III
I went to the gym. I have been going to the same neighborhood gym for many years. Others have been going there for at least as long as I have so I see some of the same people whenever I’m there. One person in particular I wonder about: all these years, no matter what day or what hour I go, this woman is there. Though we’ve never become friends—if we ever even exchanged names, I’ve forgotten hers—we tend to chat if we happen to be in the locker room at the same time. I remember our first conversation was about the book Infinite Jest, a copy of which she happened to have with her. When I asked her how she liked it she said that the best thing about it was its length. She would be reading the book for a long time, she said. Weeks. And she felt that, even if she didn’t love it, at least she’d be getting her money’s worth. (I could not help thinking of an all-day lollipop.) She was so tired, this woman said, of paying twenty bucks for short books—stuff that lasted only a short time, sometimes not even a weekend.
And sometimes it’s just a book of poems, she said. How can they charge that much for a book of poems? Who buys them?
Not many people, I assured her.
At the time, the woman at the gym was young, still in school, as I recall, or maybe just out of school. Art school. I remember very clearly what she looked like because she was so pretty, with features that were vivid and dramatic even without a touch of makeup, and how I was reminded of a story about a movie director saying about a child actress that she shouldn’t be filmed wearing all that makeup, only to be told that little Elizabeth Taylor wasn’t wearing any makeup.
The woman at the gym was also blessed with what would have been a great body even without all the effort she spent working out. Over time, though, her looks have changed, I wouldn’t say drastically but more than most people’s do. In middle age she is toned but overweight, her precise features have blurred, the dazzle is gone. No one is more aware of this than she is. In the locker room she sits hunched and swathed in towels with a look of grievance on her face. Why do they have to have all these mirrors in here, why do the lights have to be this fucking bright?
I agree about the lights. They are fucking bright. But her remark about the mirrors confuses me. I have no trouble ignoring them.
How was it possible, the woman in the locker room wanted to know, for a person to work out every day and watch every bite she ate and still not lose weight. She now ate half of what she used to eat, she said, but every year she had to eat less just to keep from becoming a blimp. At this rate, she’d soon be down to a carrot and a hard-boiled egg a day. And it wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t hurt, she said, but when her stomach was empty it was like a rat trying to gnaw its way out of there, at night sometimes it was so bad that she couldn’t sleep. She knew it sounded crazy, the woman in the locker room said, but when her sister got cancer and lost thirty pounds she couldn’t help wishing it would happen to her. And was it so crazy? After all, always hating the way she looked, always fighting against her own body and always, always losing the battle meant that she was depressed all the time, more depressed than her sister had been about getting cancer. And anyway her sister was fine now.
Shopping for clothes, the woman in the locker room went on. That used to be fun. That used to bring joy. But now it was more like a punishment. Whenever she needed new pants or a new dress, she had to try on a hundred things before she found something that fit, and the whole time she had to look in the mirror. She would stand there looking at herself in the mirror and gritting her teeth, she said, gritting her teeth now as she told me the story, thinking how it used to be—not just how much fun but the high she always got from admiring her own body.
From the back is the worst, she said. I really can’t stand how I look from the back. I never wear anything anymore that doesn’t cover my butt.
Going to the beach, going swimming, getting a tan—all these things used to be fun too, the woman in the locker room said. But now there was no way she’d ever appear in public in a swimsuit, she wouldn’t even go out wearing shorts. No matter how hot it was, she said, she always covered herself up. Even if she lost weight, even if she was thin again, she wouldn’t show her body in public, she said. Even though she knew she didn’t look worse than most women her age—she knew that in fact she looked better than most of them—she didn’t understand how some women could show themselves basically naked the way so many did, without self-consciousness, without shame. When she saw a woman walking on the beach with cottage-cheese thighs and a belly slung like a hammock, she had to turn away, the woman in the locker room said, she couldn’t even look. And she would rather die than give anyone a reason to feel that way about her.
There was genuine horror in the woman’s voice. There was horror and bitterness and pain. What a nasty trick life had played on her.
Have you heard the one about X, Y, or Z, who had so many facelifts that the dimple in her chin is really her navel? As I recall, the first time I heard this joke it was about Elizabeth Taylor.
Long before the arrival of FaceApp, I remember once hearing someone say that everybody, sometime in their youth— say around when they finished high school—should be given digitally altered images showing how they’ll probably look in ten, twenty, fifty years. That way, this person said, at least they could be prepared. Because most people are in denial about aging, just as they are about dying. Though they see it happening all around them, though the example of parents and grandparents might be right under their nose, they don’t take it in, they don’t really believe it will happen to them. It happens to others, it happens to everyone else, but it won’t happen to them.
But I myself have always thought of this as a blessing. Youth burdened with full knowledge of just how sad and painful aging is I would not call youth at all.
The other day, this happened: I was sitting with some friends at a sidewalk café. A middle-aged woman standing near the curb was speaking into her phone, her voice raised above the street noise. I’m the youngest, we heard her say. From the window of a passing car, a man roared: How can you be the youngest? You look a hundred years old!
An elderly and once very beautiful woman I know had this to say on the subject: In our culture, what you look like is such an important part of who you are and how people treat you. Especially if you’re female. So if you’re good-looking, if you’re a good-looking girl or woman, you get used to a certain level of attention. You get used to admiration—not just from people you know but from strangers, from almost everyone. You get used to compliments, you get used to people wanting you around, wanting to give you things and to do things for you. You get used to inspiring love. If you’re really good-looking and you aren’t mentally ill or obnoxiously conceited or a total dimwit, you get so used to being popular, you get so used to love and admiration that you take it for granted, you don’t even know how privileged you are. Then one day it all disappears. Actually, it happens gradually. You begin to notice certain things. Heads no longer turn when you pass by, people you meet don’t always later remember your face. And this becomes your new life, your strange new life: an ordinary, undesirable person with a common, forgettable face.