. . . There’S Something Wrong with All of Them

By Barbara Rose Brooker

Anny Applebaum is a seventy-eight-year-old author who wonders if great sex and love are possible after sixty. She wants it all. A novelist and journalist, she writes a successful column, interviewing and dating men of all ages. She records her sexcapades, insights, and telephone conversations into her columns. As she struggles with her relationships, ageism, and Hollywood, wanting to find her truths and authentic self, she goes deeply inside her dreams, her past, and her poetry. She wins it all.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 19, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524528010

Barbara Rose Brooker

Barbara Rose Brooker is currently a teacher at San Francisco State University with a masters in creative writing. She has appeared on the Today show and The Talk and has been featured in the San Francisco Chronicle, Huffington Post, and more. 

Book preview

Copyright © 2016 by Barbara Rose Brooker.

ISBN:      Softcover      978-1-5245-2802-7

                eBook            978-1-5245-2801-0

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 09/27/2016

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

746367

Contents

ANNY APPLEBAUM

ON THE PHONE WITH BEST FRIEND JANET: WE TALK EVERY NIGHT ABOUT OUR DATING EXPERIENCES

PHIL KAPLAN

THE NEXT NIGHT I ARRIVE AT PHIL KAPLAN’S HOUSE

REFLECTING LATER THAT NIGHT

ON THE PHONE SIX WEEKS LATER

GERMOPHOBIC

MIDNIGHT

ON THE PHONE THE NEXT MORNING

EVEN UGLY MEN ARE JERKS

ON THE PHONE

MARIGOLDS

THERAPY

TELAMOAN

HERB FINKLESTEIN

THE WIDOWER

ON THE PHONE AN HOUR LATER

THE THERAPIST

LATER THAT NIGHT I PAINT

DREAM

SPRING

WILLIE MORGAN

MORE MEMORIES

JO

SHOES

ON THE PHONE PAST MIDNIGHT

SIGNS YOU’RE NOT THE ONLY ONE

THE GENIUS

ANNYS DESCENT INTO HER SUBCONSCIOUS

THE EDITOR

BEAR

ON THE PHONE WITH JO

SAM

I FOUND MY TOASTER IN THE FRIDGE

NIGHT

I AWAKE BUT CAN’T SLEEP. I DRINK COFFEE. GO TO THE COMPUTER

HE’S 55!

LUNCH WITH TELEMOANS

I CAN’T SLEEP

BOBBY BAUM

ON THE PHONE

FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY PARTY

DEPRESSED

NAILS

DREAM

PHONE MESSAGES

NATIONAL TV

THE BOX

ON THE PHONE ON A WINDY WINTER DAY. PAPERS ON THE FLOOR. MARIGOLDS IN A TALL GLASS VASE BY THE WINDOW

AGE

VOICEMAIL MESSAGES

GOD WEARS GUCCI

ON THE PHONE AN HOUR LATER

TURN OFF THE LIGHTS

ON THE PHONE WITH JANET

A DATE WITH AN ACTOR

MEMORIES

EDDIE KRIEGER

EVENING

THE TREE

AM I LOSING IT?

THE JOURNALIST

DREAM

ART

THE LITERARY AGENT

ON THE PHONE

DREAM

SHRINKING

ON THE PHONE THAT NIGHT:

SAM IS BACK

AN HOUR LATER

HOLLYWOOD SKYPE MEETING

ON THE PHONE THIRTY MINUTES LATER WITH AGENT DAUGHTER IN LA

CONFLICT

JERRY K

ON THE PHONE

HE’S CHARMING

ON FACETIME AT MIDNIGHT

TELAMOAN MESSAGES

ON THE PHONE

IN MY DREAM I WRITE MY IMAGINARY LOVER A POEM

SALT

ON THE PHONE WITH JANET AN HOUR LATER

PETER’S COMPLAINTS

ON THE PHONE WITH JEFFREY

DREAM

ON THE PHONE WITH JANET

SOUR PUSS

STONES

ZACHARY

PINK ROSE PETALS

SEX ADDICT

OCTOBER

ARTIST

MEMORIES

ELEVATORS

IS EVAN BLOOM THE ONE?

BOLINAS

WRITING

THERAPY

NOTHING IS REAL

DEAR ADVERSITY

TELAMOAN WITH JANET

In

memory of my father Barney Rose, my mother, my brother Robert Rose. Also gratitude to my son-in-laws Henry Unger, Gary Osterman. Love for my cherished daughters Bonny Osterman, Suzy Unger, my niece Keran Davison, and my brother Richard Rose.

