Bone of Arc and the Stories that Help Us Understand the World

As a staunch Catholic, when I was eleven, I chose for my confirmation name Joan of Arc, because she had a horse. I've read and watched her story since in many versions, my favorite, Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc,  a translation by Jean Francois Alden of the memoirs of Louis de Contes, her page. In fact, Mark Twain wrote Recollections under the Alden pseudonym as a serial story for Harpers, from the perspective of a fictional writer about a fictional character serving Joan of Arc. My second favorite is Bone of Arc starring the famous terrier, Wishbone.

Detail has never been my strong point. History.... I get the gist.

Since that slap on the cheek from the bishop, I've grown to appreciate Jean d'Arc for her leadership, her loyalty and her steadfast faith... all on a horse. When my son did his university junior year abroad in Rouen, as his patron, I packed my valise and along with my sister journeyed to France to visit. We toiled over espresso and croissants in cafes, and wine, baguettes and cheese in other cafes, while he toiled in his oenology class. 

Late, one grey afternoon, sipping a red at a table outside overlooking a church with an imposing cross, out of place with its modern lines, we learned we were actually looking at the exact location my patron saint was burned at the stake. The tight square of buildings surrounding that place, made it easy to imagine the din of the crowds that witnessed and cheered her demise. Last summer, once more astonished at how the dots connect, I sat through a presentation at the Smithsonian in DC, celebrating Julia Child's 100th birthday, I learned that she sat in the window of the cafe a few feet from where we sat then, overlooking the same scene, without the church, and decided to teach women to cook French.

The subtleties are not lost on me. Eight years ago, I wrote a short, fanciful story, Embers,  (posted below in the previous blog) about the person who cleaned up after the pyre that took Jean d’Arc's life. I admit, I did no research for the tale except remembering the books I'd read, the videos I'd watched over the years, what I gleaned from the tour of the jail that held her and that long glass of wine in the square where her execution took place. The story describes my imagination of how they strapped her to a post with leather straps, a reluctant man with a leprous disease sent to deal with the ashes, then freed and cured in a JOA miracle. Though the movies show her eyes toward God, none have shown a montage of logistics. I made them up.  

In the writing group, the number of minutes each person gets to comment on a story is based on the quantity of people reviewing and divided by the quantity of manuscripts. Usually a strident timekeeper metes out the typical 2 or 3 minutes. Reviews cover logic, grammar, word choice and ideas to improve the story. No matter how many times I put mine through the ABC grammar reviews on line, my stories cause battles among grammarians about comma usage… as you might surmise. The evening I submitted Embers for review three people pulled me aside on the way to the Celtic Knot, the usual post-group watering hole, to make a personal comment about my Joan of Arc story.

Jeff, a psychiatrist who wrote world history thrillers, told me the story was about France and England and I needed to add more political intrigue. Rob, a retired geology professor explained that she’d never be bound in leather, it would burn through; they would have used a form of chainmail. He also told me how bone shards might be left under the chainmail. Mindy, who I first met the year before as Seth, told me the story was about a transgender individual and that theme would make my story relevant.  I learned two important lessons from this experience: People use filters when they read, no matter what the writer intends.  And, writing groups are great, but every comment is filtered and a writer must, in the end, be clear and true to their purpose. (OK, I've learned that a million other ways too, but that evening cemented the learning.)

After posting the story in the previous blog, I read the history of burning people at the stake and felt sick and wondered whether I should remove the post. A while later, before I sat down to write this post, I lit a candle. My long-nose lighter wouldn't light, so I struck a match on a box that I'd picked up at a fancy restaurant. The wick of the candle in the jar stood five inches down from the top, and I could barely get my fist into it. I burned my thumb. Oww. I can't imagine the minds that thought up the torture of burning people alive. 

Joan of Arc provokes discussion. Her story is compelling, whether told by historians, theologians, famous comic writers who thought it best to write under a pseudonym or Jack Russel Terriors. I don't think I am cut out to be a martyr, though some may say I already act it.  I've tried to emulate her leadership and commitment to an ideal. As a preteen, the possibilities of leadership excited me. I grew up to lead a company instead of an army, no doubt with some subtle nudge from my patron. In choosing between paint swatches for our offices, there was no doubt, when down to the final choices in selecting "Maid of Orleans" to surround us.

