Memoirs, Ink

Dreamer

By Nora Claypool

I'm keeping the passion in my life alive in my dreams. Even though my body has aged and it shows the scars of a life enjoyed as an active and enthusiastic urban adventurer, I find I still crave passion. When I wake from some lovely dream where I am again young and desirable, pursued by some dark, handsome hunk arisen from my imagination, my mind doesn't find it strange that someone like that would lust after me. Yet when I look in the mirror to see the fine lines and gray hairs, the sagging jowl line and crepey neck, I cringe and retreat mentally knowing that no man would be attracted to me now unless considerable financial gain were involved in it for him. Derriere despair has set in, and my underarm flab continues to wave at my daughter and her husband as they leave, after the deliberate movements have stopped.

I think about the passion I experienced in my youth, all the sweet nothings and lustful lies various men in my life told me. It makes me question the very arrangement of mortal life and aging. How unfair it all is! When a man loved me passionately, the feeling of being beautiful and sought after...being desired, and the zealous lovemaking that accompanied it, seemed a permanent part of the future, as though it would continue until I returned to the dust from whence I came. It didn't seem strange to spend whole days in bed with a lover, venturing out at night for good wine and rich food briefly, so that our energy would be restored to return to that other hunger. When men praised my soft skin, firm flesh or good bones, I don't recall one ever mentioning how honest or hardworking I was, which they do now, three husbands later. I spend whole days with Ben Gay in bed now.

The focus has shifted, like my backside. There is only one man in my life now, and he has stuck by me through thick and thin despite the fact that it's been mostly thin. In the true love that we share, he sifts kitty litter and folds laundry. He remembers what I was wearing the day we met. While his homemade chili and thumbprint cookies rival the best I've ever had and he is otherwise perfect, he has absolutely no passion for anything in life. There is no lust in there, this package of male DNA that I call a husband who is content with a rented movie and the whole sofa to himself. He doesn't know I miss it.

If I encountered someone who lusted after me now, I might be corrupted into having an affair. I still have great legs, if you just count the part from the knee down. Perhaps I could charm someone yet, in this later stage in my life where I'm still struggling to adjust to the loss of my curves and the gain of my straights, in culottes.

I think I noticed that guys no longer whistled at me about twenty years ago. My sexy dress that laced up the back and the four-inch heels seemed appropriate for a trip to the grocery store then, where as I would probably sneer at someone else dressed that way now. Who am I kidding? I'd be jealous. Inside this sweat pant clad, frumpy body is the hot eighteen year old me I used to be, mentally. I still carry myself as though I'm the me I used to be, knowing that the me I am now is pretty well past hope of passionate advances from the opposite sex. No one else is going to carry me, though. No chance someone will tear my clothes off and suck in their breath over how beautiful I am before they whisk me up the stairs to our love nest. There is real danger that my weight could trigger a heart attack if someone tried to lift me in his arms. There could be permanent spinal damage, a hernia or at the very least pulled muscles involved. Those days are over, and any breath sucking would just be due to exertion, while trying to hoist my carcass.

Living without passion is just barely living, though. I funneled some passion into Dahlias and Lilies. I get lots of compliments and requests for my bouquets, which are flattering, but nothing compared to the rapid breathing and pounding heart produced by a single passionate kiss. When you lock lips with the one you're consumed with, and the world spins a little faster, all of life seems to lie ahead; the prospect of the gratifying contact of bare skin and favorite body parts is without equal, the delicious sexuality of youth is heady stuff. So heady in fact, that it's rather hard to let go of. I remember it vividly, unlike what I was supposed to get today at the store besides eggs. Look, I'm not the delusional sort; I'm a realist. I have a mirror. I just miss that passion, and wish I could feel it again. I wish I could hear the rush of mad lust and carnal wreckage where love causes two electric bodies to collide. There has to be love like that --one great love, so intense that electricity jangles your fingers when you touch, and you long for the sensation of his lips on your skin. When it ends you can't breathe or eat or sleep because you realize you will never touch or taste him again, or feel him pressed against you. Otherwise, have you really lived? You're really old when you forget passion.

Make no mistake about my grateful heart; I was blessed to be sexy when I was young. I had power over men that I reveled in, power that I now seem to have lost. It's likely in a drawer I haven't opened in a while, in a desk I no longer have the key to. The bargaining

chip of sexual favor is off the table, so it takes an act of congress or the promise of made from scratch apple pie to get my man to take the fifty-pound bag of garbage out. Forty of the pounds are the kitty litter under the apple peelings.

I didn't wield my power meanly; I just enjoyed it like the romp it was supposed to be. Now my powers run more toward the amazing ability to make grandchildren laugh until milk comes out of their noses, and to make a baby go to sleep instantly. I bore them, I think. The smell of my clean pocket tee shirt is aromatherapy for infants in my family; they sort of go limp as soon as they're chucked over my shoulder. I'm a damn good puppeteer and I can go about twenty minutes in a hard kickball game before I limp, wheezing, to the bench, so I'm not all washed up yet, as far as powers go. I'm breaking in a new set. It's a shame my mind and body are so far apart in age.

Would I get plastic surgery, liposuction and reside at the gym to try to remain young in appearance? Would I color my grays, waste hundreds on anti-wrinkle treatments and try to fend off the advancing years? No. While I'd love to be young and sexy again, and there is strong appeal to these things, it's all too expensive. I've grown into a spirit in a more advanced stage by design.  I'm kinder to myself and cheaper. Better now, than I ever was, despite the fact that I'm no longer a trophy. I mend, give comfort, support and nurture. I fix things and baby-sit and help out. I teach the newer arrivals about old school stuff, like manners and having a work ethic, and which fork is the salad fork.

If I want to be young and sexy again, all I have to do is fall asleep. Leave me alone after I have that slice of apple pie, and I will. Staying young doesn't get any cheaper than that.

Mercifully, my mind doesn't realize my body has gone to pot when I dream. Let's hope my mind doesn't catch up-it would be a shame to waste all that passion.

Of course I do have other great dreams where I can run fast, speak French fluently, find lost pets or catch the third out in the seventh inning for the Cubs. I wonder how my deluded brain comes up with such bizarre stuff. But my favorite dreams are those where I'm in a beautiful, firm, young, body and I don't have to pull my nightgown out of my butt cheeks when I get up to go to the bathroom. I am cherished even if it's only by the real guy in bed next to me who hogs the sofa and falls asleep clutching the remote. I hereby propose a toast: To love and passionate dreams.

 

Nora Claypool is a freelance writer and high school drop out with a wide lazy streak. The epitome of unsuccess, she is the target of dubious writing schools and content mills. She takes a dim view of anything requiring hard work or conformity, such as silly college degrees or publishing credits. As an author of two novels, one screenplay, a few poems and 125 articles, she's submitted the bulk of her work to the burning leaf pile out back since the pay is about the same and it's less complicated than online publishing. Her dream; writing a funny column or whatever's easy & pays really well. She was a pen pal of the late Lewis Grizzard's late dog, Catfish, and almost neighbors with Julia Roberts.