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Menopausal Killer Sharks
By Jan Atkinson iUniverse, Inc.
Copyright © 2013 Jan Atkinson
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4759-7738-7
Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Bitch, Lush, Slut, Princess Wannabe
One of my favorite songs of all time is "Get Over It" by the Eagles, and I believe that the only way a woman can deal with hitting fifty-five is to sing "Get Over It, Get Over It, Get Over It!" constantly to herself. Fifty was bad, but fifty-five is worse—it's almost sixty.
Well, several years ago, I read an article by an obviously male psychologist who maintained that the decade following the big four-oh kinda mellows you out, and you begin to feel comfortable with yourself. I have three significant friends who are like sisters, two developed on my own and one inherited by marriage. We're still trying to figure out if we were ever comfortable with ourselves, so the phrase "mellowing out" can be catalogued as more bullshit published in medical journals by psychologists and psychiatrists whose children had so many disorders they made your own little demons seem normal.
Every time in my life I was single, all of my friends were married. And at that time, our world revolved around children and couples and children and Trivial Pursuit and couples. The odd man out did not fit in to any of the above. Once you're fifty, that changes. Now life revolves around us and, for my friends, how they're going to knock me off so they can marry my husband. More on that subject later.
My name is Samantha Laraine Anderson. That is Laraine with an "a." I go by Laurie. My parents always called me Samantha Laraine. When I was in college, I called myself Laurel for a while, but one of the jocks kept referring to me and my roommate as Laurel and Hardy, so I went back to Laurie. My husband is Graham Jones.
After the third unsuccessful marriage, I quit changing my last name at the altar. Technically, Graham is my fifth attempt at marital bliss. I even did a repeat performance with number two—God knows why. He had many of the warning signs that should be part of the male evaluation phase in a potential relationship: bad in bed, cheap, abhorred physical exercise as noted fifteen years later by the fact he looks to be ten months pregnant with triplets, and completely lacked ambition. I married him the first time because I was consumed in law school debt.
Note, I did not say he was poor. Oh contraire. Cheap and rich often go together like oil and vinegar; however, cheap can easily be hidden during the courting phase of a relationship, especially when you're close to going over your personal fiscal cliff. Cheap is a trait that can easily be masked by a few expensive dinners and island holidays, so it's hard to uncover. I made the mistake the second time because I needed a paper in Advanced Tax Law. I was so desperate at that point I agreed to his demand of twenty BJs and me paying the airfare and hotel costs for a quickie marriage in Las Vegas. For that, he only got Circus Circus, not Caesar's Palace, and an Elvis drive-thru wedding. He kept a chalkboard in the family room to track payment on the debt.
Graham and I did abbreviated wedding vows and dropped the honor-and-obey crap and until death do us part. I sincerely believe this one is a keeper, but I don't want to take any chances. It should be noted that there was an asterisk in my vows that allowed me a one-night fling with Jim Palmer, in the event the potential presented itself. My affliction for "Cakes" will be discussed later in more detail.
Frances is my wacko, proper friend, and Sally CJ is my wacko-wacko friend. Marcia is my husband's sister who isn't wacko, just financially and white-knight-in-shining-armor deprived. Sometimes I think Frances is so proper and into Miss Manners that she sends a thank-you note to dates after a multiclimax night. Anyway, Frances is a natural beauty, size five, who thinks she's a fat pig and can't get laid for trying. Her wardrobe is impeccable and would make the late Jackie O proud. Sally CJ, on the other hand, is extremely well endowed, probably never wore a size five after three years of age, and gets laid routinely. Well, she admits to dry spells, but I don't think so. Sally CJ openly discusses my demise. Frances, being more proper, sits quietly by, waiting for the big day.
Inevitably, someone will ask how we met and got to be such good friends, and after looking at all the places we've each lived, it's amazing that our paths crossed. Frances and Sally CJ met at Converse College, a small girls' school in Spartanburg, South Carolina, where girls were allowed to bring their horses and were taught all the fine arts of becoming a southern lady. Frances went there because she always wanted to learn how to ride and hoped to make friends with a horse owner; Sally CJ picked the school because it was a warm climate and far away from home.
