From the time I was 10, I’ve been obsessed with what it means to grow older. I’m curious about what it means to others, of all ages, and so I invite them to take “The Oldster Magazine Questionnaire.”

Here, novelist EJ Levy responds. - Sari Botton

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How old are you?

Old enough to not want to answer this question…

Is there another age you associate with yourself in your mind? If so, what is it? And why, do you think?

Not anymore. In my early 40s, I realized that I felt 37; really specifically 37. Not thirty-something. And it occurred to me at the time that it must be because 37 was the age at which I finally felt that I’d come into myself. That was the age at which the person I’d imagined (and hoped) I might be and the person I was coincided; my beloved and I had built with friends a tiny house together in Taos; I’d published my first essay in Orion and had recently quit my day job (as outreach coordinator for a grassroots, multicultural, environmental-protection group) to go to graduate school for creative writing, all at 37. I felt like my life was beginning, my real life, with the person I hoped to spend my life with, doing the work that I felt I was meant for…

Of course, it didn’t turn out as I expected, but for a moment my imaginings intersected reality at 37…

These days I feel sort of agnostic in regard to age; I don’t entirely believe in it.

Do you feel old for your age? Young for your age? Just right? Are you in step with your peers?

I’m likely young for my age. My tastes and habits often coincide with those of people 10 or 15 years younger than I am (at least judging by those New York Times pieces that talk about demographic trends—but maybe believing those pieces in the NYT is the most geriatric thing of all, so…). Maybe that’s just another way of saying that I’m 15 years behind my peers in terms of maturity?

Like a lot of queer people, I came to what I love late, so I’m doing things now that straight friends did a decade or more ago: having a child, getting married, publishing books…I’ve come to all of that really late. I got pregnant by accident late in life and now have an 8-year-old daughter, even as I am arguably old enough to be a grandmother …. Maybe I don’t look my age? The writer Richard McCann used to say, “You’re only as old as your hair!” So, like him, I dye mine and that maybe helps? But my age is showing more and more—in the skin on the back of my hands, which now recalls my mother’s; in my musical references from the 1990s; in my utter ignorance of current movie stars; in the fact that one popular starlet is the daughter of a friend of a friend….

Like a lot of queer people, I came to what I love late, so I’m doing things now that straight friends did a decade or more ago: having a child, getting married, publishing books…I’ve come to all of that really late.

What do you like about being your age?

Everything except my missing brain.

What is difficult about being your age?

I miss having a fast mind, a brain that could surprise me with what it could do; I miss being smart. I’m not now. And I’m often bone-tired, just exhausted, but I don’t know if that’s aging or just the cluster fuck of the last few years; it’s hard to separate that deep tiredness from parenting with a day job during a pandemic plus book promotion and political-social-legal-climate catastrophes; pretty much everyone is exhausted.

But when I was young, I was often in a state of acute anxiety that made it hard to function much of the time, so even this exhaustion is kind of a relief? I don’t have the buzzy energy that I had even 10 years ago, and I miss that, but it’s amazing not to wake up in dread. To feel this steady, calm gratitude for every fucking day is great (even as menopause bites—it’s like my brain has condensation on it, the glass is so fogged.)

The paperback edition of Levy’s debut novel is now available.

What is surprising about being your age, or different from what you expected, based on what you were told?

How joyous aging is. It is so hard to be young, really hard. At least I found it hard. Just to stay alive was hard.

My grandmother once said that she was shocked whenever she looked in the mirror to see an old woman’s face staring back, because she still felt 16. I don’t think I ever felt 16, even when I was 16; I felt very old when I was young. (I remember being in fourth grade, standing in line to go out to the playground, and thinking, clearly, with horror, “I am a fully adult consciousness trapped in a tiny body”). I loved my 20s and 30s, despite the heartache that those decades were, but the decades since have been so much better: Live long enough for joy to break over you like a storm, a wild sea. Stay alive.

My grandmother once said that she was shocked whenever she looked in the mirror to see an old woman’s face staring back, because she still felt 16. I don’t think I ever felt 16, even when I was 16; I felt very old when I was young.

What has aging given you? Taken away from you?

Aging has brought back beloved friends from my youth, whom I’d feared I’d lost, but it has taken others too soon.

It has made me kinder, less competitive, less concerned with judgment and more interested in action.

I finally understand why my parents did some of the weird shit they did, not all of it, but some.

It has taken away some of my fear and with it my edge, which I miss.

How has getting older affected your sense of yourself, or your identity?

I’m surprised every day to be mistaken for a het suburban mom, when for much of my adult life I was taken for a man.

As an androgynous lesbian—devoted to wearing that NY writers’ uniform of suitcoat, t-shirt, jeans, boots, with short hair and a deep voice—I often felt like a force walking around Brooklyn or Manhattan or Minneapolis. I experienced a lot of male privilege frankly, and it was a pleasure. Now, it’s weird to be treated like someone’s Mom (which, to be fair, I am); it’s still startling to be dismissed, talked over, ignored, patronized. It’s almost funny. But not quite.

I’ve always liked being non-normative, but I flinch sometimes on the playground or in the park when a parent asks about my life or my work and I feel like I have to come out of the closet all over again in a million ways. Sometimes I’ll look at a young parent and think, “When you were in a onesie, I was a Lesbian Avenger in Park Slope tossing stink bombs into elevators to protest homophobic policies.”

