GERRY BOSWELL
WASHINGTON SQUARE PARK
When Hattie Wiener was 6 years old, her mother took her to a bathhouse in Brighton Beach. Looking up at all that naked flesh, she vowed to never age. Of course, she says, “that vow cannot take effect because one ages.” So she made another vow, that if the universe revealed the secrets of youth, beauty, and sexuality, she would spread the gospel to others. Now, at 83, she isn’t looking for the elixir of youth. “You have to realize that you have been given an embodiment on this planet, and it’s your responsibility to take care of it like a work of art.”
Ever since her divorce three decades ago, she has been sleeping with much younger men, in their 20s and 30s. “The opposite of old is not young; the opposite of old is new.” That’s one of her many “Hattietudes”; another is to be “uninsultable. If you know you cannot be insulted, then why do you have to protect yourself?” To be open and vulnerable means dropping the masks we’ve hidden behind for so long. “With elderly people, I look into their eyes and I see the child they once were. That child hasn’t gone anywhere.”
The child who grew up in “poor Williamsburg” became a therapist in 1985. “And then I realized it was sexuality and aging that they were interested in—that’s what the patients needed.” Dating culture these days is all about the “fuck and flee,” she acknowledges, so we might as well accept the reality and work with it. Once, on a whim, she entered an over-50 swimsuit contest at the Roseland Ballroom and won. She was in the Daily News the next day being compared to Cher. A few years ago, a client encouraged her to try out for a Dolce & Gabbana ad campaign that was looking for a “sexy older woman in a bathing suit.” She landed the gig and ended up in Vogue, wearing her own gold one-shoulder suit.
For those who find her lifestyle vulgar, she challenges, “What could be more respectful than allowing someone else to appreciate you?” She’s been in love several times. “I’m a romantic, like from the old movies. I really cherish it.” For a moment, she goes to a dreamy, far-off place. “We slept naked, entwined, the entire time.” So she’s still looking, and, no, she’s not afraid to love again, not to mention she’s got “a great tongue and mouth.”
Gerry boswell burrows his hands in his jacket and smiles, radiating warmth and a restrained sadness. He had just left the South Tower when the North Tower fell. He recalls being evacuated by security and stepping outside to see people falling from the sky in his peripheral vision. One of his close friends, Eamon McEneaney, died that day. Eamon was the second friend Gerry has lost in a fire: Mike Keeley, his roommate in Syracuse, died in a house fire. They had worked together at RJ O’Toole’s Restaurant, these friends. Gerry’s the last one standing, and he often wonders, Why me?
Gerry was born in upper Manhattan. “I’ve been to San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, the Caribbean, Europe. All over. But there’s just something about the people here, the diversity in New York that’s different from other places.” He worked as a broker for a firm on John Street selling the euro, but soon after 9/11, the economy tanked and he was laid off. A colleague’s sister worked at MTV. She met with Gerry and suggested he try acting. He landed his first gig—a commercial for a personal-injury law firm—a month later. He has been acting ever since: movies, TV, commercials, voiceovers, whatever he can get. The work’s not consistent, but he makes do. “People walking around so bitter,” he says. “I want to tell them, ‘You’re alive. You’re here. You can always do something to make your life or somebody else’s better.’ ” Like checking in once a week on his friend, a homeless man in his 80s who is too proud to go to a shelter. “When I go to bed at night, I ask myself, ‘Did I do anything to upset someone today?’ I try to keep my side of the street clean.”