For One Night I Was Important Again. Thank You Armistead Maupin

By Barbara Falconer Newhall

I was popular. No, it was better than that. For one magical evening, I was important. Important! People were coming up to me wanting to talk. They wanted to hear what I had to say. I told my jokes, dished out my opinions, and people listened. They took me seriously. It seemed I was important, somebody who mattered.

I had forgotten what it’s like to be important.

I know what you’re thinking. Authentic self-esteem does not depend on externals like the New York Times best-seller list or other people’s willingness to talk to you at a party. Everybody can and should lay claim to a healthy sense of self-worth because — just because. Everybody is important. Every human life matters. Every person, young and perky or old and rickety, is a thing of beauty.  Blah. Blah. Blah.

And I’m telling you, it’s not like that. Not when you and your body have moved into life’s final quarter. You’ve left the job market. The kids have moved to London, New Zealand, Romania. (I’m serious. I’ve seen it happen.) The world out there doesn’t depend on you any more. Not like it used to.

You blend into the background now, and so does your body. Your bust line blends into your waistline, which merges with your hips, which can’t be distinguished from your thighs. And you in general kinda disappear as all the important people in the room chat each other up with a vigor that you’d rather not have to summon, thank you.

The only person who notices whether you’ve gotten out of bed in the morning these days is your spouse.

If you’ve got a spouse, that is. And I recommend having one. Here’s one good reason why: I slept in till 11 a.m. the other day, thanks to an over-enthusiastic antihistamine. Jon was alarmed, so much so that he finally peeked into the bedroom to make sure I wasn’t dead. Jon was not overreacting. He was astutely playing the odds. When you’ve got 75 years to your credit and you’re still out flat at 11 a.m., odds are you aren’t sleeping off the previous night’s excesses. There’s a good chance you’ve breathed your last.

Spouses can come in handy in situations like this. Who wants to be dead and stinky for weeks and weeks before the neighbors notice and call the health department?

A Soirée for Armistead Maupin

But back to that magical evening when I was so, so popular and to that soirée of cool people who folded me cheerfully into their glamorous circle, if only for a night.

• People like Armistead Maupin, in whose honor this party was being held in San Francisco’s Castro District. It would be followed by a screening at the Castro Theater of the prize-winning documentary, “The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin.” Armistead greeted me with hugs and smiles and listened to the latest gossip about

  

  our former colleagues at the San Francisco Chronicle. It was at the Chronicle that, back in the 1970s, he composed in daily installments — and I copy edited — the first of his “Tales of the City” novels.

• People like the adorable Jonathan Groff of TV’s “Looking” fame. (Also “Glee,” “Hamilton” and “Frozen”). This cool young actor actually wanted to hear about my wrestlings with God. Who won the match, he wanted to know? And how? Imagine that.
• People like the director Jennifer Kroot, who had come to my house to interview me for the documentary. Also, the film’s editor/co-director Bill Weber, who watched endless iterations of Jennifer’s interview with me, and decided not to leave me weeping on the cutting room floor.
• People like the very congenial Amy Tan, who chatted away in the Castro Theater’s green room before the screening — not with me exactly, but with the aforementioned attentive spouse. Jon, a novelist wannabe, plied the famous author with writing questions for a full ten or fifteen minutes. Meanwhile, I had the fun of visiting with Amy’s debonair husband, a tax attorney, Louis DeMattei.

You get the picture. It was a convivial evening. I felt appreciated and acknowledged for

a night. But here’s the take-away: years have gone by since I last held down a job or dropped a 12-year-old off at choir practice. I had not noticed how unimportant I had become — to think I was. I had gotten used to fading into the background at social events, at conferences, at the gym, the supermarket.

For quite a number of years, in my youth and middle age, I was important. As a newspaper reporter I’d had some clout in the world; my phone calls got answered. As the mother of small children, I laid down the law on matters large and small — Coco Puffs vs. Cheerios, football vs. soccer. As my body and I slid into life’s final quarter, however, I gradually forgot what it’s like to be — OK, to feel —  important.

I Was Important That Night. Or Was I?

Later that evening, over at the Castro Theater, an audience of 1400 assembled to see “The Untold Tales of Armistead Maupin.” After the movie, Jennifer introduced the cast and crew. I went first, and when I stood up, hundreds of

people turned in their seats to get a look at me. They applauded. I’m not kidding. They applauded.

I loved it. I was important. Was I more important than I had been on the day I slept till 11 a.m. with no one but my husband to notice? Was I just getting an ever-so-fleeing high from all those eyes looking at me like I was somebody?

Was I important, really? I didn’t know and I didn’t care. I loved it.

More about Armistead Maupin at “I Landed a Bit Part in a Real Movie. Thank You, Armistead Maupin.”  Also, “The Man Who Wrote the Quintessential San Francisco Novel on a Newspaper Deadline.”