Girlfriends

Sophia has no real girlfriends. She has female acquaintances, but that's about it. A lot of Weird Events in Sophia's life contributed to this dearth of female companionship, but now that she's Over Fifty, she would really like to fix this problem. Because this can be a lonely time of life, and men are--well, men. Good for lots of things, but Discussing Life's Transitions is definitely not one of them.

Sophia understands men, and is comfortable with most of them. But women remain a mystery to her.  She has four brothers, and no sisters. Sophia's mom didn't have any sisters either, so she was no help in this Understanding Other Women thing. Sophia moved a lot as a kid--she went to 14 grade schools--so making friends sometimes just didn't seem worth it. Saying goodbye was just one more sad thing to deal with as they loaded up the moving van.

Violins, please....

As a teenager, Sophia never worried about being popular. She was a rugged individualist. Besides, if a girl is popular with guys, other girls will want to hang with her. Sophia has always been popular with men. Not because, as some women have assumed, she was Easy. Sophia was/is by no means a sexual prude, but she has always had Standards.

Okay, almost always. The years 1975-77 shall be stricken from the record.

Sophia was popular with men because she was decent-looking (but not scary beautiful), and, more important, a professional big sister. Adult men, fearful of being Mama's Boys, adore women who fit the big sister mold. Unlike many of her sex, Sophia understands the radical simplicity of men. She knows exactly how far you can push a man to clean up his act, and exactly when this becomes an exercise in futility. She knows when they are too wrecked to be Saved, and doesn't try. She knows what men need, and what they really, really don't want. This accounts for her many marriage proposals (5!) and happy married life.

Um, for the record, Sophia didn't accept all five proposals. That would have been crazy.

But that's not what she wants to talk about here. Today's topic is Why Sophia Can't Make Girlfriends.

When she still had her Big Professional Career, other women wanted to hang with her because she was successful, and, yes, attractive--because being attractive meant men paid attention to her, and her female colleagues were hungry for male attention. Of the professional sort. Sophia worked in a profession with a lower percentage of attractive women than the population as a whole, so having symmetrical features was, in some situations, an asset. In others, of course, it was a Huge Liability. But Sophia is not going to blame her professional implosion on something as superficial as looks. It's not like she was earthshakingly beautiful, or anything. And in any case, the End of Sophia's Career was more complicated and nuanced than that. But that's a subject for another post.

But to the matter at hand: at this stage in Sophia's life, not having women friends has become a cause for lamentation. Sophia is lonely, and men aren't good at talking about much of anything but sports, work, and (occasionally) politics. All this is interesting in its place, but it's not really a bonding experience. Sophia would love to have a girlfriend with whom she can sort out this weird business of being Over Fifty.

In today's post, she will attempt to disentangle this whole problem.

First, there's the Mystery of Woman. Now, Sophia is a feminist. For many years she was a Professional Feminist, which is symptomatic of the problem. Because just as Marxists don't really understand economics, feminists have no real clue about women.

Growing up almost exclusively around men, Sophia internalized much of their stupidity about females. She often finds that women have labyrinthine depths she simply can't fathom. Many women, for example, are good liars. Sophia herself isn't half-bad at it. Men, on the other hand, are rotten liars. Those men who lie well, owing to some accident of genetics or sociopathic parenting, usually end up being criminals, politicians, or some combination of the two. But most men simply aren't theatrical enough to lie convincingly. Their eyes get all shifty, or they make jerky hand movements, or their voices change. Good lying requires a certain amount of multitasking, and women, owing to their historical lot in life, tend to be better at that. Men who lie invariably get caught. Sophia can never understand why so many women are duped by cheating husbands--because if Sophia's husband ever cheated, she'd be onto him in a New York minute.

But some women lie when (Sophia thinks) it would be easier to tell the truth. Yes, I tried to call you but you weren't home (were too). Yes, I sent you a letter, but it must have gotten lost in the mail (does anyone believe this one anymore?). I really like your skirt-dress-handbag-new haircut, although you didn't ask for my opinion and really I think you look cheap-fat-hard-old. Yes, I really care about you, and about All of Humanity. But isn't Sally a bitch, and don't you think Ellen's put on weight?

