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The Viagra Diaries

LIST PRICE $19.99

About The Book

A funny, fearless, and inspiring novel about dating after the age of sixty.

THE NOVEL THAT PROVES THERE’S PLENTY OF LIFE—AND HOT SEX—AFTER SIXTY!

Just because Anny Applebaum qualifies for a senior discount doesn’t mean she’s ready for retirement. But if she wants to keep her job at the San Francisco Times, she’ll have to find a way to spice up her lifestyle column. Even if it means posting her profile as an eligible single on JDate .com. Sure, Anny’s a little out of practice. She hasn’t been with a man since she found Viagra in her ex-husband’s suit pocket, and he wasn’t taking it for her. But she’s got her friends to help her fumble her way through the strange and intriguing world of online dating.

After hearing cautionary tales from the trenches—about “boomer oldies” who drag around pictures of their dead wives and fixed-income misers who wine and dine their dates at chain restaurants—Anny is relieved to meet Marv Rothstein, a charming . . . 75-year-old diamond dealer. Unfortunately, he’s also a Digital Age Don Juan who prowls singles sites for younger women. Not be outdated by this “Serial JDater,” Anny realizes Marv is the perfect subject for her flagging column and chronicles his sexcapades for the reading public. But when the new column becomes an overnight hit, Anny can’t help but feel conflicted—because now she’s having sex with Mr. X . . . and it’s nothing less than extraordinary.

Excerpt

The Viagra Diaries Chapter 1
Van Gogh’s Starry Night blows my mind. God, it’s something, swirling stars, wild emotions, and vibrant colors. Wow, there’s nothing like art.

Anyway, my name is Anny Applebaum. I’m sixty-five and I write a seniors’ lifestyle column for the San Francisco Times. I’m at the San Francisco Museum of Contemporary Art, taking notes for my next column. I usually write about restaurants, gyms, social events, stuff like that, but I’m hoping a column about art will be more inspiring.

It’s getting late, so I hurry down the flight of stairs, into the huge marble lobby with all these terrific Calders swinging around, and rush outside. It’s raining like crazy and I lost my umbrella so I make a run for it, careful not to fall in my four-inch, leather, high-heel boots. It’s rush hour and people are opening umbrellas, hurrying onto streetcars. God, the city is beautiful, all these hills surrounding the bay. A native, I never get tired of the city. It’s like living inside one of those little glass balls you shake up.

By now I’m soaked, walking along the sides of the buildings to Union Square, thinking I’ll get the next bus home, but the rain is harder and lightning streaks the sky. I hurry into a café, deciding to stay there until the storm stops.

The café is small and cozy. A few people sit at tables, working on their laptops. I take off my coat and fedora, shaking out the rain, and sit next to the window. I order a cup of coffee, thinking I’ll take notes for tomorrow’s column, but my cell phone rings. It’s my editor, Monica. I’ve been a columnist at the paper for five years and she rarely calls, so I know something must be up. “Hello,” I exuberantly say.

“Bad news,” Monica says quickly, before I get a word in. She’s on speakerphone, and I can picture her smoking a cigarette. “Sales are down big-time at the paper.”

“Tomorrow’s column is going to be great,” I quickly say in my most assuring tone. “I’m writing about van Gogh and that the museum is a place for seniors to—”

“Anny, our seniors are in diapers. They don’t know from van Gogh. There’s no market for seniors. Unless you find some new angle, some controversy, I have to cut the column,” Monica says in her fast voice.

“Seniors write me that they’re tired of ageism and being put into an age category. Stuff like that,” I say, trying not to sound upset.

“Unless the San Francisco Times is making money, fans mean nothing,” Monica snaps. “Nada. I can’t run ‘Seniors and Politics.’ You mostly talk about your antiwar views and how the world is messed up.”

“I only said that I thought the Iraq war was a waste, and that seniors should protest and get involved.”