I sometimes feel like I’m in psychic drag; who I am and was is so incongruous with the spaces that I currently inhabit. And yet with people I know well and love, I am deeply myself in a way that I didn’t know would be possible when I was younger. All the pieces fit now.

I’ve always liked being non-normative, but I flinch sometimes on the playground or in the park when a parent asks about my life or my work and I feel like I have to come out of the closet all over again in a million ways.

What are some age-related milestones you are looking forward to? Or ones you “missed,” and might try to reach later, off-schedule, according to our culture and its expectations?

There are so many things I want to write yet, so many things I want to accomplish. But I’m so far off schedule that I don’t think of them as age-related milestones…I mean, I’d love to be among Granta’s Best Young American Novelists, but I think that ship has sailed…maybe they’ll launch Best Very-Late-to-Debut American Novelists?

Maybe that’s one of the gifts of age: I don’t think about age as much anymore, not as I did when I was young. Then, life was like an alarm clock that I feared would go off, or maybe like a bomb; I felt I had to do things by a certain time or age or I’d fail. Life as timed exam. It was such a weird way to think about one’s days. It seems preposterous now. All that worry. All that time wasted on worry. [When there’s really just this remarkable too-brief treasure of time and what we’re going to do with it.]

What has been your favorite age so far, and why? Would you go back to this age if you could?

This is it. This un-nameable age. I mean, I wish I were still smart and that I still had a fast mind, but on balance this is joy, despite the mess of the world.

Is there someone who is older than you, who makes growing older inspiring to you? Who is your aging idol and why?

Yeah, many artists and writers who keep (or kept) making extraordinary work inspire me—Laurie Anderson, Isamu Noguchi, Cal Bedient, Louise Bourgeois, Werner Herzog, Barbara Kruger, O’Keeffe, Andrew Holleran, Edmund White, Louise Erdrich, Toni Morrison, Monet, Agnes Martin, Phillip Roth, Eileen Myles. Above all, Taos poet Sawnie Morris and painter Brian Shields, whose lives are a collaborative work of art; and brilliant Maureen Stanton. But honestly, I’m inspired by brilliant artists and writers of any age, they’re the tutors I look to: Chimamanda Adichie; Kirstin Valdez Quade; Garth Greenwell, Leslie Silko, to name a few. Inspiration has no age.

I experienced a lot of male privilege frankly, and it was a pleasure. Now, it’s weird to be treated like someone’s Mom (which, to be fair, I am); it’s still startling to be dismissed, talked over, ignored, patronized. It’s almost funny. But not quite.

What aging-related adjustments have you recently made, style-wise, beauty-wise, health-wise?

I have begun to lift weights (sigh) and to exercise; I have learned to apply makeup, occasionally, for Zoom events.

What’s an aging-related adjustment you refuse to make, and why?

I will not give up obsession, literary or otherwise. Or fierce political arguments. Great sex. Bikinis. Blasting music in my car. Reading all night into the wee hours. I will not give up strong coffee late at night.

What’s your philosophy on celebrating birthdays as an adult? How do you celebrate yours?

We used to celebrate in wild hot springs in New Mexico, with sparkling wine, naked. In fact we celebrated weekly with sparkling wine, as I recall, as bacon, eggs, and coffee heavy with cream each morning. Now yearly birthdays don’t get much love, but I try to make the day meaningful—writing, reading, good company, good food and better wine. The decadal birthdays matter most now—I like to go somewhere memorable, to set the tone for the decade to come: for my 30th I went to Noguchi’s sculpture museum; for my 40th, my partner and I traveled to see an exhibit on artistic rivalries; for my 50th I hiked alone to the top of a mountain I’d never before climbed. Each seemed fitting.

Maybe that’s one of the gifts of age: I don’t think about age as much anymore, not as I did when I was young. Then, life was like an alarm clock that I feared would go off, or maybe like a bomb; I felt I had to do things by a certain time or age or I’d fail. Life as timed exam.

Final unsolicited opinion:

May I just add that this questionnaire is wonderful; I feel like it’s a thing everyone should answer, maybe annually or every decade; it recalls a bit those “36 questions to fall in love with anyone,” except these questions help you fall back in love with time itself, and maybe with yourself, just a little bit. Aging is so crazy hard in our crazy youth-obsessed culture. These questions—for me anyway—help me recognize that I love this age, this time, this life, the chance to maybe help save the beautiful vulnerable world and make things and see beloved people and great art, now and now and now. Your questionnaire is a bit like Plath’s necessary reminder: “That old brag of the heart, I am, I am, I am.” Thank you for Oldster and for including me.

EJ Levy’s debut novel, The Cape Doctor (Little Brown, 2021), was named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, one of Barnes & Noble’s Best Books of Summer 2021, and won a 2022 Colorado Book Award; editions are forthcoming in French, Spanish, and Italian. The paperback edition is out in August. Her story collection, Love, In Theory, won a Flannery O’Connor Award and GLCA New Writers Award for Fiction and was published in French; Kirkus named it a Best Indie Book of 2013. It was a finalist for the Edmund White and Lambda Literary Award. Levy’s anthology, Tasting Life Twice: Literary Lesbian Fiction by New American Writers, won a Lambda Award. Her work has received a Pushcart Prize, among other honors, and has appeared in The Paris Review, Best American Essays, The New York Times, Orion, and twice been named among Distinguished Stories in Best American Short Stories. She recently resigned her position as an Associate Professor in the MFA Program at Colorado State University to write full time.

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This is ??: EJ Levy Responds to The Oldster…