Too Late for Jenna Jameson

Recollection: A warm Summer afternoon in 1999.....sat at my kitchen table, feeding my big baby boy in his high chair, Jim next to me, awaiting the arrival of Norma’s sister, Lois, who had recently flown in from Las Vegas to take care of some business. Norma had been Jim’s mistress of about thirty years and had died four years earlier. She had spent most of her adult life living in a mobile home in one of Jim’s trailer parks. Several years before in Jim’s office, I asked her how she liked living in "the park," and she said she really loved it, loved her "house" (it was an extra long model), and there was a concrete pad on the side which she called her "patio." She said she loved to sit out there and take in the "water view" which, I believe, was a small stream that ran through the park. And her married boyfriend of so many years was a multi-millionaire who, at some point, made her the manager of that mobile home park. She lived simply enough, played Bingo at the fire station in town (I saw her there once....she sat in the smoking section and was cordial with me...my friend and I sat across from her but had to politely move to another table because we couldn’t stand the cigarette smoke and joked with each other about how all those women will probably get cancer, smoking like that). She was content to have whatever he chose to give her. According to him, though, when his wife became very ill with dementia, Norma demanded that he finally leave her and move in with Norma....or somehow be with her full-time. He refused, telling her that he had to at that time devote himself entirely to caring for his ailing wife. He told her to date other people. She took up with the painter who himself much later told me he had wanted to marry her. They once took a trip together to Florida, on a bus, and from their motel room–according to Jim–she telephoned him during lovemaking so Jim could hear....tried to make him jealous. According to the painter some years later, however, it was Jim who repeatedly called them in their motel room to upset her, to upset the painter and just, generally, to spoil their good time. And then I came along and changed everything (apparently). He did what he swore he would never do. We bought a house and he came to live with me. A few years later, we had this enormous baby with blue eyes who Jim chose to name after himself (I had referred to my son, in utero, as Elvis and after a while, with no input from his father about name selection, had decided Elvis was as good a name as any....) and then, there we were, sitting at the kitchen table waiting for Lois and Margaret, Jim’s granddaughter.

I recall another warm Summer afternoon, before we lived together or were even close to considering that idea, when he picked me up at my office to take me out for lunch. We walked up the alley toward the parking lot, and I saw Norma sitting there in her car. He said, "Stay here, darlin’," and approached her car. I couldn’t hear what they said to each other, but I saw him give her a wad of money before she drove away. I don’t think anyone–even Norma–knew what, if anything, was going on with us at that time. I doubt that either of us even understood or imagined what would come in the future. But at that moment, I understood that she was still attached to him and I felt bad, coming in the way I had and when I did....especially when it was all so inappropriate anyway. I understood, too, –but much later– that she had given most of her life to him, that she had loved him so much that she considered him worth waiting for all those years, so many years, loving and waiting for someone who ultimately did not, of his own will, come through for her. It was tragic. I can never forget it. Jim was full of promises. Some he kept, others he ignored or pretended to forget about. And then she got cancer in her liver, turned yellow and passed away. Her viewing was at one of the funeral homes on Main Street, in town. Jim came into my office after he had visited there. Just sat across from me and looked devastated. I felt awful, confused, sad for him for this loss....wondering if he was plagued with guilt....for making promises that he chose not to honor, for being here with me, for loving someone where it was just all wrong. Is love ever wrong? Must be because often, clearly, even love is not enough.

Her funeral was in the middle of Pennsylvania, where she was from, and Jim drove out there in the snow with Frances Puleo to attend. Once, several years later, on a trip to another place in the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania to visit one of his mobile home businesses, we stopped at the little cemetery where Norma is buried. He asked if I "minded" if he got out to go see. I said no, of course not. How could I have minded? He insisted that I go with him. So I did. We walked, holding hands, over to her grave sight. There were plastic flowers on top. I felt helpless. And very scared. This poor woman who loved this man for so many, many years...this man, whose hand I was tightly squeezing, trying to contain my tears, trying to understand and not to understand.

So anyway.....back to the original recollection....

Earlier that morning, Jim announced that Lois was coming to have lunch with us, so before she arrived, he went out in his pick-up truck to get hoagies. The wrapped hoagies, smelling of onions and lunch meat, were just waiting to be opened on the table. I was so hungry. While I fed our baby (food from a jar) and waited for Margaret and Lois, Jim matter-of-factly mentioned that Lois had been with many, many men and that, (apparently) because of that, she had recently had a "vagina lift"--or, the way Jim said it with his Southern drawl--a "vahjahna lift, darlin'." "A what?" "Vajahna lift, darlin'." "What the hell are you trying to say?" I asked. He said "That's what happens to ladies who get older. Their vahjahnas need liftin', I guess. Like some ladies get a face lift." At no point in my thirty-four years had I ever even considered that such surgery existed or could ever be necessary. I wondered what a vagina lift entailed, wondered if I would need one at a later time....or even at that time.

Last year, while fishing on the internet for Al Sharpton remarks following the Don Imus incident, I was somehow mysteriously directed to another area on the site which contained an article about the botched vaginoplasty of Jenna Jameson, the porn star who, at that time, was only in her early thirties. That really got me thinking....maybe Jim knew what he was talking about...it wasn’t just an old-age thing. Maybe it depends on use, multiple partners....I don’t know. Via e-mail, I shared my questions and concerns about the Jenna Jameson web site with my friend, Mark Turner, who responded thus:

I get Physician's First Watch, which is an email review of medical journal articles and other news. On 9/4/07 they had an article about a news release from the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists. ACOG is now strongly advising against "designer vaginoplasty," marketed to women as a way to "enhance genital appearance and sexual gratification," and suggesting that many women develop insecurities because they do not realize the "wide variation in the appearance of normal genitalia." I assume that publicity surrounding the Jenna Jamison medical problems had a role in motivating them to issue this statement, but it's a bit late to help her.

Apparently, people were taking this issue very seriously.

So anyway....I had been sort of concerned about how Lois would deal with seeing Jim (who had been romantically involved with her sister for thirty years and kept her in a mobile home the entire time) and me, way (way) younger, and with Jim’s big baby and in a big house several miles from the mobile home park. I felt crazy. The situation simultaneously contained humor and pathos. In my mind, I contrived an exit strategy, a way out if things became too weird after Lois appeared. I told Jim I might have to leave the Lois visit early because I had something to do at work. Immediately after, Margaret and Lois arrived. Margaret said hello, greeted the baby and then left. Norma's sister took a good look at me, at my child in his high chair, at our house...and wouldn’t you know....she didn’t even flinch or hesitate...just seemed a bit put out and declared "My Lord, if Margaret hadn't driven me, I would have never been able to get here by myself. It's like a maze back here!" "Take a hoagie, darlin'," offered Jim, pressing one into her hand. I took mine and went out the back door.