If you’re unacquainted with Judith Butler, you’re in for a real treat. Judith Butler “is an American philosopher and gender studies scholar whose work has influenced political philosophy, ethics, and the fields of third-wave feminism, queer theory, and literary theory.” If you don’t agree with her ideas about gender, you are a fascist.

Her latest pronoun of choice is they, but I will refer to her as she because (1.) she is a single, and not plural, unit and (2.) I  just feel like it. She is a professor at Berkeley and has received 14 honorary degrees. In other words, she is a big deal. According to many, she is among the most influential intellectuals alive today.

Let’s start with this: In her book Gender Trouble, Butler claims that biological sex, like gender, is socially constructed, with its physical manifestations mattering only to the degree society assigns them meaning. Well, no. I would say nice try, but no.  Gender critical feminists (i.e. feminists who aren’t on board with her ideas) come in for some of her most scathing attacks. They are the victims of “phantasmatic” anxieties and also are big stupid liars whom she compares to Richard Nixon, of all people.

Personally, I don’t give a shit about gender, or not enough of a shit to ponder its meaning. I came across Butler in a critique of her assertion that the events of Oct. 7 constitute “resistance.”  Reading her put forth this idea, I thought, “Who is this pretentious idiot?”

I was delighted to find that she had won first prize in the annual Bad Writing Contest sponsored by the journal Philosophy and Literature – a prize given to “the ugliest, most stylistically awful” sentence submitted by its readers . Here is her winning sentence:

The move from a structuralist account in which capital is understood to structure social relations in relatively homologous ways to a view of hegemony in which power relations are subject to repetition, convergence, and rearticulation brought the question of temporality into the thinking of structure, and marked a shift from a form of Althusserian theory that takes structural totalities as theoretical objects to one in which the insights into the contingent possibility of structure inaugurate a renewed conception of hegemony as bound up with the contingent sites and strategies of the rearticulation of power.

You have to love her, right? I mean, she gave us the concept of gender performativity!Wikipedia notes that

Butler also explores how gender can be understood not only as a performance, but also as a “constitutive constraint,” or constructed character. They ask how this conceptualization of an individual’s gender contributes to notions of bodily intelligibility, or comprehension, by other individuals. Butler continues to discuss bodily intelligibility by means of sex as a “materialized” entity, upon which cultural, collective ideals of gender can be built. From this angle, Butler interrogates value conscription upon various bodies as determined theories and practices of heterosexual predominance.

Whatever. I suggest that you don’t waste your brain cells trying to decipher this gibberish, just be aware that you’re not allowed to object to any of it. If you’re a woman (a human born with a reproductive system that produces eggs) or a non-man, as some gender identity theorists might say, you are a TERF  for taking issue with Judith Butler. If you’re a man, I don’t know what happens. Probably you’re just a homophobic colonialist defender of the patriarchy.

Please do your own research on Judith Butler, I promise you it is more fun and rewarding than anything you can do online besides getting into arguments on Instagram. Also, note that I didn’t title this “Judith Butler: What a fucking cunt!” She’s more of an irritant, albeit a uniquely flagrant one. And I realize she is low-hanging fruit, but try to resist taking a whack at her!

It is my nightly ritual to get into bed at around 1:00 am and read until I’m drowsy enough to sleep. The other night, I put my book down and surveyed my bedroom. I was suddenly overcome with a bittersweet sense of nostalgia for it, if it’s possible to feel nostalgia for the present. My husband walked in and I blurted out, “I’m going to miss this bedroom when I’m dead.” Instead of being pissed off about how morbid I am, he surprised me by laughing and saying, “Well, then you have it better than some people!”

I just love my bedroom! I love our big bed, nicknamed Snuggy if you must know. I love the art on the walls and the heavy velvet curtains from Ikea. I love my antique dresser covered with piles of jewelry and religious shit. I love my thriftshop chinoiserie and crappy velvet chair.