My favorite but long gone gift from confirmation was a statue with Joan in armor, holding the flag, on a white stallion. Back in those days, we were told that only the good die young. I like that she was a bad ass then. My solace is that I heard I should expect to be a badder ass the older I get. 

. 

Art, Porn and Grandma, I Can Zip Up My Own Damn Dress and Find a Relationship Too

“You can pretty much figure, that a man who likes a women to have Brazilians watches porn.“ That’s what my hairdresser told me recently, as she cut my hair, in a bit of a side track to her telling me all the things she was doing to prepare for her vacation in Thailand. After our appointment she scheduled a bikini wax for herself. Her explanation responded to a question I’d wondered about since an encounter a few weeks before.

Until then, in my experience, no one had requested or hardly commented on “down there”.  Though, I admit,  I wouldn't want to go full Brazilian, as I use the curlies as a way to affirm my continuing practice of coloring my hair. The man that made the request is a decade younger, so I wondered if it was generational or maybe cultural, he is not caucasion. A couple weeks before, I’d asked a friend closer to his age about her experience with men’s preferences. I knew her response would be biased by her feminist philosophy, but she commented that a bikini wax was for her own sense of “upkeep” and her husband nor any other man before him made a request for a full sweep. Ashley's explanation rang true.  

…Reminding that I connect dots… this led me to think about art of women. That same man asked about the shelf in my bathroom with three pieces on it, a vase I bought in a gallery in Chicago with a nude woman painted around it, a vignette of a brass sculpture of a bathing nude woman, given to me years ago by a guest, amidst stones and shells I’ve found on vacations since, and a bawdy, grey-scale, 1920s French postcard picturing the backs of two women in short rompers with their derrieres hanging out and their hands on each other’s cheeks. He inquired why I, a woman, would have other women displayed.  I told him to look around, there are several pieces of art though out my place that depict women – one reading a book that I bought in a gallery in Quebec in the nineties, one of a Hispanic opera singer I bought in a gallery in El Paso in the eighties and Changing woman… a gift from a dear friend, as I went navigated the earlier years of my divorce and grew my business, and, a body-image collage, I made myself from a size 14, bathing suit form I brought home from Costco one year.

The art I display, reflects who I am. My artist friend Nancy wore a t-shirt that impressed a point in my brain, Real Art Doesn’t Match Your Sofa. I don’t display art that matches anything for that matter, but my tastes and interests. I am aware that I have spent many years of my life hating my body. Media or maybe men’s view of women’s bodies have dictated how I am supposed to look and, frankly, I’ve never felt like I measured up. And, if anyone knows me, I am competitive and want to exceed expectations, but in this case, I don’t even come close when someone else sets the sites,, the objectives and the metrics.

Having art depicting women who look normal and pleasing and by the way, may look a bit like me is life giving. It eliminates the contradiction that plays on my self confidence. The postcard of the two women speaks to something else in me, maybe a sense of my whole person who loves other whole persons. I can’t look at my women friends  (or men friends for that matter) and just see their hearts and brains, the parts that particularly attract me. I see their whole person, the vessels, as we used to say, of what contains their whole body-mind-spirit and attracts me to them too. 

Over the last year or two same sex marriage has pervaded the zeitgeist. Early on it was about the other, that self defined group of gay and lesbians who saw a possibility of love with a larger world view. It’s helped me see a larger world view for myself. It’s helped me realize that I can explore a greater sense of the breadth and depth of me.

Since I was eleven, I’ve known that I have a strong masculine aspect to my personality. In wanting to zip up a turquoise sheath with six buttons aligned like tufts on a couch, down the front without help from my grandma, I learned from her that no man would ever have me, if I didn’t accept help. Last week on a date, a man asked me to stay in the car, while he came around to open the door, fuck that, I pulled the handle. Running a business for seventeen years took balls… in opening it, managing it and closing it. I was grateful my feminine side allowed me to cry, through out. For the greater part of my adult life, I’ve intentionally kept my hair short, make up to a minimum and nails trimmed so I had time to do other stuff. I never bought into the girly persona, though I know seduction. It comes in handy across the continuum… women, men, business (what else is sales?) love and religion. I feel more whole, more engaged when I respond from my whole masculine to feminine continuum.

The moment she said it, I knew I didn't buy into Grandma's sense of being had by a man. The last couple years, have helped me be more open to differences, to take the effort to be curious and interact rather than judge. Having art of nude women in my bathroom says nothing more than I like the art.

