When life is done with you, you just know

Geez when life is done with you, you just know. The e-mail today was as stark as the day Beloved died:

“Please sign next to his dead thumb print”. No, “please sign the contract before tomorrow” – you are now off our books; officially. For me a death sentence, sorry. Because I’m 65 in exactly a week’s time and we are planning a party – with what money I don’t know, but my family is squirrelling away cleaning and inviting far and sundry.

I’ve invited not a single soul. It’s my party and I can cry if I want to. And I want to… Words have been my life blood – since I’ve been paid for it as a whorenalist – since 1976.

Longer than a lifetime. Longer than my marriage. Longer than I have been loved by any single man. Longer than death that touched me many times. But I’m still me, I shout silently.

See my hippie pants? See the way they curl around my shapes? And my knees still work; and the new uplifting bra; and the Clicks cream on my face – and my mind… Especially my mind.

Every word a pearl, every syllable a gem. I walk into my deputy editor’s office asking him how he handles “being put on contract”, thinking he’s an old hand at it. He’s not. His reality hit last month on his birthday – and now I really want to wail. We talk about “making it on your own” but “payment… they are so slack with payment…”

We talk about life, curve balls, end of an era and never end of a career – but we both know it is. And decide on what we call home.

Home is logging on every day feeding our needs: words. Those pearls we polish until they’re the gems, whether you enjoy them or not. It’s not that we don’t care. We just know when it’s good. But we also know life at our age is – maybe – not good. We’re “a dying breed”.

That breed that had Derek Watts get dust on his shoes because he walked the road of truth. That breed that got zingers as leads for national newspapers. That breed that is dead now. But the word lives on… I’m signing The Contract…