The Doctor Is In

by Ruth K. Westheimer

  I hope this chapter encourages you to take some risks, such as asking someone for a date if you don’t have a partner. But I also want you to be as safe as possible, so pick and choose when to take a risk and when to play it safe.

  CHAPTER X

  Recognize That It Is Never Too Late

  One of my attorney friends, John Silberman, once sent me a package. Since it wasn’t my birthday or any other special day, I stared at it for a minute or so wondering what he could have sent me. I shook it but didn’t hear anything. It was not in character for him to be sending me something out of the blue, so I had this feeling you get as you’re winding the handle of a jack-in-the-box. I unwrapped it to find, of all things, two knitting needles and some wool. Not only do I not knit, but I would never sit still long enough to learn such a craft—and John clearly knows that, so this gift was getting odder and odder. There was a little envelope in the box. I lifted it out, opened it, and found a note inside that read: “If being Dr. Ruth is getting to be too much of a bother, I offer you these needles and this wool so you can retire and have something to do as you sit in a rocking chair all day long.” I laughed very hard when I read that note. I guess I’d been complaining to John about something or other, and that gave him this gift idea. And it did teach me a lesson: not to complain about the responsibilities of being Dr. Ruth, especially in front of John!

  I was about seventy or so when that incident took place, and now I’m eighty-six, an age at which I realize many people might have put their work life aside and taken up knitting or some other rocking chair–appropriate activity. But not me.

  Sherry Lansing, who was the first woman to head a major motion picture studio and is a friend, coined the phrase, “Don’t retire, rewire,” and I’ve made it my motto. I no longer can do quite everything I once did, but I still make sure my daily schedule is full to the brim. And if there are some things I can no longer do, I substitute others. So I’m not actually slowing down; I’m just taking a route that perhaps has a few less hills, though it continues to lead me down some off-the-beaten paths.

  Last year my friend Gary Tinterow called to offer one such detour. For many years he’d been a highly respected curator at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and he coauthored The Art of Arousal with me. Recently he’d made a big change himself, accepting the position of director of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston.

  “Ruth, I’m putting together a lecture series here at the museum, and I want you to be my first major speaker.”

  “Of course, Gary. And you’ll be up on stage with me.”

  “Naturally. We’ll relive old times, discussing The Art of Arousal.”

  That book featured classic paintings involving sex that Gary had chosen and which had been paired with my comments.

  “Fabulous,” I said. “When do you want to do this?”

  “June fourth.”

  That date stopped me in my tracks. June 4 is my birthday—and this was going to be my eighty-fifth birthday, which is one of those milestone years that seem to require a celebratory exclamation point. Did I want to spend my eighty-fifth birthday away from New York and all my family and friends? Certainly my children wouldn’t be pleased on hearing this news. But in the split second these thoughts raced through my mind, I also considered how much fun I would have announcing to one and all that on my eighty-fifth birthday I was going to Houston for a paying gig. To me that would be the best birthday present of all, and so I gave Gary an enthusiastic yes.

  When I told Pierre, he hemmed and hawed a bit and then said, “Ruth, I didn’t want to tell you this, but Miriam and I have been working on a surprise birthday party for you.”

  “Sorry, but tell Miriam I’m going to Houston. My mind is made up, and that’s that.”

  I can’t begin to explain how delighted this turn of events made me. For the next few months, I made sure to tell everyone I ran into that instead of having a birthday party, I was going to Houston to give this lecture. This particular birthday celebration brought a smile to my face each time I thought of it. Why? Because I was upsetting the apple cart. I wasn’t behaving like an eighty-five-year-old, accepting that the passing years were slowing me down. As I see it, slowing down only leads to stopping; this gig was a sign that I was going full steam ahead.

  A few years ago, I had a health scare. I came down with a nagging cough, which led me to take a lot of sugary cough drops and cough medicine to control it, and that sent my blood sugar skyrocketing. Doctors had told me that my sugar was a little high, but no one had called me a diabetic, so I never imagined that taking what are essentially over-the-counter medications could land me in a hospital. But that’s what happened. A week later I was scheduled to cross the Atlantic on the Queen Elizabeth, one of those give-a-lecture-in-exchange-for-passage deals I mentioned earlier. I started feeling better very quickly, but nobody wanted me to go on that ship. The doctors who were caring for me ordered me to stay home. A close friend who is a gynecologist did all he could to convince me not to go. My children were mad at me for even thinking about going. I was better, but they were all afraid that if I had a relapse I’d be out in the middle of the ocean—and then what? But I was adamant that I wasn’t going to let this little setback upset my travel plans. So when the ship left port, I was on it. And by the time I arrived on the other side of the Atlantic, I was fit as a fiddle.

  Did I board that ship out of joie de vivre or hardheadedness? To arrive at that answer, to understand how I operate, you have to look backward. I’ve had some narrow escapes with death but my parents and other family members weren’t so lucky. To some extent, I feel as if I am living life not just for myself but for all of those who passed away. So do I have the luxury of frittering away time recovering from a cough-drop overdose? Not this orphan of the Holocaust. And had that boat gone without me, I might also have been kept from going to Israel by “doctor’s orders,” and that was a slippery slope that I intended to not even peer down.