The Secret History of Wonder Woman

During the past week, I've heard various interviews about the new book, The Secret History of Wonder Woman. At first it reminded me of Allison and her homage to Wonder Woman on her desk and Shari with her fierceness in the Optimistic Divorcees and Sarah with her early employment and loyalty to Planned Parenthood. Though repetitive, the interviews of the author Jill LePore connected more dots.

Watching the traditions and hearing the conversations in our office surrounding two women getting married fascinate and disturb me. The role of wife and the meaning of marriage seem to be pre- suffragist or maybe not considered at all. Last week, I bluntly (and probably too directly) asked someone I’d just met who said she was getting married, why she would change her name. She said, "tradition." Not mine, I thought.  The guy in the room, also a Boomer, said his wife didn't, nor did many of my close friends. We were in our 20s and 30s in the '70s then.

In those days, I wore suits, ties, clunky wing-tip Bass shoes and custom men's shirts with darts to fit and show my female parts. I had my own little WW on my desk to motivate me. We were supposed to dress up like the 70s for our Halloween festivities this year. I chose not to wear what we really wore then… it no longer fit.

My ex husband Lee teased me and the women we hung with, by calling us "80s Ladies" after the song by KT Oslin. 80s Ladies tells the story perfectly of what made us who we were then. "More than our names got changed… Been educated, got liberated and complicated matters with men… We said I do and signed I don’t and swore we’d never do that again… We burned our bras and we burned our dinners and we burned our candles at both ends…. There ain’t much these ladies ain’t tried."

Jill LePore reminds me that there were many women who came before, both real and illustrated who led their own lives, not in the reflection of nor in service to men. The Secret History talks about the women who innovated “Birth Control” and founded and sustained Planned Parenthood to give women an opportunity to follow their dreams and build lives for themselves with or without a partner. Wonder Woman as originally drawn was the embodiment of a woman of self destiny and power. Later generations of her story-tellers relegated her to less than.

Some conversations around the office make me think that stories of fierce women aren’t known and the possibilities don't seem possible. The media, gaming and entertainment industries still show women in subservient, objectified positions. Recently a Hooters knock off opened near where I live - Twin Peaks. I’m floored, horrified even, that no one (including me) has cried foul.

All this is to say, I am very interested in a discussion about how woman are viewed today and more important how we view ourselves. Are we who we want to be? Are we dressing for our selves, in reflection of someone else or someone's ideals. With the prevalence of selfies, I am fascinated by the poses... I want to know who are they for and what's the outcome wanted? We need to talk.

The lyrics of the 80s Ladies song tells my story exactly. I was in my 30s in the 80s right along with KT Oslin’s song, (the video shows high school graduation as 67, we were 69.) I’d like to write the lyrics for the subsequent decades as 90s, oughts and ought-teens. I’d also love to hear how my women friends would write their lyrics.

Links:

An interview at the end of the Colbert Report with Jill LePore author of The Secret History of WonderWoman http://thecolbertreport.cc.com/full-episodes/ft09kr/october-29--2014---jill-lepore.The interview prior to her is about Gamergate - women looking to de objectify women in video games like Grand Theft Auto. 

About Jill LePore http://scholar.harvard.edu/jlepore/home

New Yorker Article: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/09/22/last-amazon

Nude Women - Typical Saturday - This is Who I Am

Sitting on a folding chair in an Ellen Tracy store is not my typical Saturday activity. The day began in its usual way… stretching, espresso, an 8:30am call from Lanni. I didn’t take the call, however, because my head was covered in 6G-warm brown hair colorant. Rinsed and dressed I returned the call awhile later, because it wouldn’t be Saturday without talking to her, and then headed out for errands like the post office and cleaners in time for brunch with a dear friend. So far, that’s a typical Saturday.

A week earlier, Julia suggested going to a program after brunch entitled, This is Who I Am, a presentation by a fine art and commercial photographer from Seattle, Roseanne Olson. So, we met at a restaurant down the street from the program and her daughter and her friend, both a year ahead of Alex in high school, joined us for the meal and the program. What a treat to have the opportunity to be brought current, first hand on the life of children who have been at the heart of many, many Saturday brunch conversations over the last twenty years.

One of the young women got married a year ago, graduated from nursing school in December and just got back from a surgical mission in Kenya. The other recently moved to Michigan for a job to be near her fiance, whom, on the day she met him, declared she’d marry him. There was complete agreement the table that the betrothal was quite unexpected as she wasn’t the marrying kind. Can you hear all the great stories in these conversations? I loved hearing them, like reading a book with a satisfying ending.