ANNY APPLEBAUM

H e’s inside me. This boy is hot. He’s the twenty-six-year old Hispanic kid who caulked the seams in my bathtub. All he said was Senora and I caved. The alarm goes off. I wake. I shiver a moment, watching a stream of fog blowing over San Francisco like a pink haze. Okay I’m seventy-eight but before I leave the planet I want die for sex and romantic love.

It’s time to work. I get up, pee, and brush my teeth. I take my Lipitor, high blood pressure pills, and then dress for the day. I write Hottie, a successful daily column about love and sex after sixty. My novel The Viagra Diaries has a film option and I hope to make enough money so that I can finish writing Contemptuous Marigolds, my poetry manuscript. The poems hold not only my secrets but also my truths.

I turn off the phones. I talk on the phone a lot. I talk with my sixty plus friends, we complain about our dates, sex, ageism, all of it. We complain so much that we call each other Telamoans. I check the e-mails from my ongoing Ad on the singles sites. I text a few men that sound interesting and set up interviews. Then I write until I finish tomorrow’s column, Grow Grain, The Bald Spot.

At the end of the day when I can’t write anymore I go for my daily walk along the hills, admiring the clouds clustering and mist floating along the City.

*

(I feel this little person curled in me, hidden and watching. She’s comforting, sometimes) I have to constantly find her, watch her, listen to her, so that I can press out the images that will tell the truths, the forgotten and buried feelings.)

To capture one’s soul is like trying to catch a bubble softly flailing in the breeze. The soul contains a myriad of stories. It’s a storage center.

ON THE PHONE WITH BEST FRIEND JANET: WE TALK EVERY NIGHT ABOUT OUR DATING EXPERIENCES

S o it turns out that the sixty-eight year old real estate developer has a vagina, I confide. There’s something wrong with all of them! If they’re not married, they’re mentally challenged. If they’re married, they have fifteen-year-old mistresses.

I’m nauseous, Janet says, chewing. If they don’t have vaginas they have penile implants, urinate in bed, or die during their sleep. I’m sick of their balls! Who needs it? It’s like chewing gum.

Stop complaining! At least you’re with men who want sex!

"Leo’s latest is that he tried out for that dumb TV show Dating Naked. He thinks his body is so great. He thinks a priest raped him when he was young so now he says he can’t have sex."

Tell him to stick his penis in a hole. They only care about holes. Where’s Rhett Butler?

Honey, this Viagra generation doesn’t even know who Rhett is. The oldies don’t know from good sex. Sex is only good when we’re nineteen and we don’t know any better. Janet continues:

Judy Birnbaum was excited about her sixty-year old City Supervisor. They’re barely through their shrimp cocktail when the feds show up. He was wanted in fifty states for sexually soliciting twelve-year-old girls on the Internet.

Bella Berman went younger and not only did she break a hip twerking, but he stole her diamonds and credit cards.

Well, they’re not all like that.

You’re dreaming. Men over sixty can’t have sex. You know most of they are wearing diapers and have saggy asses. Why can’t you be happy just being alive?

Viagra has created idiots. Yet the things that we hate about these older boomer men are the same things they hold against us. So how do we meet? I don’t want to end up like poor Myrna Blum, every minute having vagina lifts, Botox, fillers. The rock star she was with gave her a vaginal infection so bad her vagina swelled up like a balloon. She had to go to emergency.

Beeeepppppp

Beeeepeppp

*

PHIL KAPLAN

I ’m sipping my iced decaf Americana with foam on top. I’m at Starbucks. I call it Starfucks because single boomers use this café as a meeting or pick up place. Anyway, I have a blind date with Phil Kaplan, a successful sixty-nine year old author of self-help books. Happiness, his last book, is on the New York Times bestseller list. The café is busy with sounds of clicking keyboards on Apple laptops, telephone conversations, grinding coffee beans, and traffic outside. Young girls wearing torn jeans and bare midriffs yak with young Silicon Valley type guys.

Exactly on time, a giant-size man hurries towards me. He has a mass of thick high puffed salt-and-pepper hair, suspicious dark eyes, and full salacious lips. He looks older than sixty-nine, maybe in his late seventies.

We shake hands. He wears three thin turquoise bangles. You look pretty good for seventy-eight, he says, with an enervated sigh.

I don’t like for, I say. Either you look good or not. Anyway, it’s great to meet another writer."

He grins. "I read The Viagra Diaries. You sell out men. Pathetic men." Then he drones on about his writing, his film options, dropping names of celebrity producers, movie stars, publishers, and agents.

Sounds great, I murmur.

