Is There Still Sex in the City?

I’d recently had a series of setbacks, as my father might say. I was scared about my finances and I was scared about my future.

257But I was also scared for my father to know that I was in a bad place. My father had always been proud of me. I didn’t want him to die thinking that I was a failure after all.

I told him that I’d finally met someone.

I always told my father about my boyfriends. In fact, I went further and made an effort to introduce them to the poor man.

This was, on the face of it, probably not a good idea. My father prided himself on “knowing men” and most of them in his opinion were highly flawed. He had once chased one of my sister’s boyfriends off the property—a suburban lawn—because he was a bad boy who only wanted on

e thing.

And yet, for some reason, I continued to bring boyfriends home to meet my father. Afterward, my father would shake his head. “Mama’s boy,” he’d said about one. “Completely selfish,” he’d said about another. “Do you notice how everything is ‘his’ and ‘mine’?” When the inevitable breakup would occur, my father always congratulated me on having gotten away from someone who wasn’t quite good enough.

“Well,” my father said, as I finished telling him about MNB. “He sounds like a gentleman.” He paused. “Tell him that I would have loved to meet him, but I’m afraid I can’t.”

* * *

258And so the day came. I called up MNB. “My father died,” I said, and then I cried a little.

“I’m coming right over,” he said.

As I waited, I realized that while I was prepared for my dad’s passing, I hadn’t considered the possibility of going through this sad and incredibly personal moment with a relative stranger.

MNB had never met my father or my family. What was the protocol?

“I’ll be there for you however you’d like,” he said. “You tell me what you need me to do and I’ll do it.”

I thought about what was ahead. The long drive. The three-hour viewing with an open casket. The overnight at the B&B and then the funeral and lunch and then the cemetery, where my father would be laid to rest next to my mother, my uncle, my grandmother, grandfather, and great-grandmother. And there would be the old friends, the few who were left, and a handful of relatives.

It wouldn’t be fun. On the other hand, it would be nicer to have him by my side. Did I know him well enough to ask? Did I trust him enough to take the chance?

I asked anyway. “Will you come with me to the funeral?”

“I’d love to,” he said.

It was that easy.

259It had been a lousy autumn and the leaves were brown as we drove up to Connecticut.

“It’s going to be okay,” MNB said, as he squeezed my hand. “Remember, we’re in this together.”

And even though it was a crappy moment in life, I realized it could have been a hell of a lot worse.

I squeezed back.

“I love you,” I said.

“I love you, too.”

Of course, we had no idea if we actually meant it. Or what it meant if we did. Who does ever know? But maybe that’s one of the good things about middle age: some things don’t change.

chapter nine

The Super Middles

On the other hand, plenty of other things do change.

Somewhere in the middle of the new middle age, people begin to fall into two categories: the “super middles” and “everyone else.”