It struck me today that there must be lots of things I’ll miss when I’m dead. And that I should start appreciating them now while I can. I think we should all do this.

I’ll start:

I will miss burgers and fries, Pollo Loco chicken, and chips and salsa. I’ll miss frozen Indian dinners. I’m already starting to miss the first cup of morning coffee after the coffee machine does a little song.

I’ll miss Nicole Wallace on MSNBC. She seems so incredibly nice besides being smart and funny.  I’ll probably miss that SNL guy who does an uncanny  and hilarious imitation of Trump. I’ll miss hearing my favorite songs on the car radio. Obviously I can hear them any time I want to, but everyone knows it’s the surprise that makes it feel like a gift.

I’ll miss getting packages from Sephora. Free shipping and easy returns!

I’ll miss changing my nail polish. It’s relaxing and it makes me feel arty.

I’ll miss my favorite thriftshop, where the octogenarian volunteers start calling our “We’re closing” every five minutes, starting 45 minutes before closing time.

I will miss exchanging pleasantries with strangers, which always makes me feel like a human being. I’ll miss our Christmas Eve parties, which remind  me that I’m lucky to have people I love, who love me back.

I’ll miss the triumph of returning something to Zara even after washing it twice, like I did today with some awful baggy jeans.

Of course I’ll miss my husband but not as much as he’ll miss me (because he’ll have to get into Snuggy alone). And I’ll miss my darling dog, Kora.

That’s about it for now. How about you? I really want to know!

My brain has been hibernating due to too much internet scrolling, but it has awakened with a bang, thanks to the discovery of an Adult Diaper Spa. Just linger on those three words. They are so incongruous and dissonant. And yet they are the portal to true insanity, not that I want to be judgemental or shaming in any way. I just had no idea!

I knew there were guys who liked wearing onesies, and I even remember looking at a website for adult size cribs. But this is a whole other thing.

This is not just a Diaper Spa, but also a Diaper Salon, Ageplay Spa, and Diaper B&B. It is run by Dr Murphy a neurodivergent M.D. who is also a “trauma-informed intimacy and relationship coach.” At the spa,

you can openly express yourself and partake of your favorite activities, meals, snacks, and nurturing. Activities range from playtime, story time, nap time, cuddle time, changing time, coloring, nursery rhymes, and sing-a-longs.

In the summer, you can play with your water wings and floaties poolside, picnic under the tree with your teddy bear, play marbles on the patio, or swing on the front porch swing and serve tea to your dollies on the porch. In the winter, we can make snow angels, build snowmen, drink hot cocoa from beneath clouds of whipped cream and sprinkles, and decorate gingerbread men or sugar cookies.

You get the idea. Who are these big babies? Are they the leaders of  government and industry? I have a feeling that these babies are mostly male, if I may be so binary. I think society already treats women like helpless babies, so it’s a less transgressive or appealing notion. I wonder if the spa offers spanking and scolding, or if that’s a different form of “play?”

The spa has everything a big baby needs, but you are welcome to bring your own blankie, stuffie, or onesie.  For $300 an hour, you get “a spa-like nursery experience for the little one inside of you, providing a warm, safe, and nurturing environment while you indulge in relaxation and self-care. Minimum session: 2 hours.” It’s $1,500 for a 24 hour Diaper sleep-over.

As I read this shit with an increasing sense of, ahem, wonder, I started to imagine being a cherished baby…I mean, it’s probably nice, right? I have no memories of my early childhood, except for my mom yelling and my sister torturing me. But by loving and caring for my own babies, I feel I’ve corrected that loss. While it’s awful to be an adult, it seems preferable to being infantilized, even by choice.

I guess it’s nice to indulge in your deepest fantasy, but aren’t some fantasies best left inside your head? Mine aren’t that interesting, and aren’t worth acting out in a pricey fake environment. Isn’t that what husbands are for?

Do they have fake farms or racetracks for people who like to do Pony Play? Uh-oh, I just googled it and they do! This place welcomes Ponies, Trainers, Handlers, Grooms, teams of Pony/Trainers and all those who love them.

