Young at Heart

So, this aging thing, sometimes has me befuddled.

The age I am right now has been a pivotal time in my life, whereas it has become the “official” age at which I have heard myself officially declare, “I’m too old for that” many times.  So, 38 must be the age an *ahem* adult, becomes too old for nonsense and tomfoolery.  38 is the age where I no longer wish to try bungee jumping.  38 is the age where I’m too old to stay out until bar time.  38 is definitely the age I prefer a good nights’ sleep, when I make sure I have a healthy dinner before a bottle of wine is consumed, or when I start worrying about retirement funds.

So, I suck.  

I’m boring, and I’m old.  All of a sudden, this shit snuck up on me.  At 30, I got my tongue pierced an thought it was cool.  At 38, I SMH at that goofy girl and wonder what other 38 year old women thought of me back then.

At 32, I was still under the presumption I was a young-ish mom to my daughters, able to keep up with them.  At 38, I realize I wasn’t all that young back then, and I worry what does that make me now!

At 34, I was taking the first scary steps through a divorce I never saw coming.  At 38, I wish I would’ve given myself some damn credit for doing exactly what I needed to do, and the strength it took me to do it back then.

At 36, I was flexing my dating muscle, healthily, and now, at 38 and remarried, I’m happy.  

I’m happy!  But, dear God, am I “settled”?

Some days, all I want to do is take a nap.  Other days, being “settled” unsettles me way too much to rest my mind or body.  Hence my befuddlement.  I’m stuck in that vortex of ‘old’ and ‘kicking-and-screaming-trying-to-remain-cool-cuz-I-don’t-really-wanna-be-there-quite-yet.’  

Flashes of ideas come into my mind on how to prove my youthfulness to myself.  And the fact that my younger husband just turned 30 (one of my personalities mutters, “asshole”, while another one screams, “GO ME!”) left me pondering how to ring in his milestone year in a fun way for him, but a reasonable time for me as well.  

Boring.  

I know.

But I was determined to make it worthwhile.  I began my quest with the simple question; What do people want to do?  Do I go special?  How should we celebrate?  Private or big?   “Old” brought to mind vacation spots, a nice dinner out, or worse yet, a nice dinner in that I end up having to create.  “Young” left me contemplating binge drinking on pepperminty shots in a sticky club or a huge family party (that I’d have to create as well).  I was already getting tired.

It was obvious I needed valued input.  I text a few friends, male and female, with a simple deciding factor I wanted their opinion on.  I boiled it down to two distinct choices, which would verify my existence as ancient or youthful.

“...30th birthday....casino, or strip club?”

Surprisingly, most of my friends replied with the casino.  Maybe my friends are old too.  Maybe they were just being polite and didn’t want to let their freak flag fly via text.  A couple said, “Both!” and I took that as a sign they really wanted to say the strip club, but were simply being politically correct.  Even fewer opted for the good old days of youth and admitted full out to the strip club adventure.  I also assign accusation that they said strip club just to see if I’d blog about it.

So in other words, my friends’ combined answers left me spilt 50/50, right down the middle, no further decided than what I was when I asked them and basically, thanks a lot, collectively they were no good to me.  I still had to decide.  Hmmmm....a casino.  Problem is, neither Bicepual or I are good at gambling.  We don’t really know how to gamble well, we don’t count cards, and we’re not good at just throwing money away.  We married in Vegas and didn’t gamble any worthy time while there.

On the other pastie...a strip club.....throwing my money away with the awkwardness of shoving it into places I shouldn’t be enjoying.  I hadn’t personally been to a strip club since my 20’s.  Hubby hasn’t been to one since before he met me.  We have never went to one together.  

Wait.  

I smell intrigue!  

I decided.  I Googled.  (Did you know that there are actual websites out there scoring God’s Country strip clubs down to the detail?  There is.  And I read and re-read ratings and looked at pictures like it was my job, people.  Such a dork approach.  I know.  And some of you better be my friend and delete my web browser history when I kick the bucket.  Don’t judge!)  

