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Authors: Pearl Cleage
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key and a couple of dollars into my pocket and headed for the West End News.
The day was chilly, but it felt good. The sky was blue and cloudless. I took a deep breath of the morning air and geared my pace to a stroll not a stride. Left to my own devices, I’m a fast walker, but I wanted to get a feel for the neighborhood, and that calls for a different speed altogether.
The houses on each side of Zora’s temporary digs were Victorians, too. One with a big, wraparound porch and the other with the most elaborate curlicues I’d seen so far. The street was empty except for two young men coming toward me about a half a block away. They looked to be in their late teens, with big hooded jackets and blindingly white tennis shoes. I wondered if they were on their way to school or on their way to work. I hoped those were the only two choices, although I wasn’t really concerned. I was always pretty good at being able to distinguish between the good guys and the bad guys and these two were laughing and talking like old friends, not coconspirators.
Besides, I knew I was invisible to them. Women my age no longer show up on the scan of men under the age of forty-five. This is, for me, a very recent development and I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about it. Until a couple of years ago, I was used to men not only wanting to talk to me, but wanting to sleep with me, but it’s all different after fifty. I tried not to admit it, but reality has a way of making you see the truth. One night at a reception, when I was just shy of fifty-five, a handsome young thing was chatting me up in a corner, and I was chatting right back, when he leaned over, put his lips against my ear, and confided that he had always had a thing for older women. It took me a minute to realize he meant
me,
which pretty much killed the mood I’d been working on. I excused myself, claiming a sudden headache, went back to my room, crawled into bed, and pulled the covers up over my head.
An older woman?
This would take some getting used to.
And it did. It still does. There’s really nothing that compares to the realization that men are not looking anymore. Oh, if you’re standing on the stage with a light on you, they’re looking, but I mean out in the world where you’re just a real person, trust me, no men are looking. I’m not complaining. It’s just a fact. Even if you are truly stylish, they’re only looking at your clothes, which also means they’re probably gay. But the look from every straight man you pass that evaluates you as a possible sexual partner? That look is gone and it isn’t coming back.
That made me sad at first. Not so sad I considered shooting Botox into my face or sewing bags of saline solution into my body to make my breasts look bigger, but definitely a little nostalgic. At first, it was hard to adjust. I’d see a young man approaching and suck in my stomach out of pure habit even though I knew he would probably not pay me the slightest attention as we passed like ships in the cross-generational night.
Then I realized that all this new invisibility had an upside. I could stop considering random men’s sexual evaluations when I encountered them on the public streets. I no longer had to wear high heels, tight pants, or low-cut dresses unless I wanted to. Not that I’ve always dressed to please men, but as long as there was the possibility of more intimate contact, I wanted to please the eye, as well as stimulate the sex and boggle the mind. But without that possibility, I could simply dress for comfort, protection from the elements, and my own amusement, which is what I began to do. The more I did it, the more I liked it; now I don’t even suck in my stomach anymore. The young men passed me deep in conversation without giving me a second glance and I walked the rest of the quiet block with the double satisfaction of having my theory of invisibility check out one more time and of knowing I truly didn’t care.
I walked
The day was chilly, but it felt good. The sky was blue and cloudless. I took a deep breath of the morning air and geared my pace to a stroll not a stride. Left to my own devices, I’m a fast walker, but I wanted to get a feel for the neighborhood, and that calls for a different speed altogether.
The houses on each side of Zora’s temporary digs were Victorians, too. One with a big, wraparound porch and the other with the most elaborate curlicues I’d seen so far. The street was empty except for two young men coming toward me about a half a block away. They looked to be in their late teens, with big hooded jackets and blindingly white tennis shoes. I wondered if they were on their way to school or on their way to work. I hoped those were the only two choices, although I wasn’t really concerned. I was always pretty good at being able to distinguish between the good guys and the bad guys and these two were laughing and talking like old friends, not coconspirators.
Besides, I knew I was invisible to them. Women my age no longer show up on the scan of men under the age of forty-five. This is, for me, a very recent development and I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about it. Until a couple of years ago, I was used to men not only wanting to talk to me, but wanting to sleep with me, but it’s all different after fifty. I tried not to admit it, but reality has a way of making you see the truth. One night at a reception, when I was just shy of fifty-five, a handsome young thing was chatting me up in a corner, and I was chatting right back, when he leaned over, put his lips against my ear, and confided that he had always had a thing for older women. It took me a minute to realize he meant
me,
which pretty much killed the mood I’d been working on. I excused myself, claiming a sudden headache, went back to my room, crawled into bed, and pulled the covers up over my head.
An older woman?
This would take some getting used to.
And it did. It still does. There’s really nothing that compares to the realization that men are not looking anymore. Oh, if you’re standing on the stage with a light on you, they’re looking, but I mean out in the world where you’re just a real person, trust me, no men are looking. I’m not complaining. It’s just a fact. Even if you are truly stylish, they’re only looking at your clothes, which also means they’re probably gay. But the look from every straight man you pass that evaluates you as a possible sexual partner? That look is gone and it isn’t coming back.
That made me sad at first. Not so sad I considered shooting Botox into my face or sewing bags of saline solution into my body to make my breasts look bigger, but definitely a little nostalgic. At first, it was hard to adjust. I’d see a young man approaching and suck in my stomach out of pure habit even though I knew he would probably not pay me the slightest attention as we passed like ships in the cross-generational night.
Then I realized that all this new invisibility had an upside. I could stop considering random men’s sexual evaluations when I encountered them on the public streets. I no longer had to wear high heels, tight pants, or low-cut dresses unless I wanted to. Not that I’ve always dressed to please men, but as long as there was the possibility of more intimate contact, I wanted to please the eye, as well as stimulate the sex and boggle the mind. But without that possibility, I could simply dress for comfort, protection from the elements, and my own amusement, which is what I began to do. The more I did it, the more I liked it; now I don’t even suck in my stomach anymore. The young men passed me deep in conversation without giving me a second glance and I walked the rest of the quiet block with the double satisfaction of having my theory of invisibility check out one more time and of knowing I truly didn’t care.
I walked
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