Before we went on, I split off from Julia and the girls to put money in the parking meter. The five minute hike gave me time to ponder the discussions. Like a good book, it drove me inside to think about my own interests at twenty-seven, my career, my friends, my travels, my relationships. Walking, aware enough to consciously miss the sheets of ice, my thoughts were mainly directed at the decisions - the dots from which I leapt like a frog on lily pads to land where I am now. 

Staring out the window from the Ellen Tracy Store, I couldn’t help allowing a pang of regret wash over me. Maybe I should have jumped a bit sooner or stayed put for longer. Each stop gave me new insights and made me who I am at this point.

Roseanne projected a PowerPoint  onto a screen  cleverly made of foam board clamped to a tripod. It consisted of sepia-tone photos of women from age 20 to late 90s dressed, at most, in a piece of tulle. The photos depicted small and large women, a women with one breast, another with a scar from a double lung transplant, another who would give birth eleven days later. Subjects had long hair, short hair, dark, light and white hair. I found myself intrigued, relating, wincing and wanting to be a person who could say, this is who I am, and, wanting others to recognize me as that is who you are.

The store, as you might imagine, isn’t set up for performances. Chairs were in rows inches apart with no room to bend forward to put a purse down without knocking your forehead on the seat in front. The Ellen Tracy staff created an elegant atmosphere by serving wine and cupcakes, but there was no easy way to hold a glass, a plate, eat and use a napkin. Having arrived minutes from a meal and wanting neither,  I offered to hold the cupcake plate for the woman behind me. She no-thanked me, but I offered again when I heard the commotion from her cupcake tipping and her reaction nearly spilling the wine.

Looking over my right shoulder, she was so near, I could smell the wine and chocolate on her breath.  She looked fiercely into my eyes. I know I can be pushy and thought for sure I crossed some line. She leaned forward and I pulled back. She put her hand on my chair and said, “Are you Mary?”

   “Yes.” Having no idea, not even a sense of familiarity for her.

   “You used to have a dog.”

   “Yes. Oscar.” This was not a useful clue.

   “We were in a group together.”

   ???, I thought.

   “Yeah, you were with Dan. You’re a writer. You wore long skirts, boots, great earrings. You sometimes walked to group. I was so sorry, when you announced you were leaving.”

Finally, chunk, kerchunck, kerchunk, it clicked into place.

She remembered me, me… from 1995. She remembered what I wore, my boyfriend, my dog, my clothes and my mode of transportation.  I could barely picture where the meetings were held. The leader of that group turned out to be the first cousin of the Roseanne Olson and stood six feet away from us. She was the dot connector between the woman balancing her cupcake and me.

As I returned to my car, I replayed my earlier thoughts about the dots that began when I was twenty-seven. It occurred to me that there was no straight line of dots to now. Yesterday,  I received a robust reminder of dots that took place eighteen years ago… sixteen years after I was the age of the girls with the newlywed faces. And today, grateful for that reminder, I will admit. This is who I am, on a typical Saturday.

Elevator

Yanking her worn black leather satchel from the front seat, Ellen Bittner hooked her elbow on the door frame, as if under a wing, and shoved the door closed. Taking a giant step toward the courthouse, she squeezed the remote, the door thunked and the lock chirped. Pitching the keys into her bag, she tugged the purse strap over her head and across her chest. Divorce court loomed.

Her ferocious push to the revolving door resulted in her own spat, “shit” as the following door nudged her heel.  Six steps. Spilling into the lobby, she spied the man who was about to rob her of her Mrs. strolling into the men's room. She darted left, cleared security, swept into an empty elevator and pirouetted flat footed to face the front. Breath. Square buttons framed the sides of the elevator door. Above the buttons on the right, a glass frame held an official letter about elevator inspections, and on the left, a matching frame with a list of the day’s cases. James S. Bittner v. Ellen G. Bittner, 12 H.

Ellen stabbed twelve and steamed enough self-hatred from her nostrils to power the old time Otis up the twelve floors. Twelve floors. Twelve years of marriage and twelve months she dreaded this date. The door closed ascending to judgment day.  Would there be twelve jurors, twelve apostles? She knew only that Judas, her nearly ex-husband would be there, once he left the bathroom.

