Shrinking

I’m shrinking. I know I’m shrinking, I made a black dot on the wall, and now my head is below it. My head looks too large for my shrinking neck. I order anti-age products from the Internet, but then I don’t get the products and they keep the money. At five feet eight, I was always the tall girl: I wore flats and slouched so I wouldn’t be taller than the boys. Recently I noticed that next to my five feet nine daughters, I have to stretch my neck to look up at them. “Time for a bone density test,” my doctor advises.

It’s Thursday afternoon, fog floats over San Francisco. At the damp hospital X-Ray basement I sit on a cold wooden bench, waiting my turn for the bone density x-ray. Shivering, I’m wearing a blue cotton gown, leather clogs, black knee socks, my pale veiny legs sticking out. Next to me sits this great looking boomer hunk, I’d say in his seventies — Semitic Jewish face, a puff of loopy hair, smooth, dark olive skin. He’s reading the art section of the New York Times. I say, “Don’t you just admire De Kooning’s sensual line? It’s so — -”

“The shits,” he sullenly shrugs. “My wife was a painter.”

“I like De Kooning’s caligraphic line — -energy….”

“That was before she ran off with the kid who trimmed our lousy grass.”

“Who?” I ask.

“The ex.”

“Uh huh.”

He extends a thin long hand. “Your name?”

“Lisa.”

“Dr. Duke Edelman.”

“What kind of doctor?”

“I’m a physicist.”

“Black holes and Steven Hawking?”

He nods. He’s working with swollen stars and Binary orbits.”

“Uh huh.”

“He’s a vegan and an atheist,” he continues, in a monotone.

He glances impatiently at his watch. He brags that His doctor told him that he has the bones of a thirty-five year old. “Why in hell am I here?” he says, as if to no one. He continues bragging about his strong physical body. He’s a marathon runner. “I run with thirty-year-old Russian women and they can’t keep up with me.

“Bones are important,” he says with a long sigh.

He clicks his fingers. “I knew it! I’m never wrong. Never forget a face. You’re the Age March lady. I saw you on television. You founded that stupid age march where a bunch of old people march around chanting how great age is!”

“They celebrate age pride for all ages. They…”

“No offense,” he interrupts. “The last woman your age I made love to, her bones cracked. Women your age have brittle bones. “bad knees, backs, hips, stomachs. They shrink.” He sighs. “It’s hard to find the right woman.”

The door opens.

“Dr. Duke Edelman,” the x-ray technician calls.

BarbaraRoseBrooker, author of 12 novels. Also a columnist. Her latest novel Love, Sometimes was released 2020, by Post Hill Press/Simon Schuster. The audible was released last month. She is at work on a memoir. Her latest TV appearances and podcasts are available on www.barbararosebrooker.com

She is the founder of AgeMarch/AgeMagnificent. www.agemarch.org