  They say life is short. What most people mean by that is if there’s something you don’t want to do—for example, accept a dinner invitation with a boring couple—you shouldn’t do it. But that’s the negative way of looking at a short life. I prefer to take a more positive outlook. If an interesting opportunity comes along, then I’m not going to duck behind some excuse like being too busy or tired or sick to miss out on whatever it is. At my age, life is only getting shorter, so that means now I have to cram in as much as I can. But no matter what your age, your life is getting shorter too—so don’t pass up any opportunity to live it to the fullest!

  By the way, accepting that offer to speak in Houston didn’t mean that I missed out on my surprise party. The play about my life, Becoming Dr. Ruth, was set to open in Hartford a few weeks after my birthday. It had already had a run in the Berkshires, but then the playwright, Mark St. Germain, had cut it from two acts to one, and before it opened in New York, it was going to have a run in Hartford. Naturally I would be there. Cough drop-bearing wild horses couldn’t have kept me away. Miriam arranged for about thirty or so friends to drive up to Hartford to a brunch before the first matinee performance. When I arrived at the theater, I didn’t have to act surprised. That all these people would have traveled for so many hours just to wish me happy birthday was both amazing and touching. So you see, I got to give the lecture, collect my check, and still get a surprise party. Pulling something like that off is another Westheimer maneuver.

  One activity I gave up with a certain amount of sadness was skiing. After I turned eighty, I decided it wasn’t safe. A famous Olympic skier who is a friend of mine, Stein Eriksen, had gotten into a serious ski accident and I thought to myself, if he could get so badly injured, then what was I still doing schussing down ski slopes at my age? So I gave my skis to my granddaughter, Michal, and while I was sad, it also made me happy to know that she’d be using them.

  In the days when I was still skiing, I was invited to celebrity ski invitationals at various resorts such as Vail and Banff. One of thes
e was held at Park City, Utah, where Stein was based. I had just gotten off the lift and was at the top of the mountain when he came flying toward me, snow scattering everywhere as he skidded to a stop.

  “Dr. Ruth, my favorite skiing sex therapist. Welcome to Park City. Come on, let’s show these Yankees how we Europeans go down mountains.”

  “Sorry, Stein, I’m not in your league.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of skiing with me.”

  “You’re too good a skier—I don’t want to slow you down.”

  Instead of taking no for an answer, Stein ordered me to take off my skis, bent down, and had someone hoist me up on his back. Then he took off down the mountain with me holding on for dear life. As the scenery rushed by and other skiers started shouting greetings to us, we made quite a sight, me in my white ski outfit desperately hanging on to this handsome Nordic god of skiing. I was both exhilarated and terrified. Stein was undoubtedly very careful, though of course he didn’t have any poles to balance himself, as his hands were holding on to my legs. I may have been safer on the back of an Olympic gold medalist than I would have been going down on my own, but at the time I was saying to myself, “Ruth Westheimer, you’ve had a good life, and if this is how it ends, so be it.”

  Giving up skiing isn’t the only accommodation I’ve made to growing older. I hate waiting, especially at airports. In the past, in order to cut my waiting time, I would often arrive just in time to make my flight. Of course, all the additional airport screening since 9/11 has forced me to get there early. I no longer want to be nervous about missing a flight, so now when I’m going somewhere, I make sure to give myself plenty of leeway. But sometimes that’s not possible. If you have a connection to make—and especially if the first leg of your journey is delayed for some reason—then when you’re trying to make the next leg of your flight you have to go dashing through the airport the way OJ Simpson used to do in those Hertz commercials. That, to me, was like an accident waiting to happen. These days, if I know I have to make a connection, I ask for a wheelchair. Some of the distances you have to traverse in airports are so long, I’d rather rely on younger legs to get me there. And rather than feel this to be a loss of independence, I just sit back and enjoy the ride.

  I know there are many people who feel that making an accommodation—be it to age or whatever else life throws at you—lessens joie de vivre. That certainly is true when it comes to sex. Many people think that if sex with their partner doesn’t take place spontaneously that there’s something wrong. But with the hectic schedules that so many couples have, planning for sex, making dates at specific times of the day, may be the only way to actually have sex. So while I’m all for spontaneous sex, I’m also for planned sex—because planned sex is far better than no sex at all.

  To have joie de vivre, you not only have to be adaptable, but you also have to take on the right attitude. If you’ve made dinner plans and they fall through you can sulk, you can waste the evening watching TV, or you can be creative and make alternate plans. For example, take yourself to the local multiplex and see a movie. Or go to a local book store and buy the latest best seller or a book you’ve been meaning to read for years. Or get takeout and call your college roommate whom you haven’t seen in years. Make use of that free time that’s suddenly dropped in your lap instead of watching it go down the drain.

