A Bachelorette Odyssey on the Doorstep of 40
I didn’t have to plan my sister Alyssa’s bachelorette party, but I did have to attend. My reluctance had nothing to do with Alyssa or her marriage, but everything to do with the fact that I’m 38, married, a mom, and generally past the age of finding pot and penises exciting.
I’ve never been much of a partier to begin with, and now, with my 40th birthday in view, a hangover was just about the last thing I wanted to deal with. As I packed up my romper dress and wedges — the closest thing to sexy I could find in my closet — I found myself fantasizing about a Handmaid’s Tale binge session under my faux-fur Pottery Barn blanket.
Five of us gathered to celebrate Alyssa’s last hurrah — four ladies in their early 30s, and I, their matriarch. Our first stop: King Spa & Sauna, a voluminous spa and bathhouse located in a suburban Chicago strip mall.
The idea is that when you arrive, first you wash au naturel in the spa’s single-sex “wet area,” full of showers, cold plunge pools, and herbal hot tubs, where even swimsuits are not permitted. As we gazed through the glass at the no-fucks-given moms soaking away in bliss — their love handles and saggy boobs just free to be — the younger ladies in our party demurred, giggling; there was no way they were going in there.
Me? I wanted to do it. So bad. Sit in a Jacuzzi naked as a newborn, completely free of judgement? Hell yes! After four decades of life, seven failed fertility treatments, a pregnancy, and a vaginal birth, not one ounce of me is precious about my body. Every doctor, nurse, intern, and their cousin has been up in my hooha, and the reward is that I have absolutely no shame about stripping down in front of a bunch of other equally lumpy and battle-scarred women.
But I’m nothing if not a team player, so I stayed with the group, still dwelling a bit on the drooping, relaxed ladies taking their bare-skinned “me time” in the hot tubs. Those were my people, or at least, the direction I was headed. I had clocked in to my late 30s, hovering between the security of maturity and the stubborn desire for elusive things like Another Baby and a Hot Body.
My sweet, youthful companions, with their functioning ovaries, smooth skin, and promising futures, could not relate, God bless them.
As we clustered into the locker room, we dressed in our “uniforms” — giant Pepto-pink T-shirts and cotton Bermuda shorts with elastic waistbands, supplied by the spa. The girls snickered at the ensemble, and I laughed along, secretly reveling in the uniforms’ prioritization of function over fashion.
The spa had nine sauna rooms, each with a different theme and supposed mineral healing property. They all surrounded a large central hall, where guests sat in fancy scrollwork chairs checking their phones, working on laptops, reading, napping, or cheering on a sporting event as it played on a TV screen. As the summer sun shone outside, everyone in this odd, windowless establishment was going about their day in the peculiar pink uniform (gray for men), as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world.
We started in the Gold Room, which was shaped like an Egyptian pyramid. As we laid on the heated floor, I looked around at the walls, which the spa claimed were 24 karat gold that would heal my ailments and improve my circulation. I was instantly skeptical — it looked like someone had just been really thorough with a can of gold spray paint. But I closed my eyes and tried to conjure a bit of zen.
Next was the Charcoal Room. Same deal. Lay on the hot floor and try to believe that the walls — painted black to look like charred wood — were actual charcoals absorbing my toxins. The Oxygen Room was sprinkled with plants; in the Infrared Room, a red lightbulb hovered a few inches over each face. The other girls tried the rooms with a mixture of irony and sincere enjoyment, losing interest after a few minutes and exiting to read magazines and chat in the central hall.
Systematically, we visited all the various rooms, which involved a lot of lying on the floor, being hot, and trying to steer my thoughts to productive places. As per usual, my mind drifted to my infertility, and I considered for the millionth time if my husband and I should take our chances on yet another expensive round of IVF, or throw in the towel for good. Given my ever-advancing maternal age, the latter seemed like the more sensible path, especially since we did manage to produce one perfect, healthy science baby. One and done, amirite? Quit while you’re ahead. But she was a big part of the reason I wanted to keep going — what additional amazing child might we be able to generate if we kept soldiering on?
