Jonathan Goldstein
Jonathan Goldstein is the host and creator of the podcast Heavyweight. In 2016, the Atlantic named it the number one podcast of the year; in 2017 it received a Third…
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As a young reporter in 2001, Jonathan was sent to profile a 93-year-old man known as the “nursing home Casanova.” What Jonathan found instead was something he hadn’t expected at all: A man in the throes of heartbreak.
Pushkin.
00:13
Speaker 2
Back in September, I participated in a fundraiser for Rock Mahomes, an organization that provides care for people living with memory loss. The event took place in Minneapolis, which is where I live. It was a warm, lively night at a brewery near the train tracks. The theme of the evening was Things That Remain. I chose to tell a story I wrote for the New York Times back in 2001 about a 93-year-old man who, in spite of his age, never stopped looking for love.
00:43
Speaker 1
And that's all coming up after the break.
01:06
Speaker 3
Jonathan Goldstein is the creator and host of the highly acclaimed Heavyweight podcast. Heavyweight just entered into its tenth season. Jonathan's probing and meddling inevitably produce beautiful and hilarious and uncanny results. He clearly also has an intimate sense for the power of story, especially as it relates to our themes here tonight.
01:30
Speaker 1
Thank you.
01:32
Speaker 2
So about 25 years ago, the New York Times magazine sent me to Florida to report on a man who had come to be known as the retirement home Casanova. Word was that although he was in his early 90s, Hyman Kaplan was dating about a dozen women at once.
01:50
Speaker 1
But when I got to the old age community.
01:52
Speaker 2
Where he lived, a place called Forest Trace, I learned that the story I was sent to cover didn't really exist or not in the way everyone thought it did. Here's the actual story, the record, of what I did find in my search for the oldest living Lothario. Forest Trace is a retirement community just outside of Fort Lauderdale. Every Saturday at 2, the staff clears aside the tables and chairs in the foyer to create a circle for the women and men to dance. Though when I say the women and men, I mainly mean the women and Hyman Kaplan. Kaplan is 93, and right now he is twirling a woman named Thelma in the middle of a circle of two dozen watchful women in wicker chairs. The couple dances among tall white pillars as sunlight streams in through the skylight high above.
02:46
Speaker 1
This is how it works.
02:47
Speaker 2
Kaplan escorts each partner to the center of the circle, where depending on the song and Kaplan's mood, they will foxtrot, waltz, tango, or even merengue. As the afternoon wears on, Kaplan's white leather loafers bounce gracefully about the carpet, and no matter how good or bad his partner, he always demonstrates a little showmanship, throwing in a Westchester step here and there, doing other little fancy things with his feet that I.
03:13
Speaker 1
Don't know the name for.
03:15
Speaker 2
When the song is over, he extends his arms to the next woman down the line, who will always graciously accept them. There's something in Kaplan's manner that makes it seem as if he has a job to do, as if he's unloading a truck of women in boxes who he must dance with, one at a time, before the quitting whistle blows. I ask the woman seated in front of me if Kaplan is the best dancer here. Well, she says, he doesn't have much competition. There are more than twice as many women as men at Forest Trace. All a man has to do is stay alive, and he's guaranteed a full dance card. A couple of these men sit with the women, watching with a sort of aristocratic indifference as Kaplan dances. Simply because they are men, they have their choice of women, but even the casual observer can see that they are a bunch of sleepy, yellow-pantsed patsies and practical, walking-shoed Ralphs, while around here, Hyman Kaplan is the Fonz. Forest Trace is all about leisure, and as such, a kind of court-like behavior has emerged full of intrigues and legends and gossip. It's the kind of thing you think you'll only live through once in high school. It's like Peyton Place here, says B.U. Tall, who was sitting in the foyer. There are so many affairs. U. Tall tells me the story of how a forest trace couple in their 90s were found naked in bed together. It seems that one of them, during the throes of passion, accidentally pulled the emergency cord above the bed. Yutal is sitting with her boyfriend, Sam Schulman. They met a couple years ago at Forest Trace. When I ask him about their relationship, he explains it this way. When my wife died, the light went out, says Schulman. Every morning when I'd wake up, I'd feel an emptiness in my stomach. Thank God I met Bea. First he asked me out for breakfast, says Yutal. Then breakfast turned into lunch, and then lunch turned into dinner. At this point in our lives, we don't try to impress, says Shulman. We don't talk about money. We don't talk about our backgrounds. We want the present. A person who's past all that understands. Shulman looks at me as if he knows that I can't possibly understand. It's a tender, forgiving look. He asks me how old I am, and I say I'm 31. He congratulates me, and I ask him what he's congratulating me for.
