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| <back | home Sex and the Geezerette by Anne R. Allen When I called my mother to wish her a happy 85th birthday a few weeks ago, she sounded tired. I asked if she was feeling OK. No, she said – she was exhausted. Her boyfriend hadn’t left her bed until after two the night before, and since she’d promised to drive friends to an anti-war rally that morning, she’d only squeezed in about four hours of sleep. The golden years, they are a-changin’… Gail Sheehy’s controversial new book, Sex and the Seasoned Woman: Pursuing the Passionate Life, fueled some heated blogging when it debuted in January. Reviewers complained that the iconic author of Passages had “lost her grip on the zeitgeist” with her anecdotal reportage on what she claims is the increasingly active sex life of the post-menopausal woman. In the age of Viagra, you’d think folks would have figured out that not every sexed-up geezer is bedding down with a 20-year-old hottie turned on by nose hairs, wrinkly necks and sagging glutes. And since we all watched Nicholson hook up with Diane Keaton’s character after dumping her daughter in Something’s Gotta Give a few years back, it’s amazing how many reviewers (including some “seasoned women”) were upset by Ms. Sheehy’s revelation that Grandma is still getting it on. Sheehy – a nicely seasoned 68 herself – isn’t the only one who reports that geezerettes are as frisky as their Viagra-fueled male counterparts. According to a new study in the April issue of Obstetrics and Gynecology, about three-fourths of middle-aged and older women are sexually active, and two-thirds of them are at least “somewhat satisfied” with the activity. And as the first Boomers morph into 60-somethings, we aren’t giving up sex, drugs and rock and roll. OK, the drugs may be Viagra and Lipitor, and the rock and roll may be played at lower decibels, but we’re still lighting each other’s fires, even though, according to 2003 Census Bureau statistics, nearly a third of Boomers are single. So it looks as if Daphne Merkin was the one not gripping the zeitgeist when she said in her New York Times review of Sheehy’s book, “Men of 45 aren’t looking for women of 45; men of 55 aren’t looking for them, either. A man wants a spring chicken…with a guarantee that her eggs are fresh.” So OK, if a dude has let the family thing slip his mind until he’s eligible for Medicare (and he has a nice retirement package) he can probably still buy himself some trophy poultry to hatch his offspring and raise them after he croaks, assuming, of course, that this rooster still produces a viable DNA delivery system. But according to the new study, a lot of older guys are having fun with partners who’d rather get down to “Fever” or “Black Magic Woman” than “Oops, I Did It Again.” What seems to upset people most about Sheehy’s book is her assertion that sex may actually be better for women who are no longer biologically compelled (and/or trapped) into forming relationships for the sake of raising families, in spite of the fact their bodies are no longer as desirable. And she really pissed them off by suggesting that it’s as OK for older women to seek younger partners as it is for men. (Haven’t these people ever heard of Demi Moore…or France?) But, as an over-55 woman who’s recently ended a relationship with a man more than a decade my junior, I must admit that saggy-baggy reality sometimes outweighed the liberating knowledge that I wasn’t contributing to planet overpopulation. And I don’t agree with Sheehy that endless workouts and/or medical enhancements to maintain the illusion of youth are in our best interest. (Sheehy even gives the name of a doctor who can provide a non-surgical “rejuvenation” for the vagina.) The issue that ended my own relationship was one that Sheehy does not address: I’ve started to feel needs of the spirit with the urgency I used to feel needs of the body. Traditionally, elder years are about seeking wisdom and clarity, not endlessly repeating mating rituals. Yes, sex is still lovely, but it’s no longer central. There’s an evolutionary purpose in elders’ loss of the hormonal compulsion to procreate. When men lose the excess testosterone that urges them to battle rivals for dominance in the gene pool, and women lose the level of estrogen that allows them to put up with it, everybody can calm down and address the administrative, healing and spiritual work of the tribe. We now live in a culture that has less respect for maturity and wisdom than any in human history. The result is leaders who behave like squabbling children and threaten to annihilate the planet. We are desperately in need of grown-ups to step in and enforce a time-out. It’s a time for elders to regain our rightful role in community and spiritual leadership, not rejuvenate our genitalia. I’m all for elders having hot sex, but I think it’s a mistake to deny who we are in order to couple with the young or become sad caricatures of what we once were. Medical breakthroughs shouldn’t lead us to extend our adolescence, but to add vigor to our maturity. My mother, ever my role model, didn’t meet her own soul mate until she was in her 70s and he was in his 80s. Before he died at the age of 99, they had a blissful, sexually fulfilling marriage unencumbered with the distractions of children or career anxieties. But what is most romantic about their story is that they didn’t fall in love with lithe bodies, high hormone levels, or a plastic surgeon’s artistry. They fell in love with souls. Maybe the newly minted geezers and geezerettes of the rock and roll generation need to let go of our obsession with youth and start directing our energy toward something more meaningful. And if we happen to hook up with a fun bed partner – maybe even a soul mate – while saving the world, so much the better. There’s growing evidence that it’s going to be hot. Anne R. Allen is the author of the novels The Best Revenge and Food of Love (available from amazon.co.uk; see review in this issue) and writes the IN Her Own Write column for the writers e-zine Inkwell Newswatch. She’s been living in England for most of the last three years, but she’s happy to be back in Los Osos. <back | top^ |