While I know many people continue growing their families well into their 40s, it seemed obscene for us to keep at it. Between my rotten eggs and my husband’s two-headed sperm, our odds for success were precariously low. And, quite frankly, I felt old. Still, I had pulled it off once, and in doing so, had forever surrendered my childless life of avid exercising, late nights out, and crop-top-wearing. With my freedom gone, I might as well double-down on the family-building efforts. But on the other hand …
My thoughts kept going in circles until eventually, in the hottest chamber of all, I experienced a sort of catharsis. As my body heat rose higher and higher and I could barely stand it anymore, I cried, tears slipping quietly down my sweaty face. Where the hell was I? Here in this weird spa, with my sister by my side, I felt a weightless sense that there were no wrong answers. Whatever path I chose, everything would be Okay. Life, with all of its twists and turns, is so unpredictable, ridiculous, and beautiful.
When it was time to pay and go, I realized I had left my driver’s license in my daughter’s diaper bag and had driven 79 miles to Chicago without it. I began to fret about not being able to get into the bars later, but it turns out I needn’t have worried; not one bouncer asked me for ID that night.
We checked into a hipster hotel in Wicker Park and got ready for our night out. The other girls sipped Zima sardonically and/or smoked pot, but I was laser-focused on wielding a curling iron and an assemblage of cosmetics to magically look 10 years younger.
Our next stop was a Mexican place, where I quickly slurped down two margaritas in order to not feel old, tired, and self-conscious. One of the ladies in our party calmly and proudly began to share about her open marriage, a topic that instantly captured the interest and imaginations of the group. I tried for a moment to picture a polyamorous relationship in the midst of bath time, daycare, and jaunts to the fertility clinic, and it was so absurd that I quickly refocused on the bowl of queso fundido in the middle of the table. And besides, who wants to be out in the world trying to seduce other random people when you could be curled up watching Westworld together before falling asleep breathing in each other’s familiar smells? I’m good, thanks.
From there we headed to a speakeasy-style bar, and I swiftly downed some sort of fancy rum concoction in order to stave off a vague creeping thought about the music being far too loud. We took a group photo, and our waiter commented that my leg looked sexy, a compliment that would carry my confidence for the next five years.
Our next and final destination was a crowded karaoke bar. A glass of champagne seemed like just the thing to prolong the desensitizing buzz I was maintaining, and the bride-to-be put in a request for “You Oughta Know” by Alanis Morissette. When her turn at the mic came up, she brought down the house. People went berserk, and I put my phone in selfie mode to film us belting the lyrics. When the line, “Are you thinking of me when you fuck her?!” came, we screamed it out like rebellious junior highers. I posted the moment to my Instagram story with reckless abandon.
At 3 a.m., we arrived back to the hotel room. While my younger sisters went downstairs to smoke, I put on my pajamas, brushed my teeth, and flossed.
After climbing under the blessed covers and beginning to drift off, my maternal nature kicked in one last time, and I pictured all the creepos that would approach my pretty, young, drunk sisters on the streets of Chicago in the wee hours of the night. As my eyes began to close, I blearily composed a simple text message to them: Please come back and head to bed. :) ❤
In the morning, after confirming that my sisters had in fact returned to the hotel room, my first thought was the Instagram story of me screaming “fuck.” I quickly logged in and deleted it.
The rest of the group slowly began coming to and getting ready to leave. As I dressed, a sense of relief washed over me that it was over, I’d had fun, and I had held my own with this fresh-faced crew, closing down the bar with the best of them. Hard decisions lay ahead for me, but, I had begun to see, that’s life at any age.
The following day, I reunited with my family and slept in later than I had in three years. Back in the familiar comfort of my house, my husband never looked more appealing, my daughter never seemed like more of a gift, and my PB blanket never felt so good.
