Keep knocking on that door
We have this idea that the only romance you can have is when you look like a magazine centerfold. When you are old, society says it is inappropriate, but I long for the contact with the person I love
Lynn Ruth Miller, author and stand-up comedian who took up acting after the age of 70
Any plain weighs invariably on my heart with the immensity of its sky, the soullessness of its untamed building developments, and the slow pace of reality crawling on. The shoreline north of Rome, as flat as a sheet of paper, made no exception. Still, for a brief season, it was the theatre of some carefree days, hikes in nature, and sumptuous barbeques in the forest. The profusion of foods and flavors made up for the dull echo that the flatland produced inside me. But it was spring, with its capriciousness. A thin, determined shower and grey clouds made unequivocally clear that the sun was an already unwrapped present. That was the weather we had to cope with for the rest of the holiday.
We had already bought some worms and so went fishing anyway. I let my friend prepare my fishhook: having grown up at the sea, he didn’t blink while dipping his fingers in the brown mush contained in the plastic box. Keeping my balance on the orange rocks of the breakwater, I enjoyed hearing the whizz of the fishing rod’s reel followed by the quick plop of the float. Under a yellow raincoat, I kept my eyes on the exact spot where the fishing line entered the water, waiting with the hopeful optimism of children to feel a pull. At our feet, the blue bucket was empty. We were standing in silence under the rain, side by side. There’s something mesmerizing in fishing. Because it creates an expectation, it feels like the time between thoughts stretches endlessly. After a while, a fellow fisherman walked by and struck up a conversation with my friend: “Your girlfriend must really love you to be here in this weather.” “She’s not my girlfriend,” he replied, “and she just likes fishing.”
Lynn Ruth Miller, with whom I had the pleasure of speaking, is a living example of the things we should not take for granted. She expresses this concept beautifully in the title of her latest book, Ridiculously Old And Getting Better: Ageless Lessons from a Very Old Stand-Up Comedian. Born in Ohio, and then after a long series of destiny’s twists and turns, she became a stand-up comedian past the age of 70. Today, she lives in a luminous flat in London. During our Zoom call, I can see the walls behind her decorated with her paintings. There are paintbrushes in a jar, a plant, fresh flowers in a vase, and a keyboard. The phone rings twice while we talk and her wit pops up unexpectedly, like those fish I had hoped for but never caught. She brings me back to those days on the Roman shoreline, under the rain. She is outspoken and her stories overwhelm me like a wave, but it is in her silence and in the depth of her eyes that I find endless pools of awareness, compassion, and love.
Tell us a bit about your story
I was born in Ohio. I got married when I was just turning 22 with an abusive man. He hit me when he was angry and he got angry a lot. After two years, he left me. This was a huge tragedy for me. I had a very severe case of anorexia and I spent about six months trying to commit suicide. I was living in my parents’ home and I didn’t get on with my mother. You see, I came from a very wealthy family, but I didn’t know we were wealthy, I just thought that everybody lived that way. After my marriage collapsed and because I had a Master's in education, I started a children's TV show on CBS, called “The Little Playhouse.” They didn’t pay me. My mother wanted me to pay her rent and I had to find a way out.
In 1961, I got married again. I liked this man, I didn’t love him, but marrying him was a way for me to be independent. I wanted to do something creative in my life. Three months later, he revealed his homosexuality. Being gay at that time was considered a medical condition. If he would have come out, he would have been sent to a hospital. He called my father to take me home. I went into another collapse. I was a wreck. I said to myself, “Your life is nothing. Everything you’ve done hasn’t worked. So, start over.” I applied for a Master’s degree program in journalism at Stanford University and I graduated in 14 months with honors.
I picked journalism when written journalism was getting out and TV was coming in, but I didn’t realize that. I had no TV. I heard the chronicle of Kennedy’s assassination on the Classical Radio Station. At the time of my graduation, the US had just passed a law that said you could not pay someone with my education an entry-level salary: I was overqualified, I had no experience, and I couldn’t find a job as a journalist. I ended up as a seller at Macy’s for the Christmas rush - I’m Jewish, but I love Christmas and Santa Claus - then I moved to New York where, again, I couldn’t get a job and I had another nervous breakdown. That’s the moment when I applied for charity housing and I got it. The people in my apartment building were uneducated, they couldn’t earn a living, but they were the nicest people I’ve ever met. I supported myself by doing freelance work.
How did you go from there to being a stand-up comedian?
I moved all over the country and I ended up in California, where I finally got my own house and I was promoting my book. At the end of the promotion, I would tell jokes. People always wanted me to go on telling jokes, but nobody ever bought a book. I thought that’s awful, but they keep wanting me back. Because I told all the jokes I knew, I went online to find new ones and I stepped into the San Francisco Comedy College. I still didn’t have a TV and I didn’t know that comedy could be a career. I thought that college was a rip-off. I wanted to become a student to write a story to denounce the scam, their taking advantage of young people. In the classroom there were eighteen, nineteen and twenty year olds and I was seventy at the time. I never had children and I wanted to have children more than anything in the world. They were children to me and I loved them. That’s how I discovered that I had a knack for comedy and I took class after class. I never wrote that article I was meant to. For the final exam, because the other students had almost no live experience and I was seventy, I wiped up the room. And I realized I had found something I loved. After a car accident I had when I was in my twenties, my body fell apart, so I was on a disability pension and that little revenue gave me the freedom to take on stand-up comedy.