Now, Sophia understands why women are this way. Intellectually understands, that is. Women have been forced to live with so many irreconcilable contradictions for so long, that duplicity became necessary to social survival. Women have to Be Nice, but secretly compete with one another for men and attention and all the rest. Women have to suppress their sexual desires in the interest of Being Nice, and thus resent women who decide that sex is fun, and morally no big deal. Women are constantly criticized, either explicitly or implicitly, and are thus really really insecure about their looks, their intelligence, their parenting skills, their husband's love, and fear/resent women who seem less insecure about any of this stuff. Women are trapped in the hell that is The Private Life, but must have a Public Face. All this leads, inevitably, to mendacity.

But here's what Sophia doesn't understand. Women fib about stuff that doesn't matter. Women flatter one another excessively, although it's apparent to all parties that most of this flattery is insincere. And this is the scariest part. Unlike men, women will look you straight in the eye while feeding you utter unreconstituted horseshit on any number of topics. What is one supposed to say to this? Sophia has tried several tactics, but the one that really doesn't work is honesty. "Well, Cheryl, it seems to me that your assertion isn't quite accurate..." Never say this. Because this will make women hate you.

Men will lie, but seldom to your face.  This doesn't make them better. This makes them moral cowards. But it is easier to tell when they have something to hide. Unless they fall into the sociopathic/criminal/career politician category, as mentioned above.

Now these are generalizations. Sophia does not mean to suggest that all humans are congenitally predisposed to prevarication. No, some are honest. And some very few are honest without being mean. These people, of course, are at a higher evolutionary stage than the rest of us. In centuries past, they were called Saints.

Sophia is, most definitely, not a saint.  She can be judgmental, mean-spirited, self-pitying, arrogant, and just not nice sometimes. To her credit, however, she Tries.  She does not gossip (except with her mom), and is an excellent keeper of secrets. She actively tries to be a good person, and to live an examined life. Without being too self-obsessed, of course.

A difficult balancing act, with many, many chances to fail.

Anyway.  Sophia has tried, on several humiliating occasions, to connect with old friends, relatives, or other extraneous females on the periphery of her life. She has not over-shared, but has been (she thinks) warm and forthcoming. On one occasion, she tried to Facebook-friend an old graduate school friend/acquaintance, and was rebuffed with silence. She did not understand this, since she and this person had several mutual Facebook-friends, and had never had any kind of a falling out.  She tried to further communicate with an old high school chum who contacted her first.  Another rebuff. There are several more examples.

This made her sad and perplexed. Then, a Flash of Insight. Recently, an old (male) grad school acquaintance Facebook-posted some pictures from 1989. There was one of Sophia, smoking a cigarette and staring into the distance with a pensive frown. She looked thin, intense, and totally unapproachable.

She now realizes that this is how most women have always seen her. And that it is likely too late to remedy the situation.  So she will make do with her wonderful guys, Thor and Percival, and her male dog, Zeus. And be grateful that she has a cool mom, a lot of books with friendly women in them, and a little bit of time left to meet that Special Someone who might be her new best girlfriend.

Next:  Why Facebook portends the End of Days

Hypochondriaphobia

Sophia is descended from a long line of people who have lived their lives in the shadow of death. Sophia's paternal grandmother was so certain that a dirt nap was imminent that she retired to her bed in her fifties, finding it useless to keep up the pretense of health any longer. As fate would have it, she did in fact contract a malignant disease and died when Sophia was twelve. The disease that finally felled her was not one of the many she had claimed to have over the years, however.  This proved to Sophia that the Grim Reaper is a tricky bastard, and, moreover, that hypochondria is little more than failed magical thinking. Fearing the worst will not keep it from happening.

This logic was lost on Sophia's father, however. For as long as she can remember, her dad has been certain that his aches and pains were actually the first sneaky signs of a lingering demise. He's now almost eighty-two years old, which would seem to lend support to the magical thinking theory. Maybe spending one's life worrying about sickness and death does keep mortality at bay. Maybe what kills people is the surprise.

Sophia, for her part, has inherited a mutation of the hypochondria gene. She's terrified of being a hypochondriac. So whenever she faces a health crisis, or even a routine test, she goes through not one, but two awful phases. The first is the genuine fear that Something Might Be Wrong, and then, like a tsunami after an earthquake, the even greater fear that She's Turning into Her Dad.  At what point, she wonders, does worry or legitimate concern become a pathological obsession with one's health? How many symptoms does one have to Google before mild anxiety tips over into sick self-absorption?

