Vol. 1, Post #13 Why I’m like this
Things I learned on 70s TV, and No More Mr. Nice Guy. My ongoing sex tips for girls* (*girls who are holding on to mid-life by a thread). A dating odyssey for Young Olds, AKA, people with readers.
I grew up in a house where there were a lot of dumb rules that were either based in utter bullshit or focused on What Other People Will Think (possibly the same category a lot of the time, but I’m going to break them into two separate schools of nonsense here).
Utter bullshit – you can only date Jewish boys, you need to go to college close to home so we can keep tabs on you, being a writer is akin to being a garbage collector, why can’t you listen to nice normal music, WHAT IN THE WORLD are you watching on TV?
What Other People Will Think – never tell anyone that your father is an abusive bipolar mess. Never tell anyone that your mother has a shopping addiction that will, in the end, result in hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt (yes – not joking) to be sorted out by her hapless family and friends after her death. Also, WHAT IN THE WORLD are you watching on TV?
My parents lived sad secretive lives, and in addition to me, had a younger daughter who is neuro-divergent and deeply compromised as an adult. Their escape plan, which they tried to implement every weekend? Leaving me in charge of my sister as soon as humanly possible (like, maybe age 11?) in order to go out for the evening with friends and pretend that everything was OK. We lived in suburban Philadelphia, in a posh neighborhood that we could not afford. I had no idea of any of this – not the two mortgages or the endless credit card bills or how we were literally almost penniless at times – when I was a kid, and, as part of keeping up appearances, I got schlepped to Benetton for sweaters in the fall and owned just as many Izod shirts as the next girl in the summer. That is, until I hit early puberty and said Fuck This Shit, no thanks. Prior to that, I blithely went along with the insanity in the house. I knew things were all kinds of Wrong and I was determined to just get out there as quickly as possible. As soon as I could quit Hebrew school, and definitely by the time I could drive, I was making my own way. You already know plenty about it.
Now, back to those nights when I was home alone with my younger sister. After she fell asleep, and the TV was mine, I could not get enough “adult” themed films and by that, I don’t mean porn. I mean the movies that came out in the late 70s and early 80s, during a time when the roles portrayed by women on screen were radically changing, based on the cultural zeitgeist, “women’s lib” and second-wave feminism. These were the three films that I couldn’t stop watching, over and over again, from the time I was a pre-teen until I was about 15 when not only could I leave the house with older friends who drove, but could escape to life-changing happenings like “The Rocky Horror Picture Show,” the punk and hardcore clubs that were popping up around Philly, the vintage bookstores and vinyl shops off of South Street, home of Zipperhead!
Ok. The movies. Official trailers in the links below. Those voiceovers!
Do you need summaries of any of these? Real quick – An Unmarried Woman was the first of a set of bookend films starring Jill Clayburgh (the second being It’s My Turn, 1980, cue the INCREDIBLE Diana Ross theme). Here, a seemingly perfect marriage in NYC is turned upside down when husband tells wife (our Jill) he’s in love with someone else and what unfolds is wife’s exploration into herself, her sexuality and desires, her fears, her discover that she can buck society’s expectations of her and of womankind in general. This all looked like pure freedom to me, even if I had no reference point from what I wanted to be freed, except my parents’ house. The film co-stars the 1970s downtown art scene in and around gritty SoHo, an assortment of singles bars and boozy pick-up parties, and features a ton of recognizable other stars from the day. Takeaway? Divorce will not break you, and in fact, might be the pathway to a life you never knew you wanted.
Next. Interiors is one of the only Woody Allen films that I can still watch. It centers around, again, the dissolvement of a long marriage after mental illness (wife, played by the incomparable Geraldine Page) and infidelity-fueled narcissism (husband) take the wheel. None of the couple’s grown three daughters (Diane Keaton among them) are particularly well-equipped to deal with either of their parents, and the whole thing ends in profound heartbreak, but…but…as was the case with Allen’s movies around this time, the sets were unusually beautiful, and I was captivated by every shot. I wanted that, the order, the spareness, the quiet of those rooms. It was the antithesis of the chaos in my home.
Diane Keaton, weirdly, also co-stars in my third favorite, Shoot The Moon, playing a harried mother of four girls, holed up in bucolic Northern California with a short-fused husband, an author who never really made it. Angry with the world, he leaves wife and daughters for, naturally, a younger woman, but seems like the joke’s on him, because Diane finds herself in an oddly compelling new relationship with a man she’s hired to help her with a house renovation. Again, another divorce film? Yes, and despite Albert Finney’s (he’s the husband) constant temper tantrums, it’s an oddly quiet movie, set against the gorgeous backdrop of this big rambling Marin County house, the opposite of Interiors, but I coveted it anyway, probably also coveting a mother who was not afraid to fall apart, to be real (mine always pretended everything was F-I-N-E). Do husband and wife reunite? What about all those kids? I’ll leave you to pay-per-view to find out.