“You’re not Christiane Amanpour. If we wanted a political commentator, we’d hire one. I warned you to tone down your opinions. You accused the Happy Convalescent Home of terrible conditions! I’ve received calls from the owner of the paper. And she’s a moron.”

I bite my tongue, fighting the urge to tell Monica that I’m a senior too and that I don’t like the way she’s talking about seniors but warning myself not to burn bridges. “I hate the label senior. I hate all labels: gay, straight, senior citizen.” I argue in my nicest tone. “I’m sixty-five, but I’m not a senior. I’m a person. As soon as you’re fifty, if you don’t like look like one of those drippy housewives of Orange County, you’re relegated to assisted living. I’d like to write about ageism. That’s controversial.”

“Hey, girl. No one wants to read about getting old. Nor do our readers want to read about seniors acting like John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. Most of our seniors are in wheelchairs, recovering from strokes. If you don’t come up with something hot, and controversial, I have to let you go.”

“Sure. No offense, Monica, but you’re thirty-eight and you don’t suffer from age discrimination. Anyway, I’ll come up with something.”

“Hey, Anny. I believe in you. We’ve worked together going on six years. I like you, but I’m taking orders from Bunny Silverman, who thinks this is the New York Times. So come up with something that evokes a huge response. Gotta go.”

After I hang up I feel panicked, my body shaking. I wish I had my paper bag. When I’m nervous I blow into a paper bag. I hold a paper napkin over my mouth, breathing deeply. Please, God, I can’t lose my column. I need the money. As it is, even with Medicare and Social Security, and occasionally selling my paintings, I can hardly make it. Here I am a sixty-five-year-old, divorced columnist with no money, and sleeping on a sofa bed. But I want fame, fortune, and undying love. I want it all. And I’m sick of everyone saying I’m too old. Age has nothing to do with dreams.

As long as I can remember, I’ve wanted to be a writer, even imagined myself a famous journalist like Diane Sawyer, standing in the rain in some Godforsaken country, my hair soaked, while the world is crashing behind me, and then rushing to the office to write about it. Sometimes it’s hard to face that so much time has passed and nothing significant has happened.

I order more coffee and watch the cable cars chugging along the hill, remembering the years I spent writing a novel, which I shelved after my marriage, then in my thirties going to graduate school and finishing my master’s in creative writing. Then after my divorce, writing columns for throwaway papers, about socialites, restaurant reviews, real estate. Things were terrible until five years ago, when I pitched Monica—barged into her office, with lists of ideas about seniors, until she said, “Cool it. You’re hired. I like your ideas.”

I watch the rain slide along the windows, remembering the day Donald told me he wanted a divorce. I had found Viagra in Donald’s suit pocket, and when I confronted him about it, he admitted he was having sex with Conchita, our twenty-year-old housekeeper, and demanded a divorce. Then to top it off, he declared bankruptcy, pleading poverty. I got a small settlement and moved to my current apartment in San Francisco. Right after the divorce, he married Conchita and they had two sons. Talk about devastated. And he has yet to contact our daughter, Emily, who at forty-one still waits for his calls. It’s pathetic. I feel bad for Emily. Donald and I weren’t attentive parents. I was always painting or writing and dreaming of a career. Donald was busy with his law practice and buying properties, and early on Emily was forced into the caregiver role.

It stops raining. I pay my bill, wanting to catch the six-thirty bus home, thinking that later tonight I’ll work on my boxes. I make and paint boxes. I have this thing about boxes. I collect them from construction sites, and in them I create little worlds, tiny tableaux that inspire my paintings. But lately I’ve been in a rut and my work feels dull.

I button my black leather coat and hurry outside, running up the hill to Sutter Street, where I catch my bus.

I push myself onto the crowded bus, trying to grab a seat in the front.

“Hey, old lady. Take it easy,” says a pimple-faced boy wearing a smelly parka, taking the seat. I pause for a moment, taken aback, before pushing to the back of the bus and finally getting a seat next to the window.

