Prudence Grimes
 
CAN I STILL FIND THE EDGE WITH BIFOCALS AND A WALKER?
 
Two years ago, I finished writing a novel centered on the lives of an American man and woman living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. One of the things the novel dealt with were the problems the woman had coming to terms with living in another culture. She had Brazilian friends, and for a short time a Brazilian lover, yet in her rush to embrace the culture she failed to make accommodation for the mores of Brazilian life. In doing so, she brought down havoc on herself and those around her. I remember, while writing the novel, my discomfort with some of the edgier sex scenes and my examination of race, class and cultural differences. And several times when I would “tone down” the sex or the race, class and cultural differences, I was advised to leave them all in—the edgier the better.
 
I’d been thinking about the novel for years, struggling with it for years, and when I finally sat down to write, it all came together in a rush. After rewrites and editing, and more rewrites, I was exhausted. I took some time off. During the time I took off from daily writing, I got old—at least my conception, my understanding, of myself aged. I had several knee surgeries, and was laid up with those; I gained weight and lost some athletic prowess while being laid up; probably I was depressed; all these things came together, and suddenly, I found myself no longer the slim, athletic, do-anything woman I used to be.
 
When I sat down to renew my old, industrious writing habits, I no longer knew what to write. All that edgy stuff I used to write about no longer seemed to pertain to me. Friends said, “Write about being a stepmother.” My journey into step-motherhood hasn’t gone well. Many women my age segue into writing about motherhood. But The Mom Club was something I always felt excluded from, snubbed by. The step-kids’ mom is alive, well, living close enough to us that we know some of the same people, and she had the membership in The Mom Club, not me. So writing about being a stepmother seems like something filled with failure, repeated rebuffs and finally, giving up and a kind of despair. I wanted to forget that; I wanted to write about something fun and energizing, sexy, and that’s not my journey into being a step-mom.
 
A few weeks ago, in my readings class, I was teaching a book by John Hawkes, The Blood Oranges, and while reading it I found a section that spoke to how I want to feel about my writing again. What I found odd was my students’ reaction to the book as a whole and to this section especially:

Youth has no monopoly on love. The sap does not flow solely in the young. In all my adventures and in all my diligent but unemotional study of sex literature I found nothing to justify the happy expressions of total self-confidence we generally read in the superficially attractive faces of so many younger men and still younger girls. Jaunty, spritely people with trim bodies and unclouded eyes are not necessarily the most capable of those thrust into the center of the pink tapestry...we were a quartet of tall and large-boned lovers aged in the wood. Too big for mere caprice, too old to waste time and yet old enough to appreciate immodesty, we were all four of us imposing in height, in weight, in blood pressure, in chest expansion...at the height of our brief season and in the four fully matured figures of our quartet, anyone with an eye for sex would have recognized an experience, purpose and continuity only hinted at in the poignant stances of young girls with thumbs hooked in bikinis and brown legs stiffly apart. There were four of us then...and in our quaternion the vintage sap flowed freely, flowed and bled and boiled...
 
Can youth make such claims? (The Blood Oranges, pp.16-17, John Hawkes, New Directions, 1972)
 
What impresses me about this passage is the attitude. There’s no bowing down before the god of youth. It raises the idea that perhaps I could not only still write about sex, but write more richly about sex than I have in the past. This passage is proud and bold and mired in its own sexuality. And I’m jealous of it. It leads me to take pride in being older. I’m up there with Cyril, the narrator, “two or three long leaps past middle age.” And I love that he writes like it’s not a bad thing, could possibly be, no is, a good thing. But I wonder also, if it was easier for Hawkes to make this realization being male. For me, anyway, this seems to be a nearly impossible place to arrive.

My students originally stated they hated Cyril, the narrator. Why? Because he was too concerned with aesthetics. I got them to admit that it’s usually artists who are concerned with aesthetics, and they finally came to understand that what was so upsetting to them about Cyril was how he both admitted to and seemed to relish his own large hands, large legs, large body—even, to their disgust—large underpants, and he loved and lusted after Catherine, and she was large: big, sexy, vast expanses of skin, nothing androgynous or boyish-figured about her. She was all woman. The students began to say, she was more of a Renaissance figure, or perhaps a Renoir figure, but definitely not what they find beautiful. It was a disturbing aesthetic, and they couldn’t wrap their heads around it. They weren’t ready or willing to admit to sexuality in older adults.
 
A male student tried to convince the rest of the class of his reading wherein Cyril was actually interested in Catherine’s fourteen-year-old daughter, not Catherine. Another student pointed out that reading could have only come from him, since it was nowhere evident in the text. This male student seemed jealous, a sort of “no sexuality but my sexuality” mindset.
 
The other day in a meeting, one of my women colleagues said, while mimicking a student responding to her sexual poems, “You’re how old? You write about what?” I’m trying for a new understanding of the problem. While I’m certainly not ready to say “problem solved,” I think I am moving towards resolving what’s stopping me. It seems to have to do with admitting to the pressure of a cultural aesthetic, finding a way within myself to relinquish that aesthetic, and not caring whether or not this is going to be something my students want to read, something anyone wants to read. I need to get back to a place where I write about what I find exciting, sexy, and dangerous. It seems that every one of us has to find this place by herself. There aren’t any road maps to this unexplored country. And the place itself seems ephemeral, almost mirage-like. I see it up ahead, shimmering in the heat, but once I get there, I’m still surrounded by desert. But you know, I still feel certain it’s just up ahead. At least I hope so.