Does Installing a Grab Bar Mean You'll Never Get Laid Again?

Asking for a Friend Series, Installment 259

Faulty grab bar installation, in which woman’s hand was severed from her body.

“Other women in the building have done this right?” I am saying to Patrick the handy man as he installs a grab bar in the shower. “How old were they? Were they attractive?’

Patrick doesn’t answer, he just laughs. He thinks I am joking, which I am not.

“You know what I’m thinking?” I say. “I could prop it. Just hang some gorgeous underwear from it and that would distract them. I did that in my 20s and it worked. I think. I mean, I was in my 20s, so who knows? Nothing puts them off when you’re in your twenties. Or, you know what? I could just tell them it was in the apartment when I got here.”

“It’s behind the shower curtain,” Patrick says. “No one will see.”

This is the difference between a handyman and a shrink. Well, there are a lot of differences between a handyman and a shrink. The big one is with the handyman you never think, ‘Is this making a difference?’ If the pipe under the sink is no longer leaking, the handyman has made a difference. Also, faced with a problem that is not going away, say the air conditioning unit in the living room that keeps making weird noises even after it got a new motor, the handyman doesn’t say, “It’s a process”. He says,“ Beats me. I guess you’re just gonna have to live with it,” and moves on.

A shrink, dealing with grab-bar installation anxiety, would have said, “Why are you so concerned about what people will think about having a grab bar in the shower?” and I would have said, “Are you kidding? Isn’t it obvious? If a woman puts in a grab bar, she will never get laid again. The European shower hose thing I can pretend is like a European spa, but the grab-bar is the spa where you go in a wheelchair. It’s hanging a sign on the door, like a restaurant: After many wonderful years in the neighborhood, we are closed. Thanks for the memories. If you left your umbrella here, tough.”

The grab bar installation, by the way, came on the heels of a phone conversation I’d been having with a girlfriend. She is a very cool friend, a novelist, who traveled by herself through Asia and China and is complimented, by women fifty years younger, on her style. She also had cancer a few years ago and though she was cured the treatment left her with sporadic incontinence, which makes her anxious about flying.

“So my social worker told me about this leak-proof underwear: Always. Like Depends,” my friend says. “It’s for women, pink, and very bulky. And when I’m going through security — you’re going to love this — the woman pulls me out of the line and says she has to pat me down. Because the X-ray machine picked up on all this padding. I guess they thought I was smuggling heroin in my crotch.”

“I can’t believe she never saw this before,” I say. “Did you explain?”

“I just laughed — I was embarrassed,” my friend says. “She offered to take me some place private, but I didn’t want to do any more walking and I thought, ‘Oh, the hell with it. Who cares?’ Of course when she pats me down, it becomes obvious what it is. Women complain so much about menopause. There is so much more adjustment to make about aging. Like walking in airports. It’s endless. People were always offering to help me with my bags, which I guess is nice, but isn’t really because it means you must look like an old lady.”

“Tell me about it,” I say. “I got these really expensive loafers, because I can’t wear heels anymore. Heels are like an evolution towards death. When I was in my twenties, I wore three-inch heels, all day. Then it was progressively shorter, wider heels. Then it was old lady shoes, like you see grandmothers in at Bar Mitzvahs and they’re always sitting down because even those are killing their feet. I told myself it didn’t matter what I’d paid for these loafers, because they were the last pair of loafers I would own. They’d last me the rest of my life.”

An editor would point out I haven’t put my age in this story. That’s what I love about Substack, no editors. I’m seventy-seven, but an extremely youthful seventy-seven. My conversations are not dominated by medical complaints. I drive a sports car, which legally reduces your age by twenty years. I have actual driving gloves. Which gives me a great idea: I will hang my driving gloves on my bathroom grab-bar.

That will send a message.

Note to T Magazine: When you use this, credit joycewadler.substack.com

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