05:44
Speaker 1
For being 31, he says.
05:48
Speaker 2
Hyman Kaplan wears his age like a man 30 years younger, hamming it up in old face. By this I mean he's a little stooped and his steps are a bit deliberate, but his age hangs off him like a kind of performance, like a teenager playing Willie Loman in a high school play. Kaplan taught phys ed for 41 years in New York City. His first wife of 39 years was killed in an automobile accident in 1969. He married again in 1970, and two years later, he and his wife moved to Fort Lauderdale. Then, after 18 years, she died of pancreatic cancer. In 1996, he gave his condo to his daughters and moved to Forest Trace. He takes me into the recreation room beside the lobby, where we can sit and talk. At the table beside ours, some women are playing cards. They wave to Kaplan, and he flashes them a smile. We missed you, says one of them. Kaplan has just gotten back from a month-long holiday visiting family.
06:47
Speaker 1
You see how they feel about me here, he asks.
06:50
Speaker 2
When he turns his head to look over at another table, I point out a smudge of orange lipstick on the tip of his ear. One of the women I was dancing with is a kisser, he says, wiping off the stain. When I ask him if he ever thought that one day he'd be kissing women in their 80s, he says, no way. But kissing has now become something vastly important to him. He even says that he can tell which women are kissers by the way they dance with him.
07:17
Speaker 1
He says that kissing keeps him young.
07:20
Speaker 2
I don't lack for women, he says, but at my age you can't really have sex. Try as you might, it doesn't work so easily. I ask him if that ever makes him angry, and he says that of course it does, but that you learn to accept it as a new stage in your life. I've tried a lot of different things, he says. Viagra and a lot of other pills are supposed to make you virile, but forget about it.
07:43
Speaker 1
It doesn't happen.
07:45
Speaker 2
Viagra may have disappeared as the standard punchline of late night talk show monologues, but at Forest Trace, Viagra jokes still go over big. At one point in my visit, I find myself sitting in on a round of Outburst, a game in which the activities director asks questions to a table full of residents, who are then prompted to shout out their answers. The question, what's something you find in a purse, provokes the answer, Viagra, as does the question, what's something you find in a bathroom, as well as what's something you find in a briefcase. Each time it has the whole table in stitches. To me, says Kaplan, senior sex is hugging and kissing, maybe a little petting now and then, soul-kissing. I used to never kiss like that. It just wasn't done in those days. Tongues in each other's mouths. Some women are scared off by that, but they shouldn't be afraid of a kiss and a hug. It makes you feel good. Kaplan takes me to the exercise room where he works out regularly. We're the only ones in here. He turns to the window that faces the pool. There's a woman sitting poolside reading a newspaper by herself. She's a very lonely person, Kaplan says, staring at her through the window. There's plenty of people here, but she's sitting alone. That's a sign. Kaplan watches her for a while and then says, let's go and say hi. When we approach her, she puts down the New York Times and looks up at us. She and Kaplan chat a bit, and when we walk away, he tells me that she likes him. I ask him how he can tell, and he says he just can. I don't like to brag, he says, but I'm a catch. I ask him if he ever dances with her, and he says that she doesn't dance. It dawns on me that that's the kind of older woman I'm going to like, the kind that reads the paper fully dressed by herself at the edge of the water, a woman who keeps Kleenex under her watch strap for me, just in case. Kaplan and I make plans to meet at the dining hall for dinner at 5.30. He shows up looking sharp in a white blazer and white pants. The residents park their walkers outside the hall door. During dinner, Kaplan points out women at other tables. He tells me who is warm and who is guarded, who is more physical and who just likes to talk. He motions to a woman sitting two tables over. She's good looking, he says, but she's losing her memory. That happened to my first girlfriend here, Mildred. But she always remembered me.
