Stairway To Mid Life Paradise…
by Juli I. Huss
Last summer right before my forty-fifth birthday, I was on
the second floor of Macy’s rifling through the sale
racks when I came across an oh-so-sexy lavender off-the-shoulder
spandex crop top with matching seersucker lavender pinstripe
pants. Perfect, absolutely perfect for all of my mid-summer
Internet dates I was finally ready to go on. I thought to
myself,” Juli, this outfit is gonna pull you out of
your romantic rut—you are gonna look so H.O.T. “
I fought my way through the long lines into the dressing rooms,
excited to see how fabulous I was going to look—lavender
has always been my color.
Why? In high school I used to wear my Maybelline lavender
iridescent eye shadow which matched my frosted lavender hair
barrettes which matched my favorite lavender polyester turtleneck
sweater I had bought specially to wear for my senior picture
to showcase my favorite lavender hoop enamel earrings. My
mother begged me not to wear all my lavender trappings (begged
me with tears running down her cheeks), but sadly I didn't
listen. I took my senior picture, with my spiky Julia-Roberts-Mystic-Pizza
hair and told myself that this was how I wanted all those
high school boys to remember me. I remember muttering to the
ghost of my ex-boyfriend,
“See, this girl you dumped right before the senior
prom Michael Erpelding? This gorgeous girl is no longer your
personal door mat, buster.” I looked fabulous. As a
result of my spiky hair and lavender wonderments, underneath
my senior picture I was voted “Most likely to marry
Dr. Spock on the Starship Enterprise…” I accept
that everyone is haunted by their past, unfortunately for
me when your past is captured in your senior picture, it follows
you into eternity.
So, there I was staring at my single-and-over-forty-fabulous-self
in the dressing room mirror and all I can say is that Macy’s
has terrible mirrors and even worse lighting.(I mean, I can't
look this bad, right?) I looked like a giant lavender marshmallow
Easter blob. In my girlish mind, I was supposed to look like
a light and airy pastel confection of forbidden pleasure.
But
something went haywire and I looked like I accidentally got
sat on and squished into a blobby blob of spandex-stuffed-
purple flab. Just to be sure I wasn't hallucinating, I tip-toed
out of my little cubicle to look in the three-way mirror in
the hallway. (This must be some sort of gag mirror, I said
in disbelief.) While standing there, eyeing myself from behind,
I caught three scrawny teenage girls standing in back of me
shaking their heads at my reflection.
“Lady, you are in the Junior Miss department.”
Announced the skinny girl with the spray on tan, with her
hands on her hips, and with not an ounce of mercy she said,
“…And Lady, you ain’t no Junior Miss.”
I looked at her with tears in my eyes, “I'm not a Junior
Miss anymore, right?” I asked, with my bottom lip quivering.”It's
over, right?”
She looked away from me, putting the palm of her hand right
in my face, “Lady, you are soooo over, it ain’t
funny. It is time for you to move up to the third floor.”
The third floor, the no-mans land of middle age spread. The
Gobi desert of shapeless tie-dye tunics, floral caftans and
umpire blue jean smocks, the black hole in the universe where
women like my fifth grade P.E. teacher Mrs. Klapp go to find
a pair of comfortable brown corduroy overalls to wear over
their Chicago Cubs baseball jersey. That sexless- fat-free-
fork in the road where ugly meets drab. Now that I had been
exiled to the third floor, I called my girlfriend Edie on
my cell, “I’ve been shipped off to the third floor,
you gotta come down here.” Edie has been on the third
floor for a couple of years now. And she looks great, I don’t
know what my problem is, she is ripe and succulent and has
the best sex life of anyone I know.
“Juli, it’s time to become a third floor woman.”
“I can’t do it alone.” I begged, gazing
at the Paris Hilton spring collection. “I gotta let
go of trying to look like Paris. right?”
