Stairway To Mid Life Paradise…
by Juli I. Huss
Last summer right before my forty-fifth birthday, I was
on the second floor of Macy’s rifling through the
sale racks when I came across an oh-so-sexy lavender off-the-shoulder
spandex crop top with matching seersucker lavender pinstripe
pants. Perfect, absolutely perfect for all of my mid-summer
Internet dates I was finally ready to go on. I thought to
myself,” Juli, this outfit is gonna pull you out of
your romantic rut—you are gonna look so H.O.T. “
I fought my way through the long lines into the dressing
rooms, excited to see how fabulous I was going to look—lavender
has always been my color. Why in high school I used to wear
my Maybelline lavender iridescent eye shadow which matched
my frosted lavender hair barrettes which matched my favorite
lavender polyester turtleneck sweater I had bought specially
to wear for my senior picture to showcase my favorite lavender
hoop enamel earrings. My mother begged me not to wear all
my lavender trappings (begged me with tears running down
her cheeks), but sadly I didn't listen. I took my senior
picture, with my spiky Julia- Roberts-Mystic-Pizza hair
and told myself that this was how I wanted all those high
school boys to remember me. I remember muttering to the
ghost of my ex-boyfriend,
“See, this girl you dumped right before the senior
prom Michael Erpelding? This gorgeous girl is no longer
your personal door mat, buster.” I looked fabulous.
As a result of my spiky hair and lavender wonderments, underneath
my senior picture I was voted “Most likely to marry
Dr. Spock on the Starship Enterprise…” I accept
that everyone is haunted by their past, unfortunately for
me when your past is captured in your senior picture, it
follows you into eternity.
So, there I was staring at my single-and-over-forty-fabulous-self
in the dressing room mirror and all I can say is that Macy’s
has terrible mirrors and even worse lighting.(I mean, I
can't look this bad, right?) I looked like a giant lavender
marshmallow Easter blob. In my girlish mind, I was supposed
to look like a light and airy pastel confection of forbidden
pleasure. But something went haywire and I looked like I
accidentally got sat on and squished into a blobby blob
of spandex-stuffed- purple flab. Just to be sure I wasn't
hallucinating, I tip-toed out of my little cubicle to look
in the three-way mirror in the hallway. (This must be some
sort of gag mirror, I said in disbelief.) While standing
there, eyeing myself from behind, I caught three scrawny
teenage girls standing in back of me shaking their heads
at my reflection.
“Lady, you are in the Junior Miss department.”
Announced the skinny girl with the spray on tan, with her
hands on her hips, and with not an ounce of mercy she said,
“…And Lady, you ain’t no Junior Miss.”
I looked at her with tears in my eyes, “I'm not a
Junior Miss anymore, right?” I asked, with my bottom
lip quivering.”It's over, right?”
She looked away from me, putting the palm of her hand right
in my face, “Lady, you are soooo over, it ain’t
funny. It is time for you to move up to the third floor.”
The third floor, the no-mans land of middle age spread.
The Gobi desert of shapeless tie-dye tunics, floral caftans
and umpire blue jean smocks, the black hole in the universe
where women like my fifth grade P.E. teacher Mrs. Klapp
go to find a pair of comfortable brown corduroy overalls
to wear over their Chicago Cubs baseball jersey. That sexless-
fat-free- fork in the road where ugly meets drab. Now that
I had been exiled to the third floor, I called my girlfriend
Edie on my cell, “I’ve been shipped off to the
third floor, you gotta come down here.” Edie has been
on the third floor for a couple of years now. And she looks
great, I don’t know what my problem is, she is ripe
and succulent and has the best sex life of anyone I know.
“Juli, it’s time to become a third floor woman.”
“I can’t do it alone.” I begged, gazing
at the Paris Hilton spring collection. “I gotta let
go of trying to look like Paris. right?”
