Babbling With Bubula

By Bobby Markels

I am getting very tired about this getting old thing, like let me tell you, old is not a disease, like people look at you and say very solicitously, how are you, as if they are amazed you are still walking. Then they say, you're looking so good. What's so incredible, I've been looking good all my life, I'm a good looking person, so why shouldn't I look just as good now as I did twenty years ago? I may look a little older but, and listen carefully, I don't want to have to keep saying this, just because I look older does not mean I look worse. I just look older. Get it? Most people are the same when they are older as when they are younger, only they are more so. Like my mother, for instance, at the age of 70, didn't suddenly say, well I'm old, get me a meditation cushion, bring me an orange robe, where are the poor, I want to save them. No, she kept right on shopping for bargains at Lord & Taylor and trying out new cosmetics and is this very minute sitting at her dressing table putting creams on her face, drawing on her eyebrows and putting on lipstick, and she is now 93. Ninety-three, can you believe this? And there is this enormous preoccupation with sex. What is so amazing about older people having sex? Is anyone surprised that they still wear clothes, go to the toilet, eat? So why shouldn't they have sex, they still walk, talk, hike, sun, golf, if they were painters they are still painters and even I, in my fumbling decrepit way can manage to put my fingers on the typewriter. I think this is all part of our national Victorianism, like when you were kids you found out how babies were born and you knew your parents never did that. Now we have this Victorian archetype psyche where people are convinced the only people who do it are in their peer group, which is because they think their own peer group are the only normal people in the world, which is because they were all brought up in peer groups -- that was all they knew all their lives. I am probably the last generation who remembers being brought up with all the kids on the block. We ranged in size, up and down, playing together, knew one another as people. If you were another age it didn't mean you were from another planet. We were all just kids together. Whatever I did, I knew other people in all sizes and shapes did too. Archaic people like me still remember that, basically, people are people and that the person across from you, even if 5 years older, or 10 years older, is, in all probability, pretty much like you. But now peer groups are so in that everyone is putting out peer-group-older women books, like Gail Sheehy says you should kill yourself when you have the menopause. Gloria Steinem discovers she has low self-esteem and her cure is to get together in groups with other women and talk about it, Gloria where the fuck have you have you been, were you asleep during the entire 70s? Gloria then tells us to forget trying to look good, it's a lost cause since the boys at the counter don't look at you anymore (tell me about it) since all else is hopeless, you should develop your inner spiritual life. Gloria, an inner spiritual life is not the booby prize, and what's the big deal if some oglers no longer ogle? Can't she just look as good as she can for her friends? For herself? (Well, not for herself, I forgot, she has low self-esteem, I mean, who doesn't, give me a break.) Sheehy goes on that you could drop dead from the tragedy of menopause. Frankly, I was overjoyed to find out I was no longer pregnable, I had raised my kids and they had raised me and it was over. I mean come on, move on, what's next, move that pillar of salt out of the mote in your eye, etc.

When I was in Florida my mother almost dropped dead because I was having an affair. True, he was a caddy. A what? my sister said, a caddy? Yes, a professional caddy. My God, a 63 year old caddy, I never heard such a thing. Listen, I said, in my town if you have a job at all you're doing good. He likes to walk --. But my mother was dumbfounded. At your age--. Mom, when is right? At 3 years old she pinned my flannel pajama sleeves to the sheets -- DON'T TOUCH YOURSELF THERE -- and it's been going on ever since. Sixty's too old. Fifteen was too young--. Which brings us to Helen Gurley Brown, our oldest adolescent, who at 70 is still carrying on about the glories of sex. Her whole thing now seems to be it is absolutely the most important thing in the world that you do it, EVEN IF YOU DON'T WANT IT. I mean, have you ever heard anything so ridiculous in your entire life? And she goes on about even though it's a struggle to keep yourself together, do it. It doesn't matter with whom, what or when, just keep those hormones moving, onward ever onward, march, left right, left, right, left --. Ladies, what is wrong with you? Just be who you are the way you are like you always were. Someone should have put acid in your cupcakes twenty years ago. And I'll tell you another thing, though everyone's going to drop dead at this one: I don't see what's so terrible about a hysterectomy. You take out tonsils, don't you? Yeah, for awhile they didn't and all the kids were sick for the first 10 years of their life. And you take out the appendix, I mean some things about western medicine might be ok. Why not take out the womb if it causes problems -- estrogen -- progestin -- poking and squirming on a doctor's table forever. And I can just hear all the women: Do you know what Bobby Markels said, instead of spreading cotton balls with matzo soup & cooking it twelve hours with dandelion root and rubbing it on your belly button, you should get a hysterectomy. Well, Bobby Markels, she's always been nuts, everyone knows that. No, I never had a hysterectomy, but I wish I did, now that I'm old enough to know better. Yes, old enough, implying -- get this, listen close -- experienced, someone who is wise, someone whose been around the block a few times and knows where the candy store is.

Bobby Markels is the author of five books, The Mendocino Malady series, On the Eve Of My 50th Year, Being Here, Lately I've Been Thinking, Popper, and How To Be A Human Bean. Her books can be purchased at Stone Press Box 711, Mendocino, Ca. 95460.

Issue Seven

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