10:18
Speaker 1
She loved me.
10:20
Speaker 2
Kaplan says that Mildred, who died three months ago, loved him so much that when she went by his car in the parking lot, she would kiss it. Even when she was finally in a wheelchair, her face would glow when she'd see me, he says. I'd pull her out of her wheelchair and hold her up to dance with me. It's after the meal while we're eating our sugar-free cheese danish that Kaplan leans over from across the table. He keeps looking behind me anxiously, his eyes darting all over the place.
10:47
Speaker 1
Finally, he wipes.
10:48
Speaker 2
His mouth and lets the napkin fall to the table.
10:52
Speaker 4
Over your shoulder, he says, that's her. Who that her is after the break.
11:19
Speaker 1
Over your shoulder, he says, that's her.
11:23
Speaker 2
Kaplan has been talking about this woman all day. Her name pops up as his favorite dance partner. She's the only woman here whom he's introduced to his family. Each time he invokes her name, Kaplan becomes uncharacteristically quiet and reticent for a few moments afterwards. They first started dating about a year ago when she arrived at Forest Trace. She broke up with him about two months ago, and everyone at the home was surprised. They were sort of like the royal couple of Forest Trace. Kaplan is vague about the reasons for their breakup, something to do with the birthday card that she didn't think was big enough, something about his manner being too outward. He slaps everyone that he meets on the back, he explains. And she's so proper. He says he'd still love to get back together with her, but she's just not interested. I casually turn around to try and see her, but she's already getting up to leave. You have to see her face, he says excitedly. and she's always dressed to the hilt. From behind, I can see her silver-gray hair pulled up into a big, regal bun. His eyes follow her as she winds her way through the tables. I still love her, he says. Whenever I see her, I get a tits and hearts in.
12:34
Speaker 1
You know what that means? It means I get a tug at the heart.
12:38
Speaker 2
After we've eaten, Kaplan and I head over to the clubhouse next door for the evening's entertainment, a musical duo called Poppy. When everyone in the hall is finally seated, a middle-aged man takes the stage wearing sunglasses and carrying an electric guitar. He's joined by a woman in her 40s wearing a glittery purple dress who stands behind her keyboard. They stare ahead stoically, bathed in a soft theatrical light. They're about to start playing when half the audience starts shouting for more light. The activities assistant turns on the fluorescent lights above the stage to a smattering of applause. The woman in purple looks unhappy about this. The lights make her and the man in the sunglasses look as if they're performing in the frozen goods aisle of a 7-Eleven. The most important thing to us is you, says the man, but do you really want those fluorescent lights on? The question is answered with thunderous applause. It will prove to be Poppy's biggest ovation of the evening. They start off with, when the red, red robin comes bob, bob, bobbing along. after which they launch into a full-on polka medley featuring Roll Out the Barrel. Poppy performs in 22 languages, and they announce that tonight they're going to take us on a trip around the world. They sing Russian songs, French songs, and Yiddish songs. Before they launch into Tarantella, the man in sunglasses asks, Are there any Italians here tonight?
14:06
Speaker 1
No one answers.
14:07
Speaker 2
Kaplan leans in to me and says rather gravely, There was one, but he died. After Tarantella, they sing Oci Cernihi, and as the opening strains drift down from the stage, a pleasurably surprised moan escapes the audience's lips. I imagine my friends and myself in a retirement home someday, perhaps a place that will look more like a row of narrow cots in a furnace room than like Forest Trace. We will be listening to a man play Sun in an Empty Room on an accordion, and we will feel the same pleasurable moan well up in our guts. I look over at Kaplan to see how the show is going over with him, but he isn't watching the stage. I follow his line of vision and see that he is staring at a big regal bun of gray a half dozen rows in front of us. After the show, as we slowly file out of the hall, we run into his former love, and Kaplan introduces us. She's a dignified, attractive woman in her early 80s, and Kaplan tries hard to draw her into a conversation. He talks about the show, he talks about music, He even explains about how I'm a reporter, but nothing makes much of an impression.
15:17
Speaker 1
She smiles politely, but she's distant. She continues to walk on ahead, and we fall back.
15:24
Speaker 2
Their exchange was awkward in exactly that way that exchanges with exes always are, but it's in that especially awkward way that occurs between people who've broken up and still work or go to school together and have to see and deal with each other day in and day out. Then, as she passes through the doorway into the night, the heel of her shoe catches in the doorframe and she stumbles. Kaplan visibly flinches and starts to walk over with his arm out. Then he pauses and watches her straighten herself. He starts to go over again, but again he stops himself. She walks on and we follow behind along the lighted pathway back to the main building as Pennsylvania 65,000 wafts through.
16:08
Speaker 1
The tropical heat.
16:10
Speaker 2
Kaplan stops in at the nurse's office for a nightcap of pills and eye drops. From there, we go back to his apartment where he gets ready for bed. I'm not very happy right now, he says, as he puts away his clothes. If there is love at any age, then there is also love sickness.
16:27
Speaker 1
And pain is pain.
16:28
Speaker 2
Rejection is rejection. And by the looks of Hyman Kaplan, a man who has the ability to make women rise to their feet at the motion of his hand, it doesn't get any easier. Being at Forest Trace has made me feel as if all of life is a process of slowly peeling away the gentle layers of cocoon, the marriages, the jobs, the deaths of loved ones, to one day reveal the 80-year-old butterfly that lies waiting within, alone, close to death, yet still so willing to render the heart vulnerable to some new idea of love. What do I want with a woman at this stage, says Sam Goldberg, a Forest Trace resident in his 80s, who, when I ask him about dating, scoffs at the very word. You see, Hyman will always tell you he's great, but do you know he wears a pacemaker? People who have ailments and have to go to doctors don't think about dating.
17:22
Speaker 1
Hyman is a rarity. It's true.
17:26
Speaker 2
Kaplan's the guy that Forest Trace has in its promotional video, riding around on a bicycle, the roper in a way, the guy who makes you feel that everything is going to be fine. I know that Kaplan is how I'd like to see myself one day, a creature of unending desire waving from a bicycle for the cameras.
17:45
Speaker 1
I can imagine being old.
17:47
Speaker 2
I can imagine gazing into the eyes of women who look like my grandmother's pinochle friends. And I can even imagine being brokenhearted in my 90s. But what I can't imagine is laying down the burden of my desire. One day, if I'm lucky, I want to be kissing 80-year-old women, too. And that might be foolish, as foolish as Hyman Kaplan himself. A couple of days later, after I left Forest Trace, Kaplan called me on the phone. The day I was leaving, he was on his way to see a production of I Love You, You're Perfect, Now Change at the Miracle Theater in Coral Gables. And he just wanted to let me know that on the bus ride there, he had met a woman. He says she's going to come to the home to dance with him. He says she's got a lot of fun in her and she isn't afraid to get physical.
18:39
Speaker 1
Thank you.
18:50
Speaker 5
Now that the furniture's returning to its goodwill home, with dishes and last week's papers, rumors and elections, Crosswords and unending war. The black in our fingers smear their prints on every door pulled shut. Now that the last month's rent is scheming with the damaged deposit, take this moment to decide if we meant it.
19:27
Speaker 1
If we tried.
19:31
Speaker 5
Are felt around for far too much from things that accidentally touch sun in an empty room Son in an empty.
19:47
Speaker 2
Room Heavyweight is produced by senior producer Kalila Holt and supervising producer Stevie Lane. Today's live show was made possible by Leif Johnson and Rockma Holmes. Dan Chouinard performed this beautiful rendition of our theme song by The Weaker Thans, mixing by Emma Munger with production help from Lisa Wang. Special thanks to Sarah Bruguier. We'll be back next week with a brand new episode.
The Host