Bits of the southern-lady and finishing-school type of stuff stuck with Frances, but Sally CJ hated every second of living in the South and vowed never to live below the Mason-Dixon Line. Following graduation, she fled the South and moved to Boston. She moved to Pittsburgh when she married Al, the party animal. I met Sally CJ when Graham and I moved to Pittsburgh for a brief period. She immediately introduced me to Frances, who apparently grew up in the Burgh. She returned to her childhood hometown because she was convinced she could parlay her college-acquired southern drawl to charm the men she grew up with—men who were known for saying things like, "Yinz guys goin' dahntahn n'at?" and "How 'baut dem Stillers?" Needless to say, she's still trying.
The three of us lived in the Burgh for only a few years since our careers have had us moving around like vagabonds. At the present time, we're scattered across the country. I live in Las Vegas, Sally CJ just moved from New Jersey back to Boston in search of a better dating pool, Frances splits her time between DC and Pittsburgh, and Marcia is enjoying the rays in Hilton Head. Thank God for frequent-flier miles.
I have made it clear to Graham that if he as much as thinks about sleeping with either Sally CJ or Frances when I die, Ambien will not help his sleep patterns. Fortunately, Marcia is not interested in a sexual relationship with her brother. She's just looking for a mirror image of her sibling without any matching DNA.
You may think I'm exaggerating. Not. Last year I was sitting at a tennis match in San Diego waiting for Serena Williams to beat the shit out of Maria Sharapova when I decided to call Sally CJ and, acting cool in front of all the rich La Jolla snots who were listening to every word spoken during my cell phone conversation while they drooled over Graham and tried to figure out what soap he was starring in, invited her to join Graham and me during our vacation at our private villa (Ha! Ha!) in Bermuda. I just can't get this texting shit down. I think it's the nails, but I'm so techno-challenged. I see seventy-year-old women who can't even see and six-year-old children who can't spell texting. Maybe that's my problem. I can spell, so BFF, LOL, POS (oops, know that one) are not in my lingo.
After all, we were going to be there for two weeks and why did we need a two-bedroom cottage for the two of us? We had our bed, a living room couch, the kitchen counter, the dining room table, the patio chaise longue, and the shower for sexual encounters; another bed would be superfluous. It was an honest and sincere offer. She accepted. Period.
One thing about the girls, we do not communicate very well. Our word is our bond. "I'll be there," spoken during our abbreviated cell phone conversation meant I'll find a flight and e-mail you what time I'll arrive, so you better have meant the invite or you'll be sorry. Two days later, Sally CJ sent me an e-mail that read: US Air flight 190, September 4at 1:30 p.m.
That was it.
The following month, Graham and I arrived in Bermuda and spent five days scuba diving and playing golf and trying new sex positions and working on increasing our alcohol tolerance in anticipation of the arrival of Sally CJ. We went to the local liquor store and bought a fifth of Grey Goose, three bottles of red wine, a half-gallon of Black Seal Rum, and some generic gin for Graham. We were ready.
The girls are self-sufficient. She knew where we were staying. We waited. And we waited. Two hours after her flight was due to arrive, we were still waiting. Something was wrong.
The concierge at the club where we stayed knew the airport manager for US Air. There was no Sally CJ MacAllister on the flight manifest. We asked ourselves, was she really coming? After all, we never really spoke to her about travel arrangements. Had the Internet failed us? Did she get thrown off the flight? Did she try to smuggle illegal contraband on the plane and get caught, only to be sitting in jail in Philly waiting to get raped by some dyke? Let me tell you—that would not be acceptable to Sally CJ. Men yes, girls never.
We were panicked. I called her office phone. No answer.
I called her house. No answer.
I called her office again and pushed the pound key to speak to someone.
"Hello."
"May I speak to Sally CJ MacAllister, please?"
"Shin's not in," was the response.
"Is shin not in because you think shin's in Bermuda?" I adapt to the language translation very well.
"Oh no, I knew shin left the office too late ..."
That's right. Sally CJ was sitting on Interstate 476, watching the big blue and gray bird fly off to Bermuda without her. I called her cell phone and was greeted by, "Yeah? I'm fucking pissed. I'm getting drunk at the beach at Atlantic City. I missed my fucking flight. I'll be there tomorrow."
Click.
Dead silence.