Sophia can only hope that hypochondriaphobia has its own magical effect. That worrying about being a hypochondriac means one isn't.

Throwing a Mastoid

She considers herself lucky that her dad was not an active hypochondriac in the Age of Google. He was, however, a research immunologist, with just enough medical knowledge to torment his entire family with the specter of rare and horrible diseases.

Chief among these was....Mastoiditis.  Never heard of this? Welcome to Sophia's childhood, where mastoiditis lurked in every childhood earache, headache, or crick in the neck. Mastoiditis is the bacterial inflammation of the mastoid bone, which is behind your ear. Feel it. It's that hard bony place where some people like to be kissed. Not Sophia. Kisses in the Dangerous Mastoid Zone are not erotic, thanks to her dad and his utterly bizarre mastoid obsession.

If Sophia had a few thousand dollars to throw to the winds, she might be able to sort this all out in therapy. Blogging, however, is all she can afford.

Sophia's dad had similar weird ideas about cars, by the way. He knew considerably less about auto mechanics than about the human body, but this did not stop him from predicting vehicular doom. In her dad's world, the car equivalent of mastoiditis was throwing a rod.  Cars were always on the verge of rod-throwing, especially when driven by the teenage Sophia. "Stop, or you're going to throw a rod!" Sophia's dad would shout as she attempted to execute some tricky driving maneuver, like passing or parking.

Sophia inevitably felt the urge to throw a rod right at her dad's head.

She never did find out what "throwing a rod" meant, exactly, but it sounded dramatic. She always pictured a long metal bar shooting through the hood as the car careened out of control and her dad yelled "you've thrown a rod, dammit!"

Needless to day, these two bizarre, unlikely occurrences became conflated in Sophia's mind. So now, whenever she feels like some strange disease is lurking in her Over Fifty body, she wonders if she's really sick, or just Throwing a Mastoid.

The Dark Continent

That's what Sigmund Freud, famous psychoanalyst and crazy person, called womankind. In case you're ever on Jeopardy, and the answer is "Africa," you can say "What continent did Freud compare women to?"  You won't win the point, but you will make an impression on the TV audience.

For the first time, however, Sophia has some sympathy for this perspective. Because her postmenopausal body is not behaving as all the books and websites say it should.  It seems her rousing Tae Kwon Do classes shook something loose Down There, and she had a little bitty Menstrual Event. Threw a Hormonal Rod, as it were.  So of course, she goes straight to her computer and Googles this problem. And what do you think she finds? It could be Nothing, or it could be

• Cancer (endometrial)
• Cancer (ovarian)
• Cancer (fallopian--a type she didn't even know existed)
• Cancer (from Somewhere Else)

Eeek! She calls her doctor and makes an appointment. The nurse says they will clear the schedule for her, because this is Potentially Very Bad. Okay, the nurse said the first part, and Sophia inferred the second.  So, a few days later--after much repressed anxiety, which included such fantasies as

• wondering if she should get a video camera, so she can give Percival some Lasting Wisdom to Treasure in Her Absence
• getting angry at Thor ahead of time, for he will surely imply that all serious illness is simply a Failure of the Will
• imagining herself withholding news of her imminent demise until the Very Last Moment, thereby
• making the whole thing lots more dramatic, a la Garbo in Camille
• making her selfish brothers who never call or email feel really guilty
• inspiring others with her courage and selflessness, ultimately generating a made-for-TV movie on the Lifetime Network

--she finally went to her appointment.  A preternatural calm settled over Sophia as she Assumed the Position, and she felt herself surrender her fate to the Will of the Universe.

Okay, not really. But that's what the voice-over will say in the TV movie. Anyway, to make a short story not quite so long, the doctor got out a tiny little laptop computer with a predictably-shaped Wand attached to it. Sophia marveled that this little device did the same thing as the giant ultrasound machines that were a window onto Percival's in utero world ten years ago. The doc explained that these cool portable machines were invented so that medics in Iraq and Afghanistan can look at the injured body parts of our troops in the field. Like most great inventions of the modern era, this one was a direct result of the human propensity for violence on a mass scale.

This little bit of information made Sophia feel guilty for Throwing a Mastoid. Soldiers lost legs, arms, and lives on a daily basis over there. She could surely face a little gynecological uncertainty.

But this brief flare of bravery faded instantly as the doctor put a condom on the Wand. Sophia almost giggled with repressed hysteria at this moment, imagining Safe Sex with an Ultrasound Machine. Would the machine call for another date, or just assume Sophia was Easy?