Twice the elevator stopped and no one entered. A phantom of the courthouse, she surmised, to ride with her, maybe Charon, on her vertical River Styx.

Mrs. Bittner and her ghost rose again and stopped – dead. No movement of the door. She pressed Door Open. Nothing budged. She pressed 12 again, reminding the elevator where to go. She inhaled, her breath sounding like the rush of a truck passing at twice highway speed.

Gingerly she pressed again, then hammered the call button so hard, so fast it sounded like a      basketball dribbling on a - gym floor. No answer. She poked the button and said “Hello?” in a voice    mingling fear and hope,  like entering a dark, unlocked house and hoping no intruder lurks. Mrs. Bittner      bent to look into the round disk just above the call button, the holes aligned like a Chinese Checkers         board. Was it a microphone or speaker?  Should she speak or should she listen?

A thought crossed her mind… a revelation. The year before Jim left, the year they tried all the things couples try before they say, “we grew apart”, she often spoke when she should have listened, and listened when she should have commented.

“Hello!” Ellen shouted into the speaker. This time it was the call of a mother, commanding a child to listen. With the same results… no one responded. She screamed, “Help!” and pounded the door. No one came to her rescue. She grabbed for her cell phone, “No Service.” Stranded, stuck between Hell and Heaven - frustrated. The heels of her hands hurt from pounding. As Ellen pulled them down, skin moisture evaporated clearing the mirror-like brass wall. She was the reflection.

Ellen Bittner stared hard. Her eyes focused. She willed the rows of her forehead and brow to relax. Ellen stared softer and saw a tired woman staring back. She sighed and her shoulders slumped. She watched her breathing as her chest heaved, her repertoire of emotions spent. In a stage whisper, she exhaled the feelings: “Weary, panic, giddiness, gloom.”  She inhaled the whole scene: a middle-aged woman, about to be set free, surrounded by head-to-toe mirrors that washed her sallow. Nothing to do but stare and take stock. She exhaled.

For the last year, Ellen barely washed her hair, let alone began a new life. She lived like the moon; her husband’s reflection. Everything she did, every action she took reacted to his leaving.

A voice with a bit of an Irish brogue came through the Chinese Checkers speaker.

“Good afternoon in there. We’re very sorry. We’ve a bit of a problem, but we’ve lads coming from another building. They say it will take thirty minutes to get you moving again. We’re sorry for the delay. You’re perfectly safe.”

“It will take a lot more than 30 minutes to get me moving again”, she muttered to herself. “I’m okay,” she said so the disembodied voice could hear. “I’m Ellen Bittner and supposed to be in Courtroom 12 H.”

“No worries, mam. I’ll alert the judge. You’ll be fine.”

Ellen heaved her chest again. “How did he know?” she wondered to herself, hoping he didn’t hear her.

Staring into the never-ending mirror, she held her head still as her eyes swooped to her nose, then fixed on her chin, where she spied stubble. Minute black bamboo sticks, outlined a permanent wrinkle along a second chin. Without dropping her gaze, she reached into her purse feeling for the make-up kit long abandoned at the bottom and pulled out tweezers. She plucked five hairs without flinching and returned the tweezers like a gunslinger holstering her gun. Her lips took shape in faint approval.

Ellen’s focus slid to the purse strap draped from her left shoulder to her right hip. Her mind conjured a crossing guard, safely guarding the womanhood sequestered twelve months earlier. Hooking the strap with her thumb and lifting it over her head, she dropped the bag to the floor. Pulling her shoulders back, her head went with them. She lost five pounds and a chin in that single move.  Ellen high-fived her new companion. She let her lips rest.  For the first time, she blinked. Her eyes wandered for a moment but came back to stare at themselves. The lids drooped, sad. She tried a smile. The edges of her eyes rose in tandem. In that moment, Ellen Bittner decided to look happy. Her eyes widened, she saw lost sparkle, an unforced smile emerged.

Veering away from her reflection, she squatted, retrieved her bag and the makeup kit. After searching through pockets, she found an oval handled eyeliner and examined it as she righted herself; no expiration date.

There was a time she didn’t worry that her makeup could be too old, but the system she once employed, no longer worked. Each month when she picked up her birth control pills from the pharmacy, she bought new eye liner. Sex pretty much stopped six months before Jim left. She stopped wasting her money on the pills and never replaced her liner. Ellen decided to risk it. She took a step closer to her reflection and watched her breath come and go as she drew the lash line on the top of each eye, then the bottom. The woman in the bronze mirror looked more familiar. She reached into her bag again and found a long abandoned lipstick. The soon-to-be ex-Mrs. Bittner gained dimension.