I am open-minded enough to want everyone to be happy and sexually fulfilled, I just don’t want to find out about it.

Changing the subject, how many times have you seen a TV couple having urgent sex on the sink counter or standing up against a wall? It’s crazy! Now I groan each time I see this, and sometimes yell, “USE THE BED!” I watch so much TV now that I can tell what every character is about to do. I can often say the line before the actor does, which is simultaneously satisfying and disappointing.

Okay then. Thoughts or enraged complaints, anyone?

In a word, yes.

If you weren’t raised as a Jew, you have no standing to speak on this. As a Jew, I decide what is, and is not, antisemitic, just as POC will decide what is, and is not racism.

If you weren’t raised as a Jew, how dare you think you can be an arbiter of what is antisemitic? Notice that when a black person deems something/someone racist,  he/she is taken seriously, and his/her view is respected…at least by the progressive left.

But Jews everywhere, since October 7, are being gaslighted constantly with indignant cries of I’m not antisemitic, it’s Israel’s government that I can’t tolerant.

As we all should know, Israel is far from being the worst country for human rights.

Moving on to global humanitarian crises, DR Congo is the largest hunger emergency in the world, with over 25 million people struggling daily to simply get enough to eat.

The country hosts one of the largest displaced populations (including refugees) in the world – approximately 5.5 million. One in seven women nationwide experienced sexual violence before the age of 18, and the problem is even more severe in conflict-affected communities. However, in 2022, the number of people in need in DRC was significantly higher than the amount of people in need in Ukraine, yet the amount of funding secured was 74% lower.

Have you heard any demands to stop the violent conflicts there? The country is experiencing outbreaks of monkey pox, cholera, measles, floods and landslides.

And in Sudan? Seven months of conflict there have resulted in 9,000 deaths and 5.6 million forced to flee their homes. Where are progressives wearing the Jalabia in protest?

I bet none of your friends are going around enraged on behalf of the Congolese or Sudanese. Because the only people who matter are Palestinians, and their plight is the only one worth marching for. If Jews aren’t involved, no one cares.

Look at the map above. Note the size of Israel. Note that it’s surrounded by countries with lamentable human rights, countries where women are second class citizens and gays are at risk of prison and death. Teeny tiny Israel is the focus of the worlds dismay and disapproval….why?? Is it “because our taxes prop up their apartheid government”? The taxes argument is absurd. The US gives foreign aid to countries all over the world, some with governments that progressives surely wouldn’t want to support.

(Ukraine was the top recipient of aid in 2022, having received nearly $12 billion from the U.S. that year following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.)

If you want to know the history of Israel, it’s easy to research. Historians and archaeologists agree that a Kingdom of Israel existed by ca. 900 BCE and that a Kingdom of Judah existed by ca. 700 BCE.  The Jews have been deported from their ancestral homeland by various empires, thousands of years before Palestine was invented by the British division of land formerly governed by the Ottoman Empire.

Let’s get back to now. “The Hamas attack resembled a medieval Mongol raid for slaughter and human trophies—except it was recorded in real time and published to social media. Yet since October 7, Western academics, students, artists, and activists have denied, excused, or even celebrated the murders by a terrorist sect that proclaims an anti-Jewish genocidal program. Some of this is happening out in the open, some behind the masks of humanitarianism and justice, and some in code, most famously “from the river to the sea,” a chilling phrase that implicitly endorses the killing or deportation of the 9 million Israelis. The decolonization narrative has dehumanized Israelis to the extent that otherwise rational people excuse, deny, or support barbarity. It holds that Israel is an “imperialist-colonialist” force, that Israelis are “settler-colonialists,” and that Palestinians have a right to eliminate their oppressors.” *

Progressives have fallen to this fiction like they once fell for Stalin and Hitler. But their beloved Palestinians had every chance to build a thriving state instead of voting to be ruled by Hamas. Jews worked hard and created Israel out of a desert. Palestinians could have done the same if they weren’t so focused on killing Jews. (White savior complex much?)

