left, or does she turn right?”; while having sex, “Does the woman of our dreams pursue her climax here, or does she wait?”
Q. In your forties, you continued to be a leading figure in the world of women’s magazines, and one of our most widely admired. However, on television, your somewhat unique voice and personality became the target of humor, inspiring jokes and widespread impersonation. How did you really feel about this?
A. The imitations were malicious. They would trim their bangs into unnaturally straight lines, or try to outdo each other with the most pronounced lisp, or repeat comments that I had said just once as though they were catchphrases, to poke fun at them. I suppose it was gradually dawning on people that I was losing my way. And it was true—I didn’t know how long I could keep going. I didn’t know whether the world was trying to make me into a role model or a clown, and felt like I was walking a tightrope on an extremely precarious balance. I guess people were watching to see which side I fell on. As I was, myself.
Q. Your fifties?
A. I wasn’t sure if my answers to people’s questions were masterful profundities or the mad mutterings of an old hag.
Q. In your sixties?
A. I stopped caring.
Q. In your seventies?
A. Mad mutterings of an old hag.
Q. If you could give one piece of advice to your twenty-something self, what would you say?
A. Beware the pressure of having to represent the platonic ideal of an attractive woman! The constant tension of having to be ready to talk vivaciously about romance twenty-four hours a day, of exposing cleavage without flaunting it, of making sure to cross and recross your legs while wearing a short skirt. There will come a time when all your sex appeal can do for you is to make you want to vomit.
Q. How do you feel about the support you have enjoyed from women readers of all ages?
A. When so many people were doing impressions of me, and the prevailing culture came to see my existence as comical, it was only thanks to the support of my readers that I was able to escape being swallowed whole by the swirling torrents of malice. At that time, I felt I was desperately clinging to a small raft, and spent months in terror of capsizing. The muddy water only kept rising and rising. Many nights, I woke from the nightmare with a start, and jumped out of my bed in the dark to spit out the mud I could taste in my mouth. That I was able to regain my standing as though nothing had happened—no, even more, to further cement my place in the popular consciousness—once I had resigned myself to living as a clown: that was nothing short of a miracle. And I owe it to all of you.
Q. You’ve said, “I can only be me.” Please share the source of your unshakable confidence.
A. When I had lost my way many times over, and didn’t know where to turn, what I needed to do in order to find myself again was to let myself do an impression of myself. That’s right. For a long time now, I’ve only been doing what everyone else was doing already—impersonating me. My mannerisms, my voice, the things I say—“What would I say if I were me?” “What would I do?” When what I really wanted to be was a tap dancer! But what does what I want have to do with anything? Other people made me into who I am. Isn’t that actually far more glamorous?
Q. Do you ever still have doubts?
A. None whatsoever. Once I had made the decision to live and die with you all, my conviction never wavered. Even now, in my eighties, I still intend to continue to be “what every woman aspires to be,” in both mind and in spirit, albeit from my sickbed.
Now, for the very last time, one of the most iconic columns in the history of women’s magazines, and the culmination of my life’s work: questions on life and love from you, my readers.
Q. I can’t leave my boyfriend, even though he’s physically abusive. (Nurse, 28)
A. Challenge him to a duel. Call him out to the river at midnight, and have at each other once and for all. In the face of your resolute blows, set free from the bounds of reason, he is unlikely to be able to resist picking up a rock. It may hurt, but that’s where you’ll need to be brave. You will find you already have what it takes inside you. Drift along the border between life and death for a while. Try to act very dead. He will probably be frightened into leaving the scene without checking whether you are or not. When he finally goes, take all the time you need to shiver with joy.
Q. I always end up waiting for him to call. (Aspiring homemaker, 23)
A. Long, long before we learned to wait for things like that, we were already waiting for something else. We’ve been waiting our whole lives for the moment when everything we can see vanishes in a puff of smoke, and someone claps their hands and says, “Your whole life up to now has been a lie. Your real life starts now.” Which is to say that he is not the one leaving you hanging.
Q. I can’t seem to meet the right person. (Office worker, 34)
A. It’s about time you faced up to the fact that this is a thoughtless delusion. There’s no way there isn’t a right person out there for you. After all, aren’t we all born right people? What I mean is, we all limit our own options too much. Have you considered someone from a different country? Someone old enough to be your father? Make a big change and try being with a woman. If you still can’t find the right person, then try expanding your age range all the way down to newborn. Once you can include ten- and eleven-year-olds, the possibilities will only widen. Look into partners you may not have previously considered. Animals are good, as are inanimate objects. If you genuinely desire not to be alone, I recommend that you take a bicycle saddle as your next partner. You think that’s out of the question? But a saddle is shaped surprisingly like a human face, and once you pull it off the bicycle, you can take each other out anywhere. When you go on vacation, the money you save on the second fare means you can make many more happy memories than if you were with another human. Best of all, a saddle can’t speak. You lament that you can’t find the right person because you have too many expectations of men who speak, and end up seeing too many of their failings. But if your partner is a bicycle saddle, there’s just one thing you need from them: to gently and lovingly support your ass.
Your town is overflowing in opportunities for you to meet your future partner. How many bicycle saddles are lined up outside the train station, just waiting for you to choose them? Nothing is stopping you from going up to the bike parking, and, like the king of some small country, boldly selecting from their ranks.
It may happen that you fall for a saddle at first sight, only for its owner to throw a wrench in the path of your love. “Hey, you there, what do you think you’re doing, trying to take my saddle?” Stand firm. Simply tell the owner that, while the saddle may as well be any of thousands for them, for you he is the only one in the world. If you suggest that the owner can take your saddle, the one you’ve never quite gotten along with, instead—be sure to carry it around with you for the purpose—then the majority of saddle-owners are sure to agree. Put your heart into it, and convey the
depth of the love you feel.
Once you’re finally alone with your chosen saddle, the rest is up to you lovebirds! Why not hold him by the stem as though he were walking alongside you, and skip down the sidewalk together? He will never sniff dismissively as a human man would when you suggest going deer-watching for your next date. Even a movie in the most questionable taste will not elicit a yawn. Go to a museum. See the sights. Gaze over the city as it’s lit up at night, and lean in close, and get a romantic mood going to rival any other couple.
Of course, there’s likely to be the occasional jeer or heckle from an insensitive bystander, pointing out that your lover is a bicycle saddle, but let this minor obstacle only stoke the flames of your love. Your partner will no doubt be prepared to be swung as hard as it takes to protect your honor. More important, most human men are no match for his manliness in bed.
What do you say? Can’t you just picture the charms of stepping out with a bicycle saddle?
If you and an attractive saddle end up embarking on a serious relationship as a result of this, please make sure to send in a photograph. I will certainly be delighted to participate in your wedding.
Editors’ note: We have brought you a condensed version of our exclusive eight-hour-long hospital-room interview with the one woman you can’t afford to take your eyes off this season—radiant as she continues to mature as an icon and a role model, still juggling home and career, giving her all to every question, as instructive as ever, right up to the very end. Her advice has attained the realm of the oracular.
The Lonesome Bodybuilder Page 12