“Honey, Paris Hilton needs to let go of looking like
Paris Hilton,” Edie counseled adding
“I’ll be right there,” and Edie left
her client lunch to meet me at the escalators with a warm
angelic smile.
“Just put your right foot on the first step and come
on up and see what you have been missing.”
She said, in a cheery voice. “Up on the third floor
women get to have hips and breasts and feel good about their
curves.” She said, glancing behind to see if I was
still on the escalator. “Up on the third floor, women
get to wear fabric that breathes and doesn’t need
to be dry cleaned, she said, as the stairs glided us up
heavenward. “Up on the third floor, designers know
that women are much smarter than girls and have to make
clothes that flatter our woman figures, with fabrics that
don’t wrinkle so you can throw them in your dryer
without fear of shrinking and we don’t have to starve
to feel fashionable.”
Whimpering, I asked her, “But there are no crop tops
or Daisy Dukes, right?” I asked, tapping her on the
shoulder, “And by the way, their size eight’s,
are they cut large or are they cut small?”
Edie turned around and smiled down at me sympathetically.
“Juli, what do you care if their size eights are cut
large? Let’s face it honey, you’re a size twelve.”
She reached out and grabbed my arm. “Its okay, honey,
be brave, up here on the third floor we can tell the truth
about who we are because we love ourselves as women and
have learned how to tell the difference between a mature
man and a mid-life schmuck.”
“We have? How can we tell?” I asked in disbelief.
Edie smiled, welcoming me into the Donna Karan section
of the third floor. “Men who love third floor women
insist on doing all the dishes, even on holidays. And they
don’t start their sentences with, ‘Yo…And
they…
I interrupted her, “Don’t tell you they got
a wife and six kids and a twenty-six year old mistress right
after they slept with you?”
“Not allowed.” She winked, clapping her hands
together. “But you know what the best news is?
“No.” I said, gazing at her in awe.
“Up on the third floor, we enjoy our desserts like
European women. Up here we like to encourage emotional balance,
personal choice and individual expression—we think
it makes our lives more fulfilling. See, up here on the
third floor the staff up here makes it clear to any men,
children and small family pets upon entering that this is
an Atkins-free zone.
I took a deep breath and squeezed her arm, “But what
about Britney Spears?”
Edie shook her head with a firm no, “Absolutely not.
No Jessica Simpsons, no Hilary Duffs, and none of those
nutty Real World girls.” Edie pointed to the sign
above the cappuccino machine, “See that sign, “No
twits, bimbos or hoochie mamas.” She shrugged her
shoulders mercifully, and conceded “Well okay, maybe
a couple of hoochie mamas…Brigette Nielson and Sharon
Stone have booked passage a couple of times, but have yet
to take the first step.”
That afternoon Edie found me a slinky black Donna Karan
cocktail dress which revealed plenty of bare virgin shoulder
with just enough cleavage to appear tarty but not cheap—thank
you very much, and a fluted train down the back that made
my caboose look less like the rear end of a Chrysler and
more like the rear view of a vintage Ferrari.
“I told you that you’d love it up here.”
Edie, said pleased with herself, as she ushered me over
towards the chocolate fondue fountain. We parted ways at
the Ben and Jerry’s tropical sorbet bar, with me in
my size 12 sassy black cocktail dress and a pair of Easy
Spirit strappy gold sandals. Edie waved good bye, with a
big happy smile as I called out to her with a mouthful of
chocolate dipped strawberries. “So, what am I supposed
to do up here?”
“Expand, ripen, become a woman unafraid to show the
world what an eternal beauty looks like!”
BIO: Juli I. Huss began her writing
career as a weekly food columnist for “The Two
Rivers Times” in Redbank, New Jersey. From the
success of her weekly column, NAL/Dutton published,
The Faux Gourmet: A Single Woman’s Confession
on Food and Sex. Her second novel, Happy Maisy Coleman,
was written after her travels throughout Japan. Juli
I. Huss lives in New York City.
