I saw that Diane Keaton-Jack Nicholson movie “Something’s Gotta Give” and about 10 minutes before it ended, I started talking to the TV screen. “You better not take the old guy back, it better not end that way.”
Jack Nicholson is alone on the bridge in Paris and I am just hoping the movie will do something shockingly original and truer to life and leave the sorry bastard there, but noooo! Unbelievable! Diane Keaton dumps the adoring, younger man—who is a doctor!!! And he seems fine with it! In a scene we don’t see because it would be a complete and utter falsehood, Keanu Reeves supposedly tells her he senses she truly loves the old guy and it’s okay to dump him on the spot and run to the man—the man who has not been able to commit to a relationship in 63 years, dates only younger women, and caused Keaton to weep during most of the middle of the movie.
This movie was such stupid trash. A more realistic and uplifting movie about senior love is one of my favorites, a Walter Matthau-Glenda Jackson film called “House Calls.” The widowed doctor Matthau briefly tries dating younger women, but once he meets Jackson, there is no going back. The comedy conflict comes from his being forced to temporarily pretend to be interested in a rich young widow to keep her from suing the hospital and protect his incompetent boss. Jackson is not in on the ruse at first and becomes offended, but Matthau woos her back. Unlike Nicholson, he never had a doubt the older woman was the right one for him.
Part of my shouting at Keaton’s stupid decision may stem from the fact that I’m in a May-December relationship. In fact, I’ve been in two, once as May and now as December. It’s always the better deal for the December person, so my recommendation is go younger.
There is a danger the May person may prove fickle. After 17 years of marriage to someone 13 years older, we just weren’t at the same place when I was 40 and he was 53. My son had left home and I now wanted to do things, a lot of things: move, change careers, something. He didn’t want to do anything. I found other people to do things with, and within a year, he didn’t seem necessary anymore and I no longer cared about him. I doubt he ever really cared about me as a person. I was the facilitator of his situation, not a person he enjoyed being with, otherwise, he might have tried being with me.
He was ill and cranky all the time and I couldn’t foresee how long I’d have to be his nurse and how much of my life I’d have to sacrifice to be his nurse, so I bailed out, giving up my rights to everything. I forfeited my furniture, his insurance, pension, everything. It turned out he only had nine more years before his smoking and drinking turned into fatal cancer, and then it would have been over for me and I would be sitting on a sizable nest egg now. But who can see into the future? And nine years is very long when it's in front of you...not so long at all when it's behind you.
Instead, I spent most of the 1990s on food stamps, racking up credit card debt, working terrible jobs, and trying to learn new skills and get back into a competitive job market on my own. I discovered men my age who were single were single for a very good reason. They were closet homosexuals, or unable to commit to anything, chronic Peter Pans still waiting for Wendy to rescue them, or just unfit for human companionship.
When I was 45, I met a 30-year-old man who was still single due to being a musician, i.e. poor and seldom available for a date on Friday or Saturday, a combination that appeals only to young women who don’t mind sitting alone in a bar every weekend while their date plays music. At first it was just a adventure for me, but month after month, he was still there, as if he were in a relationship, and after a few years, I accepted that we probably were if he thought we were. When I was 50 and he was 35, we got married. We needed some legality. He needed someone to straighten out his finances who wasn’t his mom and I needed a next of kin who wasn’t my son. Check back in 15 years and we’ll see how this is working out. (Update: 2022, still working out.)
There's always the gamble my younger husband will do to me what I did to my older husband. I have to hope he's a better person than I am.
Meanwhile, the movie ends with a happy family scene of Keaton and Nicholson out to dinner with her daughter’s family. Let me write the real ending. Having already had a mild heart attack, Jack’s health declines and Diane becomes his nurse. Then he dies. At most, they have a few short years together, mostly going back and forth to the hospital. Now she’s single again and even older. Meanwhile, Dr. Keanu has married another, smarter old woman. Tough luck, Diane. Listen to me next time I'm yelling at you through the TV screen.
