Even if you want it, divorce is about as much fun as running your tongue along the edge of a new razor blade. It also leaves a similarly painful wound. My divorce was no different. Overnight the once solid furniture of my life had been rearranged. And the dream of a happy ending had vanished like smoke on the wind.
So, I did what every newly untethered, fifty-something divorcee would do -- I moved to Vegas.
In retrospect, I have no idea why moving to Sin City sounded like a good plan. Maybe it wasn't so much a plan as a blind leap, like hurling myself off a cliff. Vegas had never been on my to-do list. Oh, I'd been there . . . once. As I recall I'd been overwhelmed by Siegfried and Roy's show and underwhelmed by everything else.
Maybe I moved to Vegas because it was different. For a girl raised in the South during the last gasp of the Donna Reed era, Vegas was as close to Somewhere Over the Rainbow as it was possible to get. Perhaps I'd gone temporarily 'round the bend. Maybe my move was a desperate cry, a shout into the darkness to the me I used to be. Who knows?
What I do know is that the rules that had governed my existence no longer applied. In light of the fact that the bedrock of my life had recently crumbled beneath my feet, this struck me as a good thing. Disconcerting, but good.
I remember standing in front of my new little condo, which was a third the size of the house I'd left, with all I had in the world stacked in boxes on the driveway, and thinking, This is it? This is all I have to show for all the years I've put in?
Yup, that was it -- the sum total, of a life I'd left behind. I called the Goodwill folks and gave it all away. Well, except for a handful of clothes -- and those didn't last long.
My first big dinner out in Vegas was at the restaurant with some friends I had known "before" -- before marriage, before divorce -- old, old friends. They were already seated at the Coyote Café when I arrived. Without preamble or social grace, my girlfriend gave her husband a knowing look then said to me, "Honey, those clothes have got to go. You look so . . . East Coast. In Vegas, preppie just screams clueless."
Well, if it looks like a duck . . .
I smiled at the waiter perched expectantly at my elbow. "A gin and tonic, no tonic, please."
While I gulped my drink, I surreptitiously watched the people around me. Most of the outfits I saw would've been appropriate for working the street corners back in Dallas. A grin tickled my lips. This could be fun.
At some point in the evening, my friend and I excused ourselves and headed toward the bathroom. We followed a short woman with long blond hair tottering on five-inch heels. She wore fishnet hose and a Lycra mini so short that dignity, if she had any, would necessitate remaining in an upright position. A leather biker jacket with the face of Elvis pieced together in multi-colored suede on the back completed her ensemble. Needless to say, she turned heads all the way across the casino.
I elbowed my friend, "Is that how I should dress?"
Apparently I'd had too many gins with no tonic, as the woman turned at what I thought was my whisper.
She was eighty, if she was a day.
In an instant, I sobered. Man, even the octogenarians rocked mini-skirts and knock-me-down-and-f@#k-me shoes. Humiliated, I looked with scorn at my khakis and cashmere cardigan and felt . . . hope.
I needed new. I craved new.
New clothes seemed like a good place to start.
So, I designed a budget and a plan of attack. A new skirt here. A pair of skinny jeans there. I had to wait for a sale to buy that killer pair of stilettos, but eventually they, too found their way into my tiny closet.
Growing bolder, one day I spied a cute figure in a tennis skirt with a matching sweater bending over the meat display at the local supermarket. Having just joined a tennis league, I thought I could use an ensemble like that. I tapped my fellow tennis enthusiast on the shoulder. "Excuse me. Sorry to bother you. But could you tell me where you bought your outfit?"
The figure turned. It was a guy . . . with great legs.
I didn't bat an eye. I noted the name of the store, thanked him profusely, then went shopping. With each new acquisition, I pitched an old one, until none remained. All that glittered was new . . . literally.
Slowly, like a chick pecking at the shell, a new me pushed her way into the light. Who knew that changing the outer would change the inner as well? Yes, I've found the me I was meant to be . . . in Sin City. I try not to overanalyze that.
The other night, I came downstairs in a slinky, off-one-shoulder, fitted dress with a rather strategic cut-out . . . oh, and those kick-ass shoes. The new man in my life whistled and said, "Back where I come from, that is a stay-at-home dress. But, you look amazing."
I took in his East Coast attire-- double-breasted blue blazer, creased gray slacks and loafers-- and grinned. Hooking my arm though his, I whispered, "Welcome to the new me."