More than once, my parents came home from a night out and made comments about how these movies were inappropriate (but then again, so is leaving your 11-year-old with a 6-year-old), turning off the television and shooing me out of the den. I wonder how much I actually understood from those screenings. I knew Jill as An Unmarried Woman was reborn triumphant into her new life, with a diaphragm in her handbag (OH MY GOD REMEMBER DIAPHRAGMS???), and a swagger in her braless strut. I knew the family in Interiors was messy, but my family was messy, and the apartments, country homes, and Hamptons beach houses all screamed NYC Sophisticate to me and even at that age, I knew my life would be in New York as soon as I could get out of Philadelphia. Shoot The Moon? Boho Northern Cali seemed like another place I wanted to know about, and even though the couple was on the rocks, Diane’s character was compelling to me, mysterious and womanly. She could go from taking a long hot bath in a clawfoot tub while she smoked a joint and had a cry, to inviting her hot handyman to stay for dinner after he finished a day’s work, roasting them a chicken and dropping the needle on Rolling Stones’ “Play With Fire.” I thought she was both vulnerable and sexy all at once, and I still love Out Of Our Heads.
After 40 years, I was curious to see what held up and what did not, so I recently rewatched all three of these films. Here is my takeaway of what they imparted, not to Young Abbe, but to Young Old Abbe:
Don’t like being married? Then don’t stay married. Even when it looks like you have it all figured out. Conversely: Get dumped? You can collapse in a heap, or you can step forth into a new day. The latter seems preferable.
Even in the midst of deep pain, there can be beauty. In fact, beauty often springs forth from deep pain. Related: Many of us do not have the parents we think we deserve. To that, I say, I’m sorry. I get it and I love you.
Date outside your type. You might surprise yourself. Shake the tree and gather up some new luscious fruit that falls from the branches. Haters hate when you do that.
Now, am I trying to wrap up a myriad of life’s decisions in a neat little package and tell you that I am the way I am because I watched too many movies about women on the verge? Hardly. But I do think that in some ways, those oddball flick picks were speaking volumes to me as a young impressionable girl, about life that’s out there, and by “out there,” I don’t mean beyond suburbia or beyond the mall (oh Valley Girl). I mean, REALLY out there – the places that don’t remotely resemble where we thought we’d end up. The dark roads where we have no choice but to press onward, even if onward is scary. And yes, I know I’m bordering on Mary Oliver and your one wild and precious life but BEYOND that. Further out. Because you know what’s out there, even further afield? A distinct lack of a playbook.
All bets are off. You wanna jump? Go ahead. You wanna run screaming back to where you came? Also fine (fruitless but fine). At this point, I’d wager that you’ve got 50:50 odds on fucking it all up or carrying it off in your next few chapters and I say, take those odds.
Look, you’re too old to be an ingenue and pretend to be surprised by life’s Fuck Yous. Yet you’re too young to sit out the dance. These years are therefore gifts, precisely what make being a Young Old so potent to me.
There are new experiences, new lovers, new adventures, maybe new bodies that might be worse for wear, maybe new homes that sure don’t feel or look like the place where you grew up or where you raised your kids, if you have them. If you can embrace that, if you find any of that compelling or exciting, you are most certainly going to have a blast on this part of the journey.
But what if you don’t like this ride? What if you wanna get off? Think about this, my more tentative Sisters (or Brothers, or Others): That playbook we tossed aside? Ready for my Big Thought?
No playbook = No More Mr./Mrs./Ms./Mx. Nice Guy. Consider this: One of the perks of being a Young Old is that your people-pleasing days are over. Mazel tov!
I think that’s what at the crux of those three movies I couldn’t stop watching. Life is messy and rather short, so make it yours and make it extra glorious by going off script if the air in the room is starting to get stale. At our age, we’ve earned the right to call the shots, and I think we can all celebrate that. Come on over and sit by me. We’re going to watch a triple-feature and you can have extra butter on your popcorn xoxoxoxo
Postscript: next week we’re back to sex chat. I’m going to write about my never-ending love for pubic hair. Have thoughts? whatsshovegottodowithit@gmail.com
I want to come watch these movies with you!!! I'll watch them, then text instead. Thank you. This is gorgeously written.
Btw it’s Alyssa Sirmarco 😊