What about the charge that Zionism is racism?

Prior to 1948, Zionism was an aspiration—the national liberation movement of the Jewish people, founded by Theodore Herzl in the late 19th century, to re-establish a Jewish nation as a solution to the antisemitism Jews faced in Europe. After 1948 until today, Zionism became a reality: a homeland not only to persecuted European Jews, but Jews from all over the globe, including Jews fleeing persecution from the Soviet Union, the Arab world, Turkey, Iran, and Ethiopia, amongst others. Israel is one of the most diverse countries in the world with over half of its population being from Africa, India, and other areas of the Middle East. The vast majority of Jews around the world identify as Zionists, meaning they support the existence of Israel as a Jewish State in the historic Land of Israel.

Antisemitism has existed now for millennia, and the prevailing ideas about Jews running everything, about how “good” they have it, is just as stupid as the Elders of Zion.

As the saying goes, “Germany will never forgive the Jews for the Holocaust.” Jews are despised for being weak, and also when they fight back. Jews are somehow responsible for everything bad. Why? The term “Jew” at various times in history has been connected to both materialism and intellectualism, socialism and capitalism, worldly cosmopolitanism and clannish parochialism, eternal chosenness and unending accursedness.

Even the UN is rife with antisemitism. So is the Red Cross.

In closing, you intellectuals arguing about whether Jewish babies were actually beheaded or just burned alive need to get a fucking grip.

Jews are the indigenous people of Israel, their ancestral homeland. Deal with it. War isn’t genocide or ethnic cleansing. And apartheid does not apply to the state of Israel, as much as you love the word.

L’chaim for now.

© Stephan Andrade

I went to a Christmas party at the home of one of my husband’s friends, even though I was close to backing out at the last minute. Backing out of things has been my m.o. for most of my life, but I’m making an effort to get out and socialize. God knows I’m sick of my own company.

The host was a lovely and talented young man who can play any stringed instrument and cooked up an incredible feast, including a salmon mousse. His apartment is right beneath the Hollywood sign, and was cozy and festive. I greeted him and his family and went straight to the food.

I met his mom for the first time and fell in love with her. She confided that having retired, all she does is read 19th century novels and watch murder TV! THAT’S ALL I DO, TOO!!! She has read all of Trollope, twice. I would marry her if I could.

A guy named B overheard us talking and later came up to me to say, I know you like 19th century novels but do you also read any modern novels? I replied that I have no interest in contemporary fiction because I’m too much of a book snob. You’d think that would be the end of it but no.

He proceeded to mention a few writers I’ve never heard of but even their names were middlebrow. He asked, Don’t you want to know what younger people today are thinking about? I said, “No, I have younger friends so I already know their perspective.” He didn’t like this answer and then told me about Jennifer Something, who has written three novels, and went on to describe the plots of each one.

I stood politely trying not to have a heart attack from anxiety and frustration. Why was he torturing me? When he finally paused, I asked him if he likes short stories, thinking maybe we had that in common. He said he occasionally reads the fiction in the New Yorker. Now here was something I had an opinion on! I said, “Don’t you think that the New Yorker fiction is always” but he turned and walked away.

I sat down next to a nice woman I’ve met before and we talked about the stress of being online. We agreed that the current climate is especially tense and divisive. She noted that it annoyed her how many people denied there was a “genocide going on in Palestine.” As a Jewish Jew, I countered with, “Yeah, and the people who don’t believe Israeli women were raped and tortured!” Luckily, we agreed that miniature donkeys are adorable.

Later, I met a lovely couple who had family in Jerusalem. The husband, who was French, confided, “I hate Netanyahu” to which I interjected something like Duh, it’s a given, “but I hate Hamas more.” We talked about the worldwide explosion of antisemitism. They both has interesting jobs and asked me what I do. I blurted out, “Nothing. I am nothing.” Luckily my husband was in earshot and he leaned in and said, “She’s a writer.”