As the bus rattles slowly along the hills, passing rows of candy-colored Victorian houses, I catch my reflection in the window, wondering if I look old. There are circles under my eyes and my brown hair hangs limp to my shoulders. Hardly like those girls on shampoo ads, their hair so silky it floats. What is old, anyway? In this country, anything over twenty is old. I close my eyes, remembering last week at Emily’s house. She lives in Berkeley with her partner, Harry, a fifty-year-old architect, and their black Lab, Fred. They were urging me to go on JDate, insisting that it was time I met someone. “Before you get too old, Mom, and end up in a nursing home,” Emily said. But I had protested, saying that I didn’t want to meet anyone online. Emily is always worrying about me, telling me what to do. It drives me crazy.

Since the divorce, outside of seeing my best friends, Janet and Lisa—we talk every night on the phone and tell each other everything—and my neighbor Ryan McNally, I don’t go out much. Ryan is ten years younger, and an award-winning photographer for National Geographic. He lives in my building, and nine years ago we met in the laundry room. I had just moved in, and we were waiting for the dryers to finish our wash. We started talking and I found myself telling him about my recent divorce. He confided that he was a widower. We became friends, and when he’s not traveling on assignment, we go to films, museums, art openings, and often critique each other’s work. He knows a lot about art, and we both love art. On weekends he stays at his country house in Sebastopol, where he grows flowers.

The bus stops at Broadway and I get off. Dark now, the moon is starting to spread in the sky. I walk the two blocks to my apartment, pause by the roses in front, remembering that two months ago before Ryan left for Holland, he cut pink roses and instructed me how to cut the stems underwater before I put them in a vase.

I rush into the Moorish lobby, past the fake waterfall, and up the crooked, bumpy flight of steps to my apartment, inhaling the sweet aromas of Persian cooking and Chinese takeout floating along the hallways. I pass the empty apartment across the hall from mine, thinking that I don’t want to die alone on my sofa bed like poor Mrs. Nelson, who was carried out in a body bag and with everyone looking.

I open my door, glad to face the night.

About The Author

Photograph © Billy Winters

Barbara Rose Brooker is currently a teacher at San Francisco State University with a masters in creative writing. She has appeared on the Today show and The Talk and has been featured in the San Francisco Chronicle, Huffington Post, and more. 

Product Details

  • Publisher: Gallery Books (April 30, 2013)
  • Length: 288 pages
  • ISBN13: 9781451688610

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Raves and Reviews

“I love this book! Barbara paints a funny as well as poignant picture of dating, romantic love, parenting an adult daughter, and sex after sixty. Barbara tells the truth and this book vibrates with razor sharp wit!”—Joan Rivers

“A smart, witty, sometimes hilarious coming-of-age novel for and about the boomer generation… This realistic and funny novel will appeal to women of all ages, while men should find it attractively controversial."

– Kirkus

"Anny's restless and sweetly funny search for true love, meaningful work, and a happy family is ageless--and a poignant portrait of a generation that's not yet ready to fade away."

– Publishers Weekly

"A refreshing glimpse at love after 60 . . . The Viagra Diaries is frank, open, honest, and fun."

– Booklist

"This book is truly unique and rings with truth. It is both delightful, smart and filled with humor and humanity. I couldn't put it down."—Dianne Baker, Actor, Producer, and Director of Motion Pictures and Television at Academy of Art University

"Barbara Brooker's incisive portrait of male-female relations today is suffused with ageless charm, candor and humor. A delightfully fluent, readable book."—Janine Canan, author of Messages from Amma

I love this book! I love that Anny Applebaum defies the fallacy of age. I laughed out loud at the irreverent humor and wit. But most of all, I love Anny's struggle to find herself and her essence and the fabulous love affair she has with Marv Rothstein. Through it all she discovers she can have it all: love, laughs, fame, fortune, and sex. Thank you, Barbara, for giving women another example of what's possible.

– Sally Kellerman, actor and singer

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