The bitch hung up on me. I didn't have the chance to say I was pissed or that I was worried that she was getting raped in a Philadelphia jail. I didn't get to say that I missed three hours of prime beach time waiting for her sorry ass. No, she pulled the perfect power trip. "Missed my flight, see you tomorrow." Click.
Immediately, I muttered, "You slut, you met a hunk and blew me off for a day at the Jersey shore."
Twenty-four hours later, we took a taxi to the airport and were there to greet the sorry bitch as she sashayed out the front door, followed by two porters in apparent heat. We even had drinks to make it back to the cottage. After all, a fifteen-minute ride to your accommodations when you're already a day late starting your vacation mandates immediate alcohol nourishment.
The next four days were a blur. They were great. By Friday, the liquor was gone. If you licked the sweat off our arms (not that a normal person would want to do this), you could get drunk. It was luxurious.
We were working on doing a semi-dry-out at one of the pools before Sally CJ's flight home. She was planning my funeral and her immediate wedding to Graham. She decided that the most appropriate and cost-effective approach would be to have a joint funeral-wedding. After all, the attendees would pretty much be the same.
Graham didn't say a word other than to offer encouragement in her fantasy plan. I looked suspiciously at the rum and Diet Coke she so kindly brought me from the condo.
It was a brilliant plan and there was no one at the pool to overhear the conniving and planning for the early termination of my life.
Come to think of it, whenever the girls are at a pool, there's never anyone else around.
Not to divert from my imminent death, but this reminds me of the trip to Puerto Vallarta. Graham nervously bid me good-bye one Memorial Day weekend for a girls-only week in Puerto Vallarta. We departed from three different cities—Las Vegas, Pittsburgh, and Philly—and coordinated our flights so we would all arrive in Puerto Vallarta around two o'clock in the afternoon. That way we could all share a taxi to the hotel. I knew we did not want Sally CJ loose in a foreign country without chaperones.
I had just claimed my bags from the carousel when Frances poked me in the ribs. Perfect timing. She looked like she walked off the runway modeling the latest spring collection for Versace.
"Are those Christian Louboutin's you're wearing? This is Mexico, not the Riviera," I said as I looked at my not-too-chic sundress and matching Dr. Scholl's.
"You never know. Where's the slut?"
We schlepped our bags to the arrivals board and noted that there were three flights from Philadelphia; one arrived two hours earlier, one was canceled, and one was due in after dinner.
We looked at each other and shook our heads in unison. "This isn't a good start. If she was on that canceled flight, Lord knows what she'll do and when she'll arrive, if at all. It's going to be a very long night waiting for her, so we might as well take a taxi to the hotel and try to call her when we get there to find out her flight arrangements."
"You're right. We might as well enjoy our beach time." If Sally CJ was booked on the canceled flight and had to spend five hours in the US Air lounge, pity the flight crew and us when she finally touched down in Mexico.
So Frances and I grabbed a taxi and headed to the Westin Regina. The WR is a very upscale resort with the cutest Mexican waitstaff in the world, and by the time Frances and I arrived, Sally CJ was already there, knew most of them on a first name basis, and had upgraded our rooms to beachfront, with a Jacuzzi on the porch.
"Where have you been? I've been here for almost two hours. Fortunately I arrived at the airport early only to find out that my flight was canceled. After telling the ticketing agent that I was meeting my best friends in the world in Mexico to grieve my recent husband's death, I found myself in the first-class cabin surrounded by sympathetic flight attendants who kept serving me vodka tonics to drown my sorrows."
"Al isn't dead. And you've been divorced for seven years."
"Yeah, he's alive, but one can always hope. I still hate that bastard."
Then she proceeded to make introductions to the boys who had been primed to bring us cervezas to help get us up to speed.
Rigioberto was mine, Roberto serviced (oops, served) Sally CJ, and Jorge tended to Frances. I suspect that Jorge would have liked to have done a lot more tending than Frances permitted. I had to give the guy credit; he never gave up trying to win her affection up to the minute we checked out of the hotel and got in the taxi to return to the airport.
The same is true of the professional soccer player I picked up for her in a dance contest. I thought he was kinda cute, but Frances blew him off before he could say his name was Joe.