I noticed a very thin woman dressed in black and wearing a big fedora. Women who wear hats are one of my pet peeves so I instinctively disliked her. I heard her say, “This is my husband, Steve.” Suddenly, I recalled an awful woman on Instagram who used to keep referring to her husband Steve. I remember that Steve bought her a $10,000 engagement ring. I sat down with my phone and went to Instagram. Yes, it was that awful woman! I was so pleased with myself that I looked around to see if there was anyone I could gloat to. Obviously, I restricted gloating to my husband.

Back at the food table, I started talking to a debonair looking guy in a black shirt who had silver hair and a matching beard. I asked him if he was a musician, since most of the guests were musicians as well as the host. He said yes, and we started talking about song lyrics. He was saying something about how you often didn’t know what your lyrics were really about until you performed the song. I went on a short rant about how a bad lyric. or even a stupid word in the lyric, ruined the whole song for me. I ended with, “a stupid cliched lyric is like an electric shock!” He looked kind of bemused.

While driving home, my husband praised me for ignoring a guy named Richard, who I hate with the force of a thousand suns. I was flabbergasted. I said, “WHAT? RICHARD WAS THERE?” I  was stunned. I couldn’t believe I never noticed him!

I asked my husband if he knew a guy named Jackson, who I discussed lyrics with. He said, “Yeah, that was Jackson Browne.”

What a night! Merry Christmas to those who celebrate and even to those who don’t. xo

This morning I said “I hate you” to my toothpaste, and I meant it. Every time I use it, the tube needs to be unclogged. It’s been a while since I last said I Hate You to an inanimate object, although I scream it at the TV several times a day. Alternating with “Just DIE already!”

I remembered writing something I called a Hatefest, and when I found it, I was impressed by how comprehensive it is. I know for a fact that I’m still as full of hate, if not more so, than when I wrote it. But my powers of recall and word retrieval are shit. Yesterday I couldn’t remember the word for lint, and tried “fluff” instead.

But back to hate, I am suspicious of people who claim not to hate anyone. Ever. Have you encountered these people? I’ve married two of them. They maintain that hatred is unknown to them. They dislike people, yes, but don’t hate. I used to imagine their mommies admonishing them as children, “No, we never hate! We dislike.” I remember a childhood friend whose mom told us, “We don’t say ‘I’m mad’! Say ‘I’m aggravated!'”

But these non-haters insist that it’s not that; it’s just an emotion they don’t experience. My latest theory is that they hate as much as us haters, but they just name it something else, like anger or revulsion or something. It’s just semantics.

(Unless it’s alexithymia, i.e. the inability to express or identify your emotions, a whole other story.)

If you can’t name at least 5 people you hate, just go away. Or get a note from your doctor.

Let the Hatefest begin!

Taylor Swift
Swiftees
Madonna
The Row
Laura Ingraham
Laura Trump
IvankaTrump
Jared Kushner
Imagine Dragons
That guy in the Strokes
J. Lo
the word “cropped” when applied to clothing
“how’s that working for you?”
Tom Ford
John Hamm
flavored coffee
Mitch McConnell
pro-lifers
butterfly tattoos
new words for homeless
Shein
proving I’m not a robot
Cormac McCarthy
Golden Goose sneakers
The Kardashians
David Duchovny
duck lips
my ex-husband
TikTok
memes
Chihuahuas
celebrity interviews
“got any plans for the weekend?”
Anna Wintour
Jack Harlow
Noam Chomsky
Anais Nin
Star Wars
MAGA
erectile dysfunction commercials
Steely Dan
people who call their dogs “rescues”
celebrities named Hailey
that awful guy who was married to Lisa Bonet
Doja Cat
Coco Chanel
hard seltzer
people who drink hard seltzer

That’s it for starters.

What did I leave out?

