Elizabeth Wurtzel’s Cry For Help
I went to a party in Williamsburg, where I definitely do not live, and was 50 percent older than anyone else. When I told a gentleman that I am 45, he was shocked. He wondered what I know that Ponce de Leon did not. Mainly it is a refusal to be a grown-up. Or just having missed the leading milestones. I have never been married, which has spared me the unhappiness of that, and the misery of a divorce. Or two. Or three. I don’t have kids, so I don’t invest energy in telling people how gifted my children are, or in figuring out how deep into the spectrum of autism they fall—nor do I turn over my hard-earned cash to SAT tutors and Mandarin coaches. Of course, I have been deprived of the pleasure of breastfeeding my baby on a barstool in a Park Slope tavern while nursing a Campari and soda, but I will survive the privation. (And it may yet happen.) Evasion and avoidance are hallmarks of youth.
I have been very promiscuous, sometimes with men I get to know better and sometimes with men I never see again, but the pleasure is mine. I did too many drugs until enough was enough, but I would not have missed it for all the drugs I haven’t done since.
I, I, I, I, I.
The reader who sent me the link points out that the personal pronoun constitutes a full eight percent of the Wurtzel piece’s content. But hey, when a gal is writing about her favorite subject (‘memba this?), the I’s have it.
Old age is not going to be much fun for somebody.
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