I had been to strip club’s a few times before with friends.  I certainly schouldn’t be intimidated, but man, I admit it, I was!  I had this (mis)conception that women in strip clubs (dance clubs, young bars, movies, magazine ads, the list goes on and on) all have perfect bodies with big boobs, flat bellies and perfect lips.  Both kinds.  While nakedness doesn’t bother me in general terms, gyrating is all together a different story (I’m too old for this!).  I don’t want bits and pieces shoved in my face.  I damn sure don’t want it done strictly to get strangers to hoot and holler for more.  I surely wondered if I’d want to see it all shoved in hubby’s face.  Ummm.  It boiled down to this: Am I secure enough?  Am I too old, really?  Am I still young enough?

With that, I booked a hotel room at a casino, non-refundable.  We were going.

Bicepual came home from a week long getaway fishing expedition to a “good to see ya! Now hit the showers”.  The car was already packed.  Money was already set aside.  Within an hour, we were back on the road.  I didn’t tell him where we were going and I drove.  

I told him nothing as we made our way south and I told him not much more as we checked into the hotel.  We dressed up and had a nice dinner of crab legs and prime rib (so grown up!) and as we gambled away the high roller amount of $40 (I really hate throwing away our money).  By the time we meandered back to the room, slowly, we just enjoyed a conversation; something we had missed with his vacation and my recent on site job training was simply talking and laughing again.  Relationships are good, but life sure tends to get in the way of them.  

Back in the room, somewhere around this point in time, he took notice of the mini-bar I brought along in my suitcase.  As I unpacked midget bottles of Cherry Promises here and there, he added ice to the drinks I mixed.  And let me tell ya, I mixed mine stiff people.  Because I, of course, had a point to prove to myself and it wasn’t gonna get proven sober.

I just *happened* to book the casino room in the same town as a “couple-friendly” strip joint.  

Whether or not we would end up there directly correlated to the amount of liquid courage I was going to consume and I knew it.  I was losing my courage with the time I spent dawdling at the concept of going.  God, the idea of being trapped in some frat boy nightmare with T & A bouncing everywhere was .....well, there wasn’t enough Cherry Promise in this room, let’s put it that way.  Everything leading up to this point stressed me out.  What do I wear?  A skirt to show off my once youthful legs?  Or is that then a skirt that would make onlookers take pity on the 38 year old in the room who was sadly trying to compete with a 21 year old hipless hottie.

I ended up changing out of the skirt, but still wore the leather knee high boots. 
I added a little more eye shadow for dramatic effect, but skipped the extra perfume.

I did an extra shot of Cherry when Thick Arms wasn’t looking, and then handed him a gift, decorated in Happy Birthday stars gift wrap.  As he ripped it open to expose a favorite cigar atop a stack of 30 single dollar bills, he laughed at what I was allowing us to do.  The gift wasn’t in the money or the cancer stick I forbid the other 364 days of the year, but in the uncharted territory I was allowing us to charter together.

Lewis and Clark with a smidgen of Bonnie and Clyde.  Just for the excitement part, not so much the slaughter.

I paid our cover charge and we entered into the world of unfamiliarness of G strings and nipples everywhere you looked.  Lights and smoke, I declared, “It smells like vanilla body spray and glitter up in here.”  I make Bicepual laugh, but I didn’t want to be one of those buzz-kill women who cracks stupid jokes out of nervousness (and let’s face it, I was her.)  I quit the one liners and made my way to the bar.  Let’s call a duck a duck here, folks.  If I was going to be okay with most of this, I had to be drunk.  

Is going to a strip club with your wife hot or lame?  Would I watch him out of intrigue and attraction, or out of jealousy?  If I found a comfortableness in this, what does that say about me?  This really could’ve been a night to delve into my psyche and it’s boundaries of sex and lines to cross had it not been for the many (many, many) vodka lemonades I was downing. 

Strip clubs, or the few I had been to in my younger days, were different from the one I now found myself standing aloof in now.  One of the first things I saw was a woman shimmy her way up to the top of a pole on a 20 foot ceiling.

