Vol. 1, Post #42 My Old Ass, Your Old Ass

Yes I know you wanna fuck Aubrey Plaza. Beyond that. 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.

Did you watch “My Old Ass” on Prime? Fuck, I wish it wasn’t an Amazon production, but there is it. I have Young Old thoughts on the flick, and I promise not to give away any spoilers. Trailer below if you’re like, Whaaaaaa?

It’s only 1:29 and yes, nearly everyone in the film has vocal fry which bugs the shit out of me, but I gotta say, I watched “My Old Ass” with a gal pal and we talked about it for an hour afterwards. And one of us might have cried (guess who — what a pussy). You could TOADULLY watch this over Thanksgiving weekend with the fam as a lighthearted salve for what ails you (do I even need to go on about THAT?)

Ok, thoughts below. Not just about fucking, but about fucking around and finding out.

So, the premise of the film is — what would/wouldn’t you tell your younger self about critical decisions with heartfelt consequences if you could go back in time? What would you share and what would you withhold and conversely, would your younger self even listen to you?

I sat with that for some time after the film ended. It was more to unpack than I thought.

The first thing I thought about was how I was such a serial monogamist in college. Two boyfriends for most of those four years, and in reality, one was and should’ve stayed just an occasional fuck, and the other, well, he was what I’ll call my first in a series of broken birds. I have been a Love Macgyver too many times to count.

Google Wounded Bird/Broken Bird Syndrome if you need to read up about it, but I’m guessing you don’t. We all know my type. Take charge whenever there is a need big or small, and endlessly love you up, and definitely not always in a healthy way. My BB list includes my college boyfriend for most of those four years, my ex-wife, and my three partners after her — five birds in that flock (I’m gonna call them The BB5). NOT my ex-husband, to whom I was married for 16 years and with whom I remain good friends. Ours was a very healthy relationship that ran its course; we got married young and had a remarkable life and an even more remarkable child. I will always love and appreciate my ex-husband more than I can say (and those of you who know him will back me up: MAJOR MENSCH).

What did The BB5 have in common? Well, they were artsy, anguised, little black rainclouds who either had a secret creative side that never got fully nurtured (and here I was to encourage them, full steam ahead), or they had unsupportive, even cruel parents who either ignored them or pushed them too hard to be someone else (and here I was, Number One Cheerleader at the ready). They were moody, emotionally immature and often flat-out emotionally unavailable, except when they and I were “cracking their shells” and a tiny bit of gorgeous vulnerability seeped out. Gold. Heroin. Naturally, if I experience a little of that, there was more to be mined, right? I’ll just keep at it. Oy oy oy. When we argued, every one of The BB5 stopped speaking for hours, sometimes days. And of course, a few of them were incredible lovers, so that made it even more intoxicating, and hard to leave. As the child of terribly unwell parents who were completely absent except when other people were around and they pretended to be the pillars of the community, I knew I was strong, and I COULD FIX ANYTHING.

But would I give up any of The BB5? If “My Old Ass” visited my young ass and warned me away from them? Well, I’m not sure.

Here’s what I DO know, had I been alerted to what was to come:

• Non-monogamy in college. Period. Except for half of freshman year and half of sophomore year, I was Hopelessly Devoted to two guys who did not step up. Should’ve just enjoyed the sex and kept it light.

  • SIDEBAR: THIS: And singer Jay Buchanan is such a sweetie; met him through my pal Pearl, who’s an incredible musician herself. Double swoon!

• Ex-wife — well, would not have married her because a year later, we were divorced (even though the wedding in Ptown was glorious), and for that matter, I wouldn’t have spent nearly ten years dealing with her cauldron of anger based on her childhood trauma and fucked up family issues. But was that relationship precisely what I was seeking when I left my first marriage, feeling unseen? You bet it was. It was DEEPLY emotional for years and it was also my first real foray into lesbo sex and for all the nonsense that my ex-wife brought to the table, we were FIRE in bed. So, I guess the takeaway here was that I wish I had left this relationship sooner. Still, it’s a decade woven into the fabric of my life with my son, and likewise, I love my stepson and his other mom, so there you go…

• The two BBs that followed — here’s where it gets interesting. As for S., I would’ve never gotten involved. Yes, “My Old Ass” could’ve saved me some serious heartache for 3 years. S. was a sober alcoholic. I am not sober. I have a lot of respect for anyone who makes the life-affirming and difficult choice to get clean and stay clean and when I met S., he was that person. Dedicated and very upfront about it. I loved that. A couple years in to our relationship, after we were living together, and after I had adapted my life to work with his very program-specific life — sober New Year Eve celebration with his friends at his sober ski house in Vermont, no pot in our house even though he himself did not indulge, all the specific lifestyle changes meant to keep him healthy, and make no mistake, I was up for all of that — S. “went out.” That’s what you say when a sober person takes up their addiction again. What that taught me is that I am not meant to date or have a relationship with someone who is sober. We’re not a fit. And when S. started drinking again, the damage he caused (we had broken up ahead of him actually drinking, but it was coming) was so cataclysmic that there are almost no words. It nearly killed me. I’m not exaggerating.

