TN10: Carlene Bauer, Novelist

Your Age: 50 

Basic bio: Meet TueNighter Carlene Bauer, an inspirational writer and editor based in Brooklyn, NY. Her latest book, the novel Girls They Write Songs About is a phenomenal power ballad to the beauty of female friendship. Published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, it will be out in paperback this week.

Beyond the bio: One of the misconceptions about getting older is that, as soon as you hit 40 or 50, you magically stop caring what people think about you. It does get easier to not give a @#&!*, but it might take some of us longer to fully free ourselves from wanting the approval of others.

What makes you a grown-ass lady?

Knowing when to get the hell out. Be it a party or a relationship.

Here’s her TueNight 10:

1. On the nightstand: Two books about the history of the Pine Barrens [the ecological term that’s used to describe 1.1 million acres of pinelands in Southern New Jersey], which is essentially where I grew up, and earbuds, because BBC radio mysteries on YouTube are melatonin to my ears. I realize that admitting to a dependency on the soothing powers of a British broadcasting product is kind of like admitting I sleep every night, ALONE, in a flannel nightgown that’s positively choking me to death with its decorum, but that is not the case.

2. What are you listening to: The pressure!!! Lady Wray—she should be as famous as Mary J. Blige. Start with the song “Come On In.” The Velvet Underground, always. Gillian Welch and Lucinda Williams (they keep teaching me how to write). I am really enamored of “Run a Red Light,” the new song by Everything But the Girl. It is—comforting? I know for sure it’s inspiring to watch musicians you grew up with keep making songs that get under your skin.

3. ‘80s crush: Charlie Sheen! Because of the movie Lucas. Knowing what we all know now, I have transferred that crush on over to Martin Sheen. That’s only partially a joke.

4. Current crush: Luke Kirby as Lenny Bruce on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel

5. Latest fav find: A313. It’s a retinoid cream from France; a friend told me about it. The packaging, suggestive as it is of both of a) a t-shirt bought in the summer of 1982 as proof you spent it in the Riviera and b) a logo designed at around the same time for an international space program, is almost worth the $30 alone. I got so wrapped up in the packaging details I almost forgot to say that it works. Sorry. It works! I have very sensitive skin, but it hardly ever causes flaking or irritation, and it really keeps some of my finer and more worrying lines at bay.

6. First job: Working the counter at a local bakery. Sophomore year in high school. After school and on weekends. I can still smell the grease on my clothes from the donuts. (Fondly.)

7. Who has influenced you the most and why: Joan Didion! How to see through the bullshit and write lyrically and coruscatingly about what you see.

8. What you like/hate about getting older: I like the life-giving perspective: the not wasting my time and energy going from zero to 60 over something that doesn’t merit it. I was going to say I hate the physical changes—neck grotesquerie, weight gain—but I don’t like living in a culture where the young seem to really hate the old and older. End intergenerational warfare now!

9. Best thing that happened recently: Riding a bike around Fire Island. I don’t ever bike in New York—I don’t want to get picked off by a truck—and the 11-year-old in me apparently really misses it.

10. Looking forward to: Seeing what I can do now with all the superpowers bequeathed to me by maturity.