I’m gonna tell you the truth.
I lied. A lot.
Okay, that’s a lie.
I lied all the time.
I lied to survive. And I lied because it seemed as if nobody wanted to hear the truth. I just told people what they wanted to hear. I also lied by withholding information, which is another kind of lie. Here’s one of those.
Once, during the dark days of my marriage, I decided to surprise my wife with a bottle of champagne. Things had been sort of unraveling, and I thought a romantic evening might help us turn the ship around. I didn’t know that by then the ship had already crashed and was taking on water like the Titanic, but . . .
Anyway, to enhance the romance, I popped a little blue pill. Yes. I took a Viagra. This was a really big deal for me, because philosophically I’m opposed to unnatural male enhancement. But I really wanted this evening to be perfect.
Then, before I even uncorked the champagne, we got into a huge screaming fight and I stormed upstairs with a boner the size of a baseball bat.
Great. I’m upstairs with a huge hard-on and nobody to offer
me relief.
Have you read the label on the Viagra bottle? I stared at it in horror. I was about to have a boner for four hours. Really? Four hours? What was I supposed to do for four hours in this condition? I couldn’t leave the house. I couldn’t phone out-call massage. My wife was downstairs, and I was betting she was not gonna understand. Or be sympathetic. All I could think of was, “How great is this? I take a pill, we get into a fight, I get a massive hard-on, and all I got up here is basic cable and DVDs of my sitcom.”
It also says on the bottle that if your erection lasts for more than four hours you should seek medical assistance. Really? I’m not calling my doctor. He wears thick wraparound glasses that make him look like a welder and has hair the size of an Afro coming out of both ears. If I need to call somebody to finish this off, I’m gonna text my wife downstairs and ask, “Hey, is your sister home?”
I should’ve been honest. I should’ve said, “Look, I know we had a terrible fight, but I took a Viagra and I need some relief. Guzzle some champagne, close your eyes, and pretend I’m Benjamin Bratt. I need help!”
When I turned fifty, I asked myself a question: “Do you want to be a liar your whole life? Do you want your life to be one big lie?”
No.
Since my birthday party, I’ve been truthful. Instead of accommodating people all the time, I tell people what I like and what I don’t. I’ve undergone a transformation. I’ve become more comfortable with myself. I like my life.
And here’s the biggest surprise: I like telling the truth. It’s a total relief. Lying was like swimming in a muddy river. I want to swim in clear water. If I’m going to swim in muddy water, I’m going to dirty it myself. I’m losing track of my point. I just know that all this talk about rivers and water is making me want to find a bathroom.
So, okay, now I’m being real.
You know what I said about being fine with turning fifty?
I lied.
I hate it.
I haaate it.
I suddenly realize that I’m old. What’s worse is that I feel old. I know that from now on I’m gonna be in more pain than usual. Why? I’m fifty.
It happened already.
First thing this morning.
I got out of bed and something popped. Pop. Just like that. Pop. I could not figure out where it came from. I stopped in my tracks and looked around. Where the hell did that pop come from? I heard the pop, all right, but from where? It came from somewhere out there. There was a shot—I heard it—but nobody knows where it came from. It was like the grassy knoll.
It was so strange. Nothing hurt. I patted myself all over, searched for a bone or a knuckle or something out of place or sticking out or not where it should be, and I couldn’t find anything. I took another step and it happened again—
Pop!
What the hell? I’m standing in the middle of the room, frozen in place, my eyes passing over the room like searchlights, like I’m looking for somebody who broke into the house, and I know the pop came from me, because there’s nobody else in here, and I say, “So that’s how this goes? I turn fifty and my body goes pop just because?”
Life after fifty. It’s miserable. And it’s only beginning.
And—hold on—did it take me longer to get upright than it did when I was forty-nine? I think so. I’m definitely moving slower. The difference of one day felt like twenty years.
And then I had my first over-fifty realization—well, besides you go pop for no reason.
When you turn fifty, everything changes—the way you think, the way you look, the way you approach your day. Little things become big things. Stuff that never used to matter—crap you never even noticed—suddenly becomes important. What’s up is down; what’s down is up—hell, everything is messed up. You have no choice except to deal with it. You have to adjust.
For example, now when I go to work, I have to plan which car I’m gonna take. That was never an issue before. Now I think, “I can’t take that car because it sits too low. I’ll never get out of that damn car.”
I can’t pull up to my office looking all cool in my Porsche. I can’t do that anymore. It’s too risky. I don’t want to have to call security to send over the Jaws of Life to lift me out of my car.
I’m also much more conscious of time. I’ve started to slow down, to take everything easy. Time itself seems to rocket by. When I was younger, I never thought about how fast the day went. I wanted time to fly. I wanted to be old enough to be on my own, to start my own life, to escape. Now I don’t mind waiting. When people get annoyed and say to me, “Hey, I’ve been waiting for twenty minutes,” I want to tell them to chill out. Appreciate the time you have. Enjoy each minute. Time is precious.
I also stopped saying, “I’ll see you later.” At my age there may not be a later.
There’s also more pressure on me to look younger, because my show is still on TV all the time in syndication. In the show, I’m in my forties. People think of me as that age, as if I’m frozen in time. I also look younger because I have all my hair.
And, okay, keep this between us. . . .
I dye it.
I have to.
Couple reasons. First, my hair started going gray in my mid-thirties. I first noticed specks of gray when I was doing stand-up. One night, the spotlight hit me and it looked like I had tinsel in my hair. I couldn’t believe it. I aged twenty years during that one set.
A short time after that, I was signing autographs for this kid who was about eight years old. The kid stared at me, made a face like something near him smelled, and said, “Hey, your hair is gray.” I laughed, rubbed the top of his head affectionately, and thought, “You little shit.”
But he was right. I was looking and feeling a lot older than I was. I didn’t want people staring at me, going, “Is that George Lopez? No. That’s not George Lopez. It sort of looks like him, but that guy is much older. Let’s ask him. Hey, old guy, you’re not George Lopez, are you?”
I admit that going prematurely gray and having little kids tell me that I looked old bummed me out. The only thing that made me feel better was that they got a wax figure of me at Madame Tussauds. At least that wax George Lopez will be forty-five forever. From now on I plan to go in there every year, take a picture, see how far I’m getting from looking like that, and adjust.
When I look around me—especially in Hollywood, where everybody is desperately trying to look young and usually failing—I rarely see guys my age who can pull it off. One exception.
Pee-wee Herman.
I saw him on Broadway and he looked terrific. I’m sure he was funny, but I don’t know for sure, because I was too distracted by how he looked. He looked exactly the same. It was inspiring. He’d gained a few pounds, but not many. He knows he has an image to protect, so he’s devoted himself to looking the way he always did—same suits, same shoes, same high voice. He’s my new idol. I
want to stay as young as Pee-wee.
So, the first thing I did was dye my hair.
Next, I became very conscious of the clothes I wear.
You have to be careful when you turn fifty.
President Obama and I are the same age, but he wears mom jeans. He really should think about a different look. I’ve noticed some gray in his hair, too. I’m not saying he should go for a total dye job like me, but he might want to consider some highlights. He should be careful. He doesn’t want to look like the guys at my party, especially the Mexican aunt.
I realize I’ll have to change my look eventually. Because I know that at some point that same little kid is going to look at me and say, “What’s that old man doing wearing those PRPS?”
For now, though, I can carry it off. But you have to be aware of a delicate balance. Like the other day, I saw an old black man wearing Velcro shoes, high ankle socks, and this black plastic thing that looked like...