But dating is not great, he complains. Most of the women I date don’t even know who Bette Davis was. He sighs gloomily.

Maybe you date women who are too young?

Of course young! he snaps. The women over sixty have faces like eggs, back problems, cellulite, bad facelifts, knee problems, humps on their backs. They’re looking for a schmuck like me to marry and take care of them. He continues to complain about age, about how he works out and keeps fit, he repeats, about how most women over sixty are not fit. He frowns, looking at me suspiciously. Are you on Lipitor?

I’m not applying for a job, I reply.

He laughs, revealing perfect white veneers. Say, I have a house on Nob Hill. Do you want to come to dinner tomorrow night? I make a mean brisket.

I hesitate. Sure. I’ll try your brisket.

THE NEXT NIGHT I ARRIVE AT PHIL KAPLAN’S HOUSE

T he door opens. Hello, I say.

You look… great. His critical eyes scan my black pants, high top black and white Sketcher shoes, and my off-the-shoulder black sweater. He leads me along a narrow hall, past framed covers of his published books, into a small cheerful living room. African rugs and wall-to-wall bookcases mix with interesting artifacts. Bach Brandenburg’s play loudly from speakers.

I sit on a worn beige couch. I like your home. I love Victorians.

We drink a couple of vodka shots, shooting the breeze about our careers. I talk shade about publishers, Hollywood, and options. Monica Lewinsky has a bestseller because of a blowjob. To get your book noticed you have to murder someone and publicly repent.

"Happiness is on Oprah’s best picks." He exhales a satisfied sigh.

"Wow. The Viagra Diaries is optioned for a TV series."

Don’t quit your day job, he says, unpleasantly.

Gotta keep your dreams.

Dream. Schmean! Let’s eat.

The table is set with these huge gold plates. Tall candles flicker flames and a wilted gardenia floats inside a glass bowl. The brisket is wonderful and I’m eating like a horse, trying not to gulp, or make clicking sounds with my new bridge. During dinner he talks about how really hard writing is, how absolutely fucked up it is.

I think it’s exciting.

That’s because you’re a narcissist.

Aren’t we all?

You eavesdrop your life. You don’t live it.

Interesting, I say, gulping the potatoes.

Afterwards, we have coffee and brandy in the living room. Ravel’s Bolero is sensually rising. A sign he wants sex. He talks about his upcoming thirty-two-city book tour, complaining about the publishers booking him in rotten hotel suites. Then he brags that he’s never married but that he doesn’t like being alone.

Do you believe in happiness? I ask after a contemplative silence.

He frowns. I believe in Viagra.

Isn’t happiness more than sex?

Sex makes happiness. I’ll show you, he replies, his fingers moving along my arm.

It’s… late. I have tomorrow’s column to write still.

He frowns. You Jewish women want it all! he suddenly shouts. You’re never satisfied with a brisket and an orgasm!

That’s not true. You just haven’t met the ONE yet. I want to get out of there.

I’d get married in a minute if I can find the right woman, he says gloomily.

No such thing as right or wrong, I add. It’s only our true selves that matter.

Who told you that? Some beat-up yoga teacher? Do you really think that at seventy-eight you’re going to have happiness and a TV deal?

Even when I’m a hundred, I want it all. Hope is for every age.

You can’t be that dumb. Honey, I know you write about ageism, shove it down our throats, but trust me after fifty you’re done. The women I meet your age are desperate for a man. Either they want a penis, or a schmuck like me to be with them when they have strokes.

Everyone isn’t that way.

The ladies over sixty are done, he insists unpleasantly. The party is over.

I can see why you haven’t met the right woman.

A gloomy silence. He stares into space.

I stand. It’s late.

Stay, he says, grabbing my hand. We’ll watch some great French porno films. My twenty-seven-inch plasma television is in the bedroom. I’ll show you happiness.

Great brisket. I have to go.

*

REFLECTING LATER THAT NIGHT

I paint a woman inside a box. I draw women diving into space, their long legs angled up and the sea is dark green with white thick waves. I feel ecstasy. As I paint and the moon is low, I think about why I can’t find a romantic partner. I also wonder why so many women my age and if I too, dumb down to have a man? I think about my past lovers and how they turn into my books and columns.

Is he right? Am I only in love with my imagination? Incapable of living outside it?

*

ON THE PHONE SIX WEEKS LATER

"A nother mental. How does this happen? I met him at a lecture series on the Universe Beyond. I thought he’d be interesting. He’s a seventy-year old rocket engineer. We had two great dinner dates and he seemed really cool. Adorable looking until he undressed