So now you’re a single gal again, but you have a new girlfriend, Peggy, the mother of my friend Liz from school, and you and Peggy make a little connection when you pick me up from a playdate at her house, and Peggy suggests that next time Betsy comes over you should stay and hang out with her. Peggy sees something in you, buried under your buttoned-to-the-top blouse and full skirt, and wants to help you uncover it. The following week, Peggy brings you into her bedroom and closes the door, tells us kids to knock if we want to come in. She asks if you’ve ever done grass. You hesitate — mowing the lawn is the first thing that comes into your mind — and when you do clue in and say no, you feel like she may as well have asked if you’ve ever had sex with a woman, and you’re a tiny bit afraid that might be next. But it isn’t. So you share a joint with Peggy, she shows you how to do it, and soon you’re relaxed and floppy and giggly, you’d do this 24/7 if you could accomplish anything this way, but you imagine having to take a voice lesson on marijuana and picture yourself rolling on the floor, peeing your underwear. You admire Peggy’s flowy Mexican blouse; she looks comfortable in it and in what’s under it. She takes it right off and tells you to put it on; you do so. You giggle; she tells you to keep it, throws on a paint-splattered, stretched-out T-shirt that was on the floor by her bed. Peggy is an artist. She tells you stories of some of the men she’s been with since her own divorce—Nothing special, she says, but quite a few amazing lovers in there. Peggy sees the curiosity on your face, gets that you haven’t fully worked out the sleeping-with-people-you-aren’t-married-to thing, in spite of having a go at it when you actually were married. It’s 1968! she says, smiling. You know what year it is, but you don’t know what her point is, and she sees that. You’re a modern single woman. You’re in New York City. It’s your time. You can do what you want now and not feel shitty about it! I had a three-way once on peyote! You don’t know what peyote is, you think it might be a type of bedsheet, but you do know you’re barely ready for another two-way. I mean, it wasn’t all that great, honestly. You can skip that, in my opinion. But there are lots of men out there. Why limit yourself?
Your mind is effectively blown. This is not what you were taught. You set your hair with rollers, and you will do this forever and always. Women wear slips under their dresses; they go on proper dates until proposals are made; they maybe, maybe work part-time until they become with child. What could you have been thinking, leaving all that behind? This way has not been quite what you imagined, though that didn’t go far beyond Grande Dame. You hoped to be so celebrated that you’re given a name, like Sutherland’s “La Stupenda,” or Callas’s “La Divina,” or even just be referred to by your last name, like Caballé. Not yet. And this blouse is so comfortable. Stupid slips. Right on! you say. Okay, too much. You and Peggy fall on top of each other laughing.
Lois Dies (What Scenario Are We up To?)
Okay, I think I have it this time, Betsy. Scenario four — or is it five?
You’re not a kid anymore. You’ve stopped drinking, but that’s about it. You go to the AA meetings. You’re still single. You’re broke. I die, you grieve, now you’re in your mid-thirties. You’ve given it a go as a writer, but it wasn’t what you wanted after all. You decide it’s now time to pursue your life’s dream of becoming a Broadway star. As you see it, now that your mother the singer is dead, you no longer have to use that dimmer switch anymore; that’s not really true, but you hope. You still have stage fright, which is the reason you say you never pursued it — it was hard enough for you to sing for the singing coach — so you contact a woman who specializes in stuff like that, and she works with you for a year, breathing exercises and guided meditations and the like. Some of it is flat-out silly. She tells you to picture yourself on a stage that faces an ocean; the ocean is your audience, the ocean doesn’t judge you, the ocean only wants you to succeed. You have always loved the ocean, but right now you’re picturing tsunamis instead of gentle, encouraging waves; this can’t possibly help, and you tell the coach so. She says just keep doing it, it’s not magic, and so you do, you don’t have much to lose, and one day an audition comes up that you don’t say no to, for a supporting part in a new musical. You were already on the old side to make a start in this field when you went to the coach in the first place, but this part is tailor-made for you, exactly your age, a spinster character, the kind with glasses and a bun that comes down at some point when she meets a nice man. You get the part. I could give you a year’s worth of auditions like this, so you know what it’s really like for most people — how it stinks when you get feedback like You’re not ready or Do you have anything else or Have you ever or Would you be willing to dye your hair/get a nose job/do a nude scene or sometimes even just Thank you, which may as well be them saying You may now go jump off the Chrysler Building.
Their primary concern is that you’re too old, but your talent is undeniable, and they decide unanimously to hire you, and you’re flattered, although you’re not at all sure you should have taken this on. You are, now that you’re here, decidedly not sure. It should be said that it was never that you didn’t know you could sing, and sing well. That has nothing to do with the fear, which returns in the form of that swelling ocean, on this actual stage, as you’re receiving actual praise from actual people, and you see in front of you an enormous Hokusai wave coming down over the house seats, over the casting people, over the orchestra pit, hanging right down over your head.