“Honey, Paris Hilton needs to let go of looking like
Paris Hilton,” Edie counseled adding
“I’ll be right there,” and Edie left her
client lunch to meet me at the escalators with a warm angelic
smile.
“Just put your right foot on the first step and come
on up and see what you have been missing.”
She said, in a cheery voice. “Up on the third floor
women get to have hips and breasts and feel good about their
curves.” She said, glancing behind to see if I was still
on the escalator. “Up on the third floor, women get
to wear fabric that breathes and doesn’t need to be
dry cleaned, she said, as the stairs glided us up heavenward.
“Up on the third floor, designers know that women are
much smarter than girls and have to make clothes that flatter
our woman figures, with fabrics that don’t wrinkle so
you can throw them in your dryer without fear of shrinking
and we don’t have to starve to feel fashionable.”
Whimpering, I asked her, “But there are no crop tops
or Daisy Dukes, right?” I asked, tapping her on the
shoulder, “And by the way, their size eight’s,
are they cut large or are they cut small?”
Edie turned around and smiled down at me sympathetically.
“Juli, what do you care if their size eights are cut
large? Let’s face it honey, you’re a size twelve.”
She reached out and grabbed my arm. “Its okay, honey,
be brave, up here on the third floor we can tell the truth
about who we are because we love ourselves as women and have
learned how to tell the difference between a mature man and
a mid-life schmuck.”
“We have? How can we tell?” I asked in disbelief.
Edie smiled, welcoming me into the Donna Karan section of
the third floor. “Men who love third floor women insist
on doing all the dishes, even on holidays. And they don’t
start their sentences with, ‘Yo…And they…
I interrupted her, “Don’t tell you they got a
wife and six kids and a twenty-six year old mistress right
after they slept with you?”
“Not allowed.” She winked, clapping her hands
together. “But you know what the best news is?
“No.” I said, gazing at her in awe.
“Up on the third floor, we enjoy our desserts like
European women. Up here we like to encourage emotional balance,
personal choice and individual expression—we think it
makes our lives more fulfilling. See, up here on the third
floor the staff up here makes it clear to any men, children
and small family pets upon entering that this is an Atkins-free
zone.
I took a deep breath and squeezed her arm, “But what
about Britney Spears?”
Edie
shook her head with a firm no, “Absolutely not. No Jessica
Simpsons, no Hilary Duffs, and none of those nutty Real World
girls.” Edie pointed to the sign above the cappuccino
machine, “See that sign, “No twits, bimbos or
hoochie mamas.” She shrugged her shoulders mercifully,
and conceded “Well okay, maybe a couple of hoochie mamas…Brigette
Nielson and Sharon Stone have booked passage a couple of times,
but have yet to take the first step.”
That afternoon Edie found me a slinky black Donna Karan cocktail
dress which revealed plenty of bare virgin shoulder with just
enough cleavage to appear tarty but not cheap—thank
you very much, and a fluted train down the back that made
my caboose look less like the rear end of a Chrysler and more
like the rear view of a vintage Ferrari.
“I told you that you’d love it up here.”
Edie, said pleased with herself, as she ushered me over towards
the chocolate fondue fountain. We parted ways at the Ben and
Jerry’s tropical sorbet bar, with me in my size 12 sassy
black cocktail dress and a pair of Easy Spirit strappy gold
sandals. Edie waved good bye, with a big happy smile as I
called out to her with a mouthful of chocolate dipped strawberries.
“So, what am I supposed to do up here?”
“Expand, ripen, become a woman unafraid to show the
world what an eternal beauty looks like!”
BIO: Juli I. Huss began her writing
career as a weekly food columnist for “The Two Rivers
Times” in Redbank, New Jersey. From the success of her
weekly column, NAL/Dutton published, The Faux Gourmet: A Single
Woman’s Confession on Food and Sex. Her second novel,
Happy Maisy Coleman, was written after her travels throughout
Japan. Juli I. Huss lives in New York City.