Ellen focused on her shoulder length hair. It fell flat, side-to-side from a part above the middle of her left brow. If she’d hooked in a school bus-yellow barrette to hold back the right side, she would be looking at her fourth grade photo. Ellen thanked God for not allowing her to regress that far. Taking a step back, Ellen bowed, whipped her hair over her head. Her hair now a mane—she flipped it back and whinnied aloud for emphasis. She looked directly in the mirror again, combed and lifted her hair with her fingers.   She giggled as she struck a vein of silliness. Ellen jerked her head to the right and struck a pouty model’s pose. She swiveled her head back toward the door. She smiled… a real smile. She stepped back, away from the door, assessing the woman she saw. There, in the reflection, stood a somewhat attractive, middle aged woman, in a black, shapeless pantsuit with a pretty pink, jewel-neck blouse, popular in the days when women thought working was liberation.

Ellen took off her jacket and tossed it over her bag. With both arms, she reached to the nape of her neck, unbuttoned the top three buttons on the back of her blouse, tugged it from the her slacks, and pulled her arms from the sleeves. She hesitated, found no evidence of a video camera and continued pulling it over her shoulders. Amazed at her own pluck—she turned the blouse around, put her arms back into the sleeves, and tucked it deep into her waistband. Ellen Bittner chose not to re-button.

For the last year Ellen buttoned down. She shopped only for essentials, and only after carefully scouring sales and coupon pages. Her colleagues at work suggested classes and cruises. Her sister pushed manicures and massage. She stood still in the wash of ideas, a rock in the swirling tide. She stayed home except for work and the kid’s activities. She cleaned the house and rented movies.

As mother and father this past year, Ellen Bittner’s priorities swung back and forth from nurture to survival. With one child in second grade and the other about to enter junior high, Ellen organized chores, activities and homework. Her resolve required additional hours at work. Her resolve gained her a promotion. Three weeks ago, when the papers were signed and this day, only a formality, she resolved that they would have the best vacation. Tomorrow morning, with the decree behind her, the soon-to-be former Mrs. Bittner would be on the road to the town with four water parks, two hundred miles away. Survival was wrestling with pride. In that instant, she spied confidence in her face.

Last weekend, her mother told her she needed color and gave her jelly bean-pink nail polish that Ellen never applied. She fished the polish from the zippered compartment of her satchel and began to shake it.

Pumping the bottle up and down, she was startled that fatigue set in from that meager effort. She shook the bottle with the other arm. In the past year, she had not taken a walk, let alone worked out. Inspecting herself from all directions, she decided to find a class to bring her back into shape.

Ellen slipped her arms into her jacket sleeves before she applied the polish. She fished a pink and yellow striped scarf from her purse and draped it around the collar of her coat. Her reflection allowed a woman standing taller… stronger, lighter than she felt in years. Nail-by-nail she painted away her humiliation, she covered her desolation, she brightened her outlook. As the polish hardened, so did her determination to find joy in the freedom.   

The elevator jerked and began to rise as if never stopped. The doors spread wide on twelve. Her nearly ex husband stood a few feet away, gazing beyond the smiling woman who emerged. Ignoring his ignorance, she stepped out, checked her watch, twelve minutes flown. Ellen Bittner’s attorney also waiting expectantly by the door, swooped in, clutched her arm and guided Ellen to the courtroom. In a vertical twelve-story ride, she’d found a new direction.

Mary Longe 2/16/13
ps. I'd hugely appreciate it, if you would become a member/follower of this blog. Sign up on the right   hand side. -> -> ->
Thanks.

Vertical Boobs

When four women past the age of 55 get together, the conversation eventually gets around to aging bodies. From head to toe the list gets longer each time we meet: creases around the eyes like sun rays, crevices from nose to lips, turkey neck, dime-size freckles on the hands, knees that Joan Rivers told Lindsay Lohan needed ironing, bunions that could take a toe ring. After a glass of Sauvingnon Blanc, Lynn added vertical boobs. Once we stopped howling, Claire mentioned that she was apart of a discussion where the subject of older women at nudist beaches came up. KC said, “Gawd, just put them in your pants.”