Anyway, a few moments later, the Game Was On.  The pictures were materializing on the screen. Sophia could see them, and they looked just like when she was pregnant, only sans tiny Percival. In other words, she was looking at a blurry gray landscape that resembled nothing so much as a giant dust storm.

The doctor, however, began to show off her training. "Look, there's the lining," she said helpfully. Sophia looked, and saw...nothing but video snow. "Look, there's an old fibroid."  Sophia perked up at this. At last, something to see. An old fibroid. She imagined a tumbleweed rolling across this barren tundra, but saw pretty much nothing.

Finally, ten minutes and several hundred dollars later, it was determined that Everything Looked Normal. Sophia was instructed to go home and call again if she threw another hormonal rod in the future.

So, no video diary of Sophia's Last Months. No Lifetime Movie. No fight with Thor about his insensitivity. No medical marijuana. Sophia had, as it turned out, simply Thrown a Mastoid.

Her fear of death was not justified, but her fear of hypochondria certainly was. She went straight home, endured Thor's "I told you so's" and filed away her genetically-acquired phobias for another day.

In retrospect, she realized one thing. Hypochondria is where imagination goes to live when it has no other outlets. Perhaps she ought to begin writing another novel.

Yes, another. More on this in a later post.

Fists of Fury

Sophia's husband Thor is a macho but enlightened guy. He doesn't need to kill things with firearms, or tell homophobic jokes, or any of that stuff. But he seldom does housework, invariably leaves the toilet seat up, and is extremely competitive in all things. Like most males of his ilk, he lifts weights. Because he's a big guy--about six-five and two hundred twenty or so--he lifts really big weights that Sophia can't even pick up when he leaves them lying around.

His real name, while equally monosyllabic, is not Thor. But Sophia thinks it suits him. Despite his Thorlike physique, he's kind of simple and predictable, which is why Sophia married him. She likes simplicity in fashion, in baked goods, and in men.

Sophia herself is not all that simple, nor is she particularly strong. Nevertheless, she is not helpless. In a verbal sparring match she can whip Thor's muscular ass in about two minutes flat. He doesn't argue with her much, because he's a practical guy, and hates to lose. Taking on Sophia in a war of words can very easily lead to Verbal Armageddon, so he treads carefully around certain subjects.

To satisfy your curiosity, Sophia will list these in a future post.

But because he thinks she's too cerebral--and verbose--Thor is always harping on Sophia to Get Stronger. He is not the kind of guy who likes fragile, helpless women. He would have been very happy married to Wonder Woman, as played by the well-endowed Lynda Carter in the 1970's.

Unlike Lynda, Sophia is not very physically impressive. She has skinny little stick arms and, in recent years, a weak back. Except for her outstanding rack (eat your heart out, Lynda), none of her body parts are anything special. She works out a few times a week at the YMCA, because her Over Fifty metabolism now moves with glacial speed, and must needs be pushed to burn even a few dozen calories.

But she does not Hit Things. Or rather didn't, until last week. That's when Percival enrolled in a Tae Kwon Do class with one of his little friends.  Sophia and Thor went to watch the little martial artists, and were wowed by how cool the class was, and how cute-but-grown-up Percival looked in his TKD gear. As they were watching their adorable child punch and kick other children, Thor happened to notice another class going on at the same time. All women, punching and kicking one another. Thor looked that these strong, ass-kicking women, and at his wife with her stick-like arms. And he had an Idea.

Now Thor isn't much for Ideas, unless they involve ways to make money or fix stuff using only duct tape. When Ideas do occur to him, however, he is pretty much inexorable in his insistence that they be carried out.  And so it was in this case.

"Why don't you take that class?" he said. "You can bring Percival, and learn Tae Kwon Do while he does. It's a perfect set-up."

Yes, perfect, but not for Sophia. Words, not feet and fists, are her weapons of choice. She'd rather kick some philosophical ass than lift her leg above her chest while swinging it backwards.  And anyway, she's pretty sure that move is anatomically impossible for a woman Over Fifty.

But, Thor knows Sophia pretty well. He knows, damn him, that she does not like to back down from a challenge. She grew up with four ass-kicking brothers, and, like Thor, hates to admit defeat. So she agreed to try the class out once. Now what do you think happened?

