Yes, Please

[Things have been a bit on the grim side here lately, so I’m sharing a lighter piece that I wrote a while back. I was initially hesitant to share it, and then I remembered my discussions with an editor at Cosmopolitan last year about publishing it in a “Sex After 60” roundup. Which ultimately didn’t happen because I declined their suggestion to add “specific, spicy details” to an already heavily edited piece. My version is tame in comparison. And remembering the absurdity of the whole exchange with the twenty-something editor brought a much-needed laugh.]

It was perhaps the biggest of several shameful secrets that I kept during my twenty-five-year marriage: after the first year or so, sex was as infrequent as a proverbial blue moon. It might not have been such a tragedy if it were by mutual consent, or if I hadn’t drunk the Kool-Aid that my husband was serving: that the reason we weren’t doing the hokey pokey on the regular was because I was repulsive.

It was genius on his part, really. The foundation was laid early and reinforced almost daily with a grimace, a poke, a flinch at my touch, a “joke” about my appearance. There was rarely a need for an outright “no” as I’m a notoriously quick study; I learned early on to stop asking. Because my pining in silence was apparently not enough to ensure a total shutdown, there was also the recurring suggestion that my normal, healthy sexuality was somehow vulgar and distasteful. That wanting a physical connection was further evidence of my general inferiority.

I had absolutely no clue at the time, but there is photographic evidence and a healthy consensus that I was reasonably attractive, in amazing shape, and looked at least ