When I set out to learn about my mother's bridge club, the Jewish octogenarians behind the matching outfits and accessories, I never expected to fall in love with them. This is the story of the ladies, their game, their gen, and the ragged path that led me back to my mother.
My husband floated the idea that I use my self-loathing to mask my ambition. Get to know me. I’m hugely ambitious, I’m profoundly self-loathing. It’s not a schtick. It’s not a Broadway play. It’s not the Luray Caverns. I will most certainly regret, at the end of my life, that I spent so much of it hating myself. I’m not fucking around. It’s not a Rothko, it’s not a poem, it’s not a blade of grass. Ha ha.
How self-loathing are you on a scale of One to Ten?
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Betsy Lerner 
It depends on the day, maybe hour, minute, or second. Varies from 1 to 10. Also extremely ambitious, without sucess…so far!
12
“How self-loathing are you on a scale of One to Ten?”
Not as much as I ought to be. I know what I have done.
9.5
At the risk of appearing to be unspeakably boring, I would rate my self-loathing at one, on your scale of one to 10. This does not mean smug satisfaction with myself, or lack of remorse where remorse is due. I accept myself as I have figured out that I am, and I would have no reason to not end my life if I ever reached a nine or 10 rating of self-loathing. As for ambition, I do not consider my own numerous contributions to my failed ambitions to be a cause for self-loathing, just a cause for some unsentimental assessment of my character flaws and limitations. I recall what the great theater provocateur Charles Ludlam said about ambitiopn, which my memory clumsily paraphrases as “If you have not failed miserably and often, you have set your sights too low.”
7.5 but only because it’s sunny out.