  I’ve not allowed the passing years to pin me down in any way. And if there’s one story that illustrates that more than any other, it’s the changes I permitted, or encouraged, Nate Berkus to make in my personal habitat.

  To set this story up properly, I have to tell you a bit about my apartment in Washington Heights. I’ve lived there for over fifty years. Since I’m not a minimalist but rather more of a pack rat, I have a history of allowing far too much stuff to pile up, literally. And since my late husband shared the same collecting habit, at times our apartment would look like a silo after a record-breaking harvest. I had a big pile of books and papers in the living room that I covered with a blanket and called my summer ski slope. Every once in a while I’d go through this pile and toss or give away large amounts of it, but I was always so busy that finding the time to make these purges was difficult—and I would never let anybody else do it, as something that I really needed might then wind up disappearing.

  To compound the problem, I have two traits that add a level of difficulty to my tossing ability. One is that if I appear in a publication, I don’t ask for one copy, but ten or maybe even twenty copies. I give a lot of them away to friends and family, but a lot manage to find a permanent home under my roof. And then I don’t like to throw anything in the garbage that has my picture on it. I’m not usually very superstitious, but this falls into that category to some extent. So as the years went by, the amount of stuff that I wouldn’t throw away grew and grew. Don’t get me wrong; it never got as bad as those people you see on Hoarders. But conditions did get out of hand for months at a time until I was able to devote some hours to reducing the pile.

  When a producer from Nate Berkus’s show called Pierre, it had nothing to do with the state of my apartment. They wanted me on as a guest because of my expertise, they said. I didn’t get it. He’s an interior designer, and his show was all about decorating, not sex. I know less about decorating than I do about singing, so what was my role going to be on a show like that? My first reaction was to say no thank you. But then they explained what they wanted to Pierre, and he in turn told me it was an important national show. And so a date was set for me to appear.

  The premise was that a woman had written to Nate saying that she and her boyfriend had broken up, and since the time he left the apartment they’d shared, she couldn’t have sex there anymore because it just didn’t feel right. She told her sad story on the air, then they brought me out. The studio audience gasped because they had no greater expectation of seeing me on The Nate Berkus Show than I’d had of being there. After I greeted Nate, I cut right to the chase.

  “My dear, the answer to your question is simple: get rid of all your bedroom furniture. I understand that it evokes memories of the good and bad times you had with your boyfriend. That’s not an uncommon reaction. And I understand that it might be expensive to replace it all, but you can’t allow a bedroom set to ruin your sex life. So if you can’t sell it, then give it away and get new furniture as soon as possible. And even if you have to sleep on a mattress on the floor for a little while, it will be worth getting your sex life back.”

  But while the cameras were still turning, I decided to float a trial balloon.

  “Nate, I fixed this young woman’s problem—now maybe you can fix mine.”

  “Dr. Ruth, if I can, sure.”

  “I’ve lived in my apartment for more than fifty years. I’ve accumulated so much junk that I’m ashamed to have anyone over, and especially not a man. Can you help me?”

  Nate didn’t hesitate. “Of course. We’ll redecorate your apartment.”

  “For free?”

  “Yes, for free.”

  I started clapping my hands with joy like guests on game shows do. I was about to get a free apartment makeover. Talk about a Westheimer maneuver!

  The first step was that Nate came to visit me in my apartment. I did some cleaning up before he arrived, since he was there with a film crew to tape the “before” portion for his show and I didn’t want my place to make me look like a bag lady. But the task was rather too large for me and my housekeeper to make more than a dent. I didn’t know very much about Nate but when he kissed the mezuzah that was attached to the frame of my front door, I knew at least that he was Jewish, and that made me like him even more.

  With the video cameras rolling, we went over my living room, and I pointed out to him why this or that item was important to me.

  “I collect turtles,” I explained to him when he saw all the little turtles I have everywhere. “For a turtle to survive, it has to stick its neck out. It has to take a risk. And since that’s my philosophy, I like havi
ng them around me to give me courage whenever I feel the urge to crawl back into my shell.”

  “But you have so many.”

  He was right; I must have had a hundred. It may seem like I’m obsessed with them, but really it’s not my fault.

  “I don’t buy them, people give them to me. And then I can’t just throw them away, can I? But some mean more to me than others.”

  Nate spotted the one turtle I have whose value puts it above the level of a tchotchke, proving that he’s truly an expert, even in the world of ceramic reptiles.

  A week or two after Nate’s visit, some of his crew came and began to pack up my belongings in plastic boxes to put in storage, each one carefully labeled. They were redoing only the front rooms, so I was able to move a lot of belongings into a spare bedroom. Eventually I did throw out or give away boxes and boxes of books and other items, but at least I could do it on my timetable. And now I’m much more careful about limiting the amount of junk that I gather (though I’ll admit perfection in this skill set continues to elude me).

  When it was finally time for the actual remodeling work to begin, I moved to the Waldorf Astoria Hotel. I can’t say that residing in the lap of luxury particularly made me miss my apartment. On the contrary—I immediately started plotting on how I could move there permanently.