  • I need to say that I believe in Alcoholics Anonymous and other twelve-step programs with all of my heart and Al-Anon got me through this ^^^. I can’t give enough thanks to the brave people I’ve met in the rooms and the brave people I know who work their programs.

• Back to those two other BBs. I would NEVER give up what I got from my relationship with B. NEVER. He turned me on to polyamory, which I enjoyed in many, many ways, introduced me to a few of my favorite people as well as my BELOVED intro and lasting love affair with Astoria and Queens in general. It was B. who encouraged me to finally take up the drums. We had an amazing sex life, a deep connection over art and music and most of our life values aligned beautifully. I loved him deeply and our breakup was devastating. I wouldn’t change a minute of it. While we were polyamorous, I was also seeing my final BB in this flock (F.) and again, as that morphed into its own thing for years, marked by great sex, great love, and great heartache, I wouldn’t change a thing about that either.

So, on Abbe’s Assential Scoreboard, we’re three-against-two, regarding situations/relationships I wish I had been “warned” to steer clear of (two) versus the ones that delivered poignancy, passion, and more than a few ouch-that-hurts pinches (three); I’d not want to miss out of those, even with the pain.

And that’s why this musing-over-a-movie is poignant to me — because no matter what “My Old Ass” shared with me, I would still stay the course for much of what has unfurled in my life. Yes, there are things I would’ve tweaked to work better with time. Time is a fickle lover, Dear Readers, isn’t it? Fickle or not, there is no way that I would’ve learned how to better love myself (to say nothing of loving others) had I not had lived through the experiences that I described above. There is no way my child would’ve grown up the way he did, in this Catskill Mountains community, with a guitar in one hand and a huge green field behind our house at his disposal. Would AW still have gone on to be a musician and a man who can appreciate a quiet night on a country porch as much as he can appreciate an obscenely priced meal at an urban hotspot if I had never left my married life in NYC? Maybe. Would I have met people other than this Chosen Family who I adore more than I can say, who see me for precisely the freakshow that I am, had I not abandoned what seemed written in stone? Maybe.

(Mother Son tattoos, 2017, Amsterdam, after The Kid played a Frank Zappa Fest in Germany…who wrote this script? Not My Old Ass!)

If Old Ass Abbe had shown up and told me that the relationship in which I’d enter at age 22 would end at age 38 and that then, I’d be off and running wild, tossing aside what many would say was a very comfortable and happy life for Destination Unknown(s), would I have listened? I don’t know. I know that I was happy in my marriage, but I felt like I wanted something…more. And I got plenty. Some of it was heaven-sent. Some of it was so wretched that it makes me shiver.

I suppose it’s plausible that had Old Ass Abbe shown up and whispered in my ear that those parents were not my intended people or appeared to me in college and steered me away from those boys who basically wasted my time when I could’ve been dating smartiepants cuties like Sean Gale — hi Sean Gale! — I might have listened. Some days I wish she had. The parent thing is a hard nut to swallow sometimes. And I find myself telling my young friends to date, date, date while they can so that they don’t miss out on their own Sean Gales.

The question remains: when you’re a child, when your ass is so young and carefree that you feel utterly invincible and happily untethered to any outcome, well, who would listen to ANYONE that would try and steal that beautiful thunder?

This is the last song on the first eponymously named Violent Femmes album, which came out in 1983, when I was 15. As soon as I could drive, I played this cassette in my car’s deck until the tape wore thin and snapped and then I bought another. If My Old Ass showed up then and told me I’d get to know the band over the years, would even welcome them to my home in Woodstock and visit them on the road, inviting them to the Bob Dylan Museum with me for a private tour, well, I’d have laughed at her. The same way that my Young Ass is laughing at me now, sitting here in my orthopedic bedroom slippers.

Would YOU want to chat with Your Old Ass? Lemme know and happy, healthy holiday season commencing…commencing…now. As Robin Byrd used to say, “If you don’t have a loved one, you always have me.” I am eternally thankful for you, Dear Readers.