Ten years ago, on the cusp of turning 20 years old, I complained to a Cumberland Farms co-worker – a mid-20s guy from Colombia named Diego – that my life was over. “I’m old,” I moaned. “All the hot boys won’t want me. I’m not a teenager anymore. It’s all downhill from here.”
Diego took my belly-aching quite seriously, which only lead to more consternation. Had he flipped my concerns away as feminine crazy talk, I would not remember what he said: “A woman in her 20s is in the prime of her life. Take care of yourself, and you’ve got at least 10 years before you hit the wall.”
So here I am, hitting the wall. Eff you, Diego. Smacked with laugh lines and burgeoning chair butt. Bammed by official estrangement from distrustful youth. Walloped by the ticking of my biological clock.
I joke with Mr. Pinault that this is the last week he’ll get to romance a woman in her 20s, so he better make the most of it, because it’s all downhill from here, ha ha ha. I laugh; he doesn’t dare. His mind computes all conceivable responses and weighs them against probable ramifications like tears and fury. “You’ll always be a younger woman to me,” he says. I preen and flirt, thinking, Smart man! And then he blows it: “Besides, no one can stay 29 forever.”
Technically, the Fountain of Youth is accessible to delusional liars or suicides. But then again, I look forward to age 39, when I can look back on this moment with a grimace: “I though that was the beginning of the end? Stupid child!” (Can you sense the distracted preoccupation with mortality lately? My god, I posted a picture of a gravestone last Sunday. How ghoulish.)