I have already confessed to being at a loss for words to adequately describe the abomination that is Donald Trump. But recently, one thing I keep thinking after watching the news is how utterly without redeeming features he is. My default analogy is that at least Hitler loved dogs. And music. And had some actual talent as a painter.

I was thinking of this yesterday while walking my dog (shout out to Hitler!) and started to mentally review the dictators I’m most familiar with, to compare them to Trump. Qaddafi came to mind first, and he had the redeeming feature of great style. He’s one up on Trump right there!

So let’s review historic dictators to see if any are as worthless as Donald Trump.

Stalin excelled in seminary school and earned a scholarship to Tiflis Theological Seminary in 1894. Good job, Stalin! Your dad didn’t have to pay to get you accepted!

Castro went to law school and was passionate about social justice.

Saddam Hussein also went to law school on his own merits and “did much to modernize Iraq’s infrastructure, industry and health-care system, and raised social services, education and farming subsidies to levels unparalleled in other Arab countries in the region.” Well done, Saddam!

Kim Jong-un was educated in Switzerland and after his father’s death, implemented some economic and agricultural reforms. Not bad, Kim Jong-un!

Mussolini was a journalist who studied Kant, Hegel and Nietzsche. (Trump = Covfefe)

Mobutu Sese Seko, with his trademark leopard-skin cap and carved wooden staff, was a a true style icon, and I’m still looking for a facsimile of that hat.

Pol Pot played the violin and was fluent in French.

Augusto Pinochet taught classes in military geography and geopolitics and was the editor of a magazine, Cien Águilas (‘One Hundred Eagles’).

François Duvalier aka Papa Doc was a physician, and was active in a United States–sponsored campaign to control the spread of contagious tropical diseases, helping the poor to fight typhus, yaws, and malaria. He was also a master of Haitian Vodou! Who among us doesn’t love Haitian Vodou?

I could go on, but you see my point here. That bastard Donald Trump is the most patently worthless human being in the history of the world.  Why did god make him? I heard a guy on TV noting Trump’s “incandescent stupidity and malevolence.” Incandescent gave me a little thrill. If only I could be as elegant in expressing my contempt!

All I can do is take comfort in his notable hair-loss and commensurate panic as I try not to think of him winning the next presidential election. If that comes to pass, there won’t be enough cyanide capsules in the world to put us out of our misery.

I admit I’m not a poetry lover. I don’t even like poetry. I like it better when it rhymes, like the Ancient Mariner. Sometimes I read the poetry in The New Yorker, and inevitably sneer or mutter “Jesus Christ.” I used to think it was a failure on my part, but now I’m comfortable with all of my biases.

I once had a job that involved stupid magazines with stupid ads for suckers, like devices to enlarge your breasts overnight. One of the ads was for a poetry contest, that was clearly a scam. It was something like “YOU TOO COULD BE A POET! ENTER THIS CONTEST AND WIN $10,000!”

I showed it to my young teenager and we decided to send in a poem to find out what the scam was. It was back in 1990, but I still remember laughing as we took turns composing it. Max was reading Stephen King at the time, who was a master of the idiotic mixed metaphor, and you can see the Stephen King influence throughout.

Sure enough, our poem won an Honorable Mention! and we could see it published in a nice anthology for only $49.95! We decided to pass. *If you want to try this too, go here.

Keeping in mind my disappreciation for poetry, I was excited to discover a poem by my husband’s ex-wife, my bête noire and the Anti-me. While I try to follow her monthly column in her community newspaper, somehow the poem escaped my attention until now. “Escaped my attention” is the kind of thing she would write, so I apologize, but she would have prefaced it with “hitherto.”

I won’t pretend to “get” this poem; You don’t need to get it to enjoy it, right? But once I figured out its subject, I was inspired to write my own elegy:

Ode To The Tennessee 3

What fresh hell is this! Voting
To kick them out for
Protesting

Even the fat white lady knew how
Wrong
This was. Plus

The 2 young black guys
Are so hot!
Especially the Brother with
The earring and long hair

I even followed
Him
On Instagram.