I should have killed her on the spot for my personal humiliation. The final dance-off was to "Let's Twist Again" by Chubby Checker, and I was out there doing the United States proud—boobs swaying and cellulite jiggling, not even thinking about a Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction, reliving the twist contest I was in at Friday Night Assembly in tenth grade. I was in the twist finals with Jimmy Wilcox when my blue chiffon dress began disintegrating. First the belt flew off. Then the sides started to part. I already had a huge run in my right stocking, and my pink garter belt was slipping down my butt.
This time it was an aging Laurie against a nineteen-year-old beach volleyball hard body whose body parts (both real and augmented) stayed firmly in place. I'm sure that later that evening there was a crowd watching videos on someone's cell phone in the bar. Thank God it didn't go viral on YouTube. I had no idea what was being said in the bar because my Spanish isn't that good, but I thought I heard, "Ballena varada," and I wasn't aware of any beached whale sightings on the coast of Mexico.
Oh well.
All that, and Frances was not receptive to my dance partner's advances. Maybe it was when he took off his Yankees baseball cap, and she noticed that he was a candidate for Rogaine. I wonder if there's been a study to see if men who wear baseball hats more than twelve hours a day have a greater propensity for baldness. Or maybe, who wants to get laid by a guy who wears a Yankees baseball cap?
There are five pools at the WR, one of which was ours. It took us two days to lay claim, but after that, no one else dared venture near. We were the three killer sharks in the water, swimming with our menacing hand-fin in the air, judiciously guarding the swim-up bar, baring our breasts at women who gave us dirty looks, and zealously making sure that no one had the opportunity to lounge in the decadent pool beds.
Now, back to the pending end of my life. Even without the assistance of Frances, we were able to take control of the pool at the club in Bermuda. Graham was just an innocent bystander. Potential widower and newlywed, yet innocent bystander.
What made it worse was that I was prepared to die. I had injured my back and could not sit for more than two minutes. I needed drugs and had none, and I was afraid to take what Sally CJ was offering me. I figured that death was a preferred alternative to the twelve-hour flight to the West Coast.
Sally CJ agreed.
Graham was a little too quiet.
I did not drink the Diet Coke.
Sally CJ is still my best friend.
Graham is still my loving husband.
Life at fifty-five is great.
I think every woman is entitled to a middle husband she can forget.
—Adela Rogers St. John
CHAPTER 2
Growing Old Gracefully
Whoever coined the phrase "growing old gracefully" was a lonely, ugly woman who never had a date in high school and was waiting until mid-age to finally snare the quarterback on her high school football team. Obviously, the statement's originator was not the high school prom queen or the head of the cheerleading squad.
No woman over fifty who has any self-respect or pride can stand in the front of her bathroom mirror and say that she's genuinely happy to look like Mrs. Milhoag, her high school English teacher, affectionately referred to as Mrs. Warthog, who could have been the twin sister of your neighbor's Shar-Pei. Remember, she was the teacher whose jowls flapped like a bat taking off when she turned her head trying to catch that creep, Jimmy Wilkowski, throw the spitball across the room at his true love, Susan Brzezinski. Remember, the one with the sagging jowls and puffy eyes whose body was so juicy that even if Spanx had been invented back then she still couldn't squeeze into a size eighteen dress?
I can actually handle the sagging breasts and the cellulite that come with the aging process because you can cover them up with Escada and St. John clothing, and no one will be the wiser. In fact, women are jealous because you look so in-vogue. In-vogue. That's the code word for clothes that are so expensive and the material so thick and luxurious that no one focuses on the ripples of cellulite underneath.
Let's face it, there aren't enough hours in the day to work, cook dinner, make sure your teenage children aren't in jail, and exercise a sufficient number of hours to burn off the cookies and chocolate bars so you can look like Catherine Zeta-Jones. Something has to go, so obviously, what you can't see, no one will know is wrinkled.
Even my husband noticed when my favorite pastime became standing in front of the bathroom mirror pulling the skin back so I could see my heart-shaped jaw line. I think I read in Cosmo that those of us blessed with a heart-shaped face are the first to go because for forty-plus years, you're used to that ugly, pointed chin, and then one day you get up and look in the mirror—and shazam, your face looks like a square.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Menopausal Killer Sharks by Jan Atkinson. Copyright © 2013 by Jan Atkinson. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse, Inc..
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