Damn.  Okay.  That’s actually kind of impressive.

Next thing to catch my attention was a tiny blond getting huge amounts of hollers and whoops because she could make her butt jiggle in a way that even I was left to wonder, as I tilted my head to a 90 degree angle, “How in the hell.....?”  Lemme tell ya, she made it rain bills her way, for sure, and as my husband looked on I said, “I hope the other girls in this place pay attention to her....”  It was damn right tutorial.

Eventually hubby and I made our way to a table, and I was surprised how people were acted throughout the evening.  I overheard a joke here and there about single moms paying their way through law school of course, but for the most part, men and women were polite to each other.  There was the bachelor party, yes.  And there was that overweight man in the corner who licked his $5 bill and stuck it to his face begging “Suzy” to summon it with her boobies.  Of course there were a sprinkling of women like myself with their men.  There was one noticeable couple who looked painfully out of place.  Talk about old.  I suddenly felt better and it was the vodka working in partnership with this exact couple.  Shit.  If they could do it, I could do it.  My courage bloomed just a tad.

So we moved to the seats around the floor.  Now I’m faced with nakedness.  And.I.mean.right.here.in.my.face.literally.I’m.faced.with.all.kinds.of.nakedness.  A sliver of me free fell into panic when hubby left me to go get a new round of drinks, but I had $5 Bill Face and now “Lexi” to entertain me.

Courage struck hubby all of a sudden and he plopped down a wad of singles in front of me.

Dear God, please stop now.

After a few ridiculous attempts of shoving the money back at him, I accepted my role here as “wife at a strip club” and decided to just take my public lashing and get it over with.  Like moth to a fire, here she comes, shimmying and crawling my way.  Lord.

In my head, I’m telling myself, “Sit back.  Enjoy (yeah right).  This too shall pass.  Woman up.”  I look over at my husband, someone I shared vows with not all that long ago, and he is thoroughly enjoying himself at a degree of which should be unjust only because I don’t know if he’s liking the girls, or how he anticipates his wife is going to react to them.  With one fell swoop, she took the dollar he handed her and, literally swiped the rest of the money from in front of us.  She was gone in the neon flash of a forgiving red light.

“Did she just take all my money!?” he asked me in disbelief.

This might be kinda funny after all.  By the end of the night, we had spent more and drank more than usual.  He had been kissed, I had been kissed.  We skipped the lap dances, he had been wished a very generous (said in my best Marilyn Monroe voice) happy birthday several times over, I had been asked to dance, I got dragged up on and bent over backwards on the stage, his lap had been assaulted by all Utah standards and common laws, and I had been told (by 2 separate girls TYVM!) “nice boobs!”.  

My work here was complete.  

Just as I was really appreciating the evening, some asshole announced last call and the lights of reality came up.  How rude.

Back at the hotel, sitting on a barely lit patio in the best autumn weather we could ask for at this time of year, Bicepual puffed his cigar with reverence on the evening.  He didn’t say a whole lot now.  The most shocking moment of all he declared was not the boobs or the leather or even the touching or the amount of money we spent, but that I went one for one with his drinks.  Something obviously way more out of my element than even the fact I was at a strip club.  We relived little parts of the night until I groggily hugged my pillow later, and I heard him say, “do you know it’s almost 5 am....”  To which I replied, “Shhhhut up. Don’t tell me that.”  

Ignorance is bliss they say, and a very common trait among the young so I’ve heard.

And then....

The next morning....

I had a hangover from hell.  And I realized just how old I am.

I am 38.  The exact age when a completely normal boring mother of 2 drinks her way around naked nervousness to plunge right into the very things that she has created most fearsome in her own mind.  

I got caught up in trying to keep up.  

I’m old.  And I'm not even gonna try to deny it.

Those 21 year old girls, who I’m telling you, no way in hell were single mothers because, as God as my witness, I’d swear those tiny little hips never gave way to a birth canal right of passage, told me, I had “nice boobs”.  

Twice.

Boom!

Age is just a number.  And life is too damn short.