I shared it with my friend M, a published novelist and hardcore fan of the Ex’s work, and he countered with this:

Tennessee 3 braving
and behaving
No
The guy with the Afro is the hotter of the 2

Whew! I’d hate to have to pick the winner here, but I would love to pick the winner of your entries! So, (YOU TOO COULD BE A POET!) please submit a poem about the Tennessee Three and the winner will get a nice certificate! If anyone out there is an artist, you can help design it.

Don’t be shy! There are no losers, only winners!

I knew this was coming but it was still a shock. When I read that Sinead O’Connor had lost her son to suicide, it was a a given that she wouldn’t stick around. Her panic and horror were familiar, and I relived it for a long time. I braced myself. And it seems like a miracle that she stayed as long as she did, a little more than a year.

Even if you never liked her, you must have recognized an exquisitely sensitive soul without much of a protective membrane. She clearly was driven to tell the truth – not tell, but shout out – without thought of the consequences. I used to be like that, once.

She told us that her son was her soulmate, the only person who had ever loved her unconditionally.  And that’s just too much of a loss. I have been there. I’m still there.

When you lose your soulmate, or your twin soul, whatever term you like to describe this, you literally feel hollowed out, less substantial, without the ballast that kept you safely rooted to earth. I’m not being poetic, just factual.

Sinead O’Connor’s death is such a tragedy because it shouldn’t have happened and yet was inevitable. There are a million tributes and think pieces now that she’s gone, and while it’s a comfort to know that she was appreciated, it has really destabilized me personally. I feel guilty for being here after thirteen years. What kind of monster am I to go on without Max?

It hurts me to write his name. It’s better to write about Lost Sons in general. I can go for weeks without hearing or saying his name. People don’t want to bring it up, unless it’s his birthday or the anniversary of his exit. I hear music that I know he would’ve liked and say aloud, “Max would have liked this.” My husband replies, “Uh huh,” but it feels wrong. He should say, “Yes! He would love it and he hears it now! He would love it because his taste was so impeccable and wide-ranging and in keeping with his brilliance! Why is he gone? Bring him back!” But it’s not my husband’s job to speak what’s in my heart.

I always wonder if people who learn that I lost a son are thinking, “God, what an awful mother! Why didn’t she kill herself! I myself could never survive this!” One of my half-sisters actually said something like this, making it about her. Obviously she’s an idiot so she doesn’t count.

But I’m sure that other mothers who aren’t idiots are thinking this, silently reprimanding me for my unforgivable ability to go on. I don’t blame them.

I would like to apologize! Forgive me. It’s not that I’m shallow or not heartbroken beyond repair. At first, it was because I couldn’t abandon my younger boy. I couldn’t bear the thought of shattering the lives of my family members; it seemed too cruel to put them through it. Later, it was a courtesy to my husband, as I liked to remind him. Now it’s mostly a lack of courage. If I was sure we’d be reunited, I could do it. Even if we weren’t reunited, I remind myself, I’d be passing through the same door he passed through.

The other day, I was lying in bed, looking at my beautiful antique dresser and the shit on the walls and I felt a wave of sentimental fondness for them. I remarked to my husband, “I’ll miss this room when I’m dead!” He laughed and said, “Well, that’s better than saying ‘I wouldn’t miss any of this crap’!”

But I meant it. I’ll miss a lot of things when I’m dead. To be or not to be is a daily choice, not just according to Camus:

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy. All the rest — whether or not the world has three dimensions, whether the mind has nine or twelve categories — comes afterwards. These are games; one must first answer.

and/but:

Men are never convinced of your reasons, of your sincerity, of the seriousness of your sufferings, except by your death. So long as you are alive, your case is doubtful; you have a right only to their skepticism.

I doubt that Sinead wrestled with this. I believe she followed her heart. I respect her courage and sense of purpose. If living without her boy was a battle for her, it was one battle too many. I hope he kept a seat for her. And if there’s no afterlife out in the cosmos, at least she passed through the same door. My she rest easy for eternity.

I decided to write about those awful Instagram ladies with silver hair, who expect a medal for going gray. They all have tons of followers who idolize them and eat up every positive, self-congratulating post about Loving Life, or practicing yoga. To me, these women seem interchangeable; they all have a silver mane that they constantly refer to, and they are all very thin if not emaciated.

So I googled “gray-haired women” to look for some images to copy. None of them excited me until I saw one who called herself a “Pro-aging Ambassador.” I never heard of this title and have no idea if there’s a million or if she’s the only one. And I don’t know what duties the ambassadorship entails. Does she travel the world giving speeches about the Wonders of Aging?  Does she chair committees?

I would like to adopt my own title: Anti-aging Ambassador. I will go around complaining about getting old (which I already do constantly, in an unofficial capacity.) I will persuade those silver foxes to wipe the smiles off their wrinkly faces.

Instead of “embracing the gray”, I will extol the glory of dyed hair. I will heartily mock the actresses who have suddenly embraced their gray. Jane Fonda, Andi McDowell, even Jennifer Aniston, apparently. They all look better with their hair dyed. Maybe they’re just too lazy to keep up the color, but let’s not act as though they cured cancer. Plus, you need to spend plenty of time to keep that silver looking soft and shiny instead of dull and coarse.

My sister has a friend who went gray a million years ago, before she was forty, and we always wondered what her problem was. Why did she just let her turn grey and straggly? Was she making a Statement? Was she saying, “I’ll show you, society, I don’t have to adhere to your beauty standards”? Her hair is still gray and we’ve decided she’s being passive-aggressive.

Being old truly sucks. There is nothing good about it. Nothing. All those platitudes that begin with, “The good thing about getting old is” are lies. “…you stop  caring about what people think of you!” “You are so much wiser!” “You know what really matters in life!”

Please. I am nearly seventy and still totally crushed if someone doesn’t like me. I don’t know anything about anything, and keep making the same mistakes. I’ve obviously learned that life is fraught with catastrophes, but I already assumed this as a teenager from reading Thomas Hardy novels. I have acquired no wisdom to pass on except “wear more shorts while you’re young!” I have opinions and policies but not wisdom. And I’m just as confused and mystified as I’ve always been. I have no idea what matters. I’d like to keep my eyesight and be able to wipe my own butt but otherwise I don’t know what ‘s important at this point when the key milestones of life have already passed.

Late adulthood is a time of deep reflection and introspection. If you are proud of the life that you have led, then you should feel a sense of peace. If, however, you are haunted by regrets and failures, you will likely experience despair and resentment.

According to Erikson, either ego-integrity or ego-despair characterizes the end of life for older adults. The virtue of this stage is wisdom.

Well, yes but no. Maybe it’s just my ego-despair talking, but the old people I know are all worried about diabetes and Alzheimer’s and health insurance. We can’t remember words and don’t like to crouch down to tie our shoes. Personally, I salt everything and eat lots of processed food but most of the old people I know are serious about their diet. We want either Botox or fillers and wish we could lose that roll of flab. When we watch TV and see someone for the first time in years, we scream “OH GOD, WHAT HAPPENED TO HIM/HER??” Maybe that last part is just me, but I doubt it.

For as long as you can ward off old age,  you should enjoy the use of your body and brain before they become a burden to you or someone else. Prepare for loneliness and a lack of purpose. Make sure you have all the cable channels and a good TV.

And for fucksake, commit to the upkeep of your hair and don’t believe it when your partner or children say you look great with gray hair. They’re just threatened by your lingering attractiveness, such as it is. I may be senile but my hair is glorious! I pay a fortune to color and tame it but it’s worth every penny. To paraphrase Yeats,

only God, my dear,
Could love you for yourself alone
And not your yellow hair.

You can let yourself go, I mean embrace your gray, if you must, but bury me blonde. Or cremate me blonde. Whatever.