Sophia loved kicking and punching things! She loved the whole Not Thinking aspect of it! She realized why men like fighting so much. It's unambiguous, and uses very few brain cells. Punch, block, punch. Kick, block, kick. Repeat as necessary until someone falls down and doesn't get up. For millennia, this was all men did during the daylight hours.

For a few weirdly wonderful moments, Sophia knew how it felt to be a guy. The power--and sheer stupidity--of it all was intoxicating. After the class, she began to dream big. Black belts! Trophies! Taking down muggers in a New York subway station! Maybe even beating Thor in a non-rhetorical fight someday (she confesses this image had a little erotic charge to it). Nothing seemed impossible. So she signed up.

Well, it turns out, the teacher of the class was not showing all her cards on that first day. No, once she had Sophia signed up for this Tae Kwon Do boot camp, the gloves were off. Sophia realized what it means to be the only White Belt (read: klutzy beginner) in a class of five youngish women with dark-colored belts who can kick their legs higher than any Rockette.

For one thing, it means coming home with a severe hand tremor from punching a pad repeatedly with her bony little fists. She was certain that she had triggered some devastating neurological disorder, and would have to quit this insanity immediately. But no. Thor, who was on the Boxing Team in college, assured her that this was normal. Even his godlike hands shook like giant oaks in an earthquake after he punched the hell out of someone, he said.

Sophia considered this, and thought it incredibly dumb. Why, she wondered, would someone hit something--or someone--until they developed scary neurological symptoms?

Then she remembered to (Not) Think Like a Guy, and stopped worrying about it. Punch, block, punch. Hit first, ask questions later.

But there are other things about the class that are less easily dismissed. Chief among these is the fashion issue. While skinny little Percival looks cute as hell in his Tae Kwon Do outfit, Sophia does not. She had hoped that, like the other (younger) women in her class, she would look tough and sinewy in the loose black pants, Asian-style jacket and white belt.

This was not the case. Because she is top-heavy (see earlier post) and no longer has a perceptible waistline unless completely naked, she looks like a dumpy black sack tied in the middle. The glaring white sash accentuates her no-longer-Lynda-Carterish waist, and the pants bunch out at the hips. Not a good look for the Over-Fifty, non-athletic body. And of course, the classroom is a veritable funhouse of mirrored walls. The last time Sophia had to do anything in a room like this, she was a sylph-like fifteen-year-old, taking ballet class. She loved looking at herself then. But now that she's Over Fifty, she uses mirrors sparingly, like salt and alcohol.

Moreover, Sophia is pretty convinced these are Fat Mirrors. Any woman over twenty knows that, just as there is matter and anti-matter, there are Fat Mirrors and Thin Mirrors. These are definitely Fat Mirrors. Perhaps the owners of the school thought Fat Mirrors would make female students hesitate to drop the class.

Anyway, because of the Wall of Fat Mirrors, Sophia has to stare at her chubby-looking self in 3D for forty-five minutes, wondering how a once-graceful fifteen-year-old ballerina morphed into this lumpy creature with big hips and skinny stick arms.

She also has to grunt "HUUNNNH" when she shoots her fist out, which makes her feel way stupid.

The teacher of this class, Master Jane (you gotta love any sport that lets a woman ascend to the title of "Master") is an awesome physical specimen who is about the same age as Sophia. Yes, it's true! One would think this would be inspiring, but Sophia is not fooled. While Sophia was pulling the string on her Chatty Cathy doll back in the Eisenhower years, Master Jane was back-kicking little boys in her preschool and elbowing bullies in the sandbox. She and Sophia may be the same sex, but they definitely aren't the same species.

The other women in the class are equally alien. They are shorter than Sophia, with fists and feet that move at lightspeed. Sophia feels as if she's moving underwater when she watches these black, red, and blue-belted warrior princesses spar with one another. They are nice to Sophia, treating her with the kind of noblesse oblige that true aristocrats reserve for their inferiors. Master Jane forces some of them to partner with the newbie, which limits their workout considerably. Sophia feels bad about this, but Thor, who is first and foremost a capitalist, reminds her that she is paying the same amount of money for the class as the warrior princesses, so they just have to suck it up.

Sophia loves this about Thor. He never feels uneasy about his place in the world. So even though she's Over Fifty, and will never punch and kick like Master Jane, she is going to stick with the class for awhile. Because she wants to feel that way, too.

HUUNNNH!