In an interview you said you leave your house in the evening for your shows. Many people are afraid to leave the house after dark, are you not?
Of course I’m not afraid! I’m not afraid of anything. Look what’s happened to me. How could I possibly be afraid? Nothing could happen to me now that I haven’t encountered and dealt with already.
What have you learned from your experience as a stand-up comedian?
It was two years into the comedy when I started to realize that there were tremendous blocks against women and against old people. Then, one day, the comedian Howie Cooperstein asked me when was the last time you touched yourself. I was speechless. I had no relationship and I realized that his question opened up this tremendous need for closeness.
You got in touch with me because of the advertising campaign I wrote about, right?
When I saw that poster in my underground station, it broke my heart. I cried. I would love more physical contact. Last summer I met a man who is twenty years my junior and I fell in love with him, but I became conscious that that avenue is now closed for me. Not because of what I think, I recognize this desire, but because we’re stimulated by what the media has made for us, has taught us. Society sets up walls. There are a lot of relationships between women in their fifties and men in their thirties. But when you’re 87 (I’ll be 88 in October) there is no way. People think that at seventy, at eighty that that door is closed. But that door doesn’t need to be closed and that’s why I wish that the person I’m in love with could see me in a different way. But he doesn’t. People do not see attraction because of my age. We have this idea that the only romance you can have is when you look like a magazine centerfold. Society says it is inappropriate, but I long for contact with the person I love. I’m allowed to love him without reciprocity. That’s what I said to a friend of mine who’s 93 and is in love with the cook at his facility. I told him, I’m not getting the whole cake, but I’m getting slices of it and I’m lucky.
We really need a change of perspective on this.
When I was younger I read Locked Rooms and Open Doors by Ann Morrow Lindbergh. She wrote beautiful things about women who are imprisoned in the rules of their society and how they can free who they are. When I read her work, I was in that trap. It was unbelievable for me to read about this gifted woman’s attempt to be herself. She wrote in her diary, “You push and push and push at the door and one day you look and say, “Oh, my God! It’s open!” and it has been open for a long time.” That’s why I always say that if I’m loud about this, if I’m verbal about this, if I explain that I do want someone to hug me, I do want someone to touch me, I do want to try to have sex - because I don’t care if I can or can’t but trying is a lot of fun too - maybe things will change.
How is love different at your age?
Love is very different now from the crushes I had. Love when you are younger is very needy. I don’t feel that way with the person I’m in love with now. I don’t possess him and I have no desire to possess him. I have no desire for commitment. I have no desire for him to say, “Yes, it’s going to be forever,” because for me forever could be a month. But I want attachment, connection, I want that hug, that closeness. We had a fight and after we hung up we were already smoothing out the waters. This would have never happened when I was forty. I would have said, I’m done. Instead now I love him just as much. His happiness, his homeostasis is more important to me than mine. At my age, love is a different thing. You get a balance with it. I love knowing that his heart is beating, that’s how much I love him. It took me 86 years to find someone I wanted that way. The definition of love is that the room feels better when he’s there.
You said that the way we age is our choice.
Absolutely.
What did you choose?
I have chosen not to descend into the disintegration of my body. I have aches and pains like the rest of the people in this building, but that doesn’t stop me. I have decided that I am going to fill my life with new and interesting things and I’m doing it. I’ve just put out another book called Ridiculously Old And Getting Better: Ageless Lessons from a Very Old Stand-Up Comedian. I’m looking to get a PhD. I am starting to have headlines here in London, when transportation opens up again, I will be back in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok. All I have to do is to call up a few people to get some gigs. I loved Singapore and Bangkok. I love Bangkok despite its airport where I get lost all the time.
How has aging transformed you?
I realize now that I am not perfect. We are human; we are fallible. I realize that I do not always do what I call the right things and I realize now that that’s the package I am, the package I have to deal with. I’m very sensitive. You can make me cry at the drop of a hat. If I see a little kid crying, I cry too, it’s ridiculous. But I have a good perspective. I see what I am doing. I realize that happiness is a by-product, as Viktor Frankl wrote. I have that by-product, as I’m happy. Life is not always smooth, but I’m happy. I am purposeful, I have meaning and that’s why routine is so important. I get up in the morning, which of course is always a surprise, I have something to do that I want to do. I have a friend who, after she retired, is doing the same things she did for the fifty, sixty years before. My life is changing. It is evolving. I am not the same person, because I haven’t allowed myself to be the same person. I’m not afraid to open doors and try new things.
It seems like you’re having a great time…
This is the best year of my life. I’ve fallen in love, I put two books out, I paint, and my friend Kate and I are going to do a film.
What else do you envision for your future?
I’m going to travel, I’m going to get a new house, I’m gonna get a puppy, I want to get a PhD if I can, and I want to have a brand new show. I’ve got a lot to do.
EPILOGUE
The puppy never arrived as Lynn Ruth passed away on a September afternoon in London. Many things remained unsaid between the two of us, but I treasure our correspondence that followed our first and last conversation. From the first moment, Lynn Ruth and I just clicked. I shared with her poetries she didn’t know, she honored me with her confidence. Even after she’s gone, Lynn Ruth is present in my days. Just like she would have done if she was still physically here, she’s nudging me with her example to leave my comfort zone and set to sea.
