by Lawrence Schubert
I am a member of the generation that was famously advised not to trust anyone over the age of 40. I adhered to that advice rigorously…until I turned 40. Thereafter, I adhered rigorously to a new credo: Never trust anyone under the age of 40.
As I was nearing my fourth decade of life, someone told me: “At 40 you have the face you deserve.” I remember looking in the mirror and wondering, “What did I do to deserve this?!” Then there was my sainted Italian grandmother, as prolifically quotable as Oscar Wilde (albeit, without his vocabulary) who once told me: “A man’s life begins at 40.” It is one of those sayings that sounds like it originated in the Reader’s Digest or the Ladies Home Companion and would find its perfect expression as an embroidery sampler hanging on the kitchen wall. It probably doesn’t qualify as an aphorism, or even as an adage (Grandma was not one for metaphors, or metaphysics: Simply put, she believed in God, family and ravioli-and in that order.) And, of course, I paid little heed when she said it, but it resonated in the years that followed, when I often wondered: Did I hear the whole thought, or only the part I wanted to hear?
“I’m glad I’m not young anymore,” sings Maurice Chevalier in Gigi (1958) Liar!! Big French Liar! One minute he’s thanking God for little girls and the next he’s pretending that he doesn’t care that his baguette won’t get hard anymore. 40 is easy. Even 50 is breezy, and catches you off guard. (I’m still here! And I have sperm!!) But mind you: This is not your father’s 50.
You are approaching the Wasteland as delineated by T.S. Eliot, or “midway through this journey called Life,” as Dante & Marianne Faithful said. Quote: “Midway upon the road of our life I found myself within a dark wood, for the right way had been missed. Ah! How hard a thing it is to tell what this wild and rough and dense wood was, which in thought renews the fear! So bitter is it that death is little more. I cannot well recount how I entered it, so full was I of slumber at that point where I abandoned the true way.” That’s me-nodding out at my desk, in this jungle called Hollywood.
How do you meet people when you have been superseded by the Twitter Generation? I find myself haunting the mailbox hoping for a jury duty summons and buying things on eBay so I can leave Feedback for Blanche in Tuscaloosa. Blanche seems like a delightful woman and if I am ever in that part of the world I will have to take a detour and visit her and the butterfly cemetery she keeps in her backyard. And also Bruce in Des Moines, who sold me all that nice McCoy pottery. Everyone seems friendly and happy on eBay: it’s like an Internet Disneyland-the happiest place online.
But I digress. Frequently. In life and in conversation.
Dorian Gray had the right idea: let the picture get old. I would not make the same mistakes as Dorian, however. I wouldn’t ditch poor Sybil Vane and murder my friend, turning my portrait from a Rembrandt to a DeKooning. And I wouldn’t have to worry about Universal Health Care passing: I’d only have to keep the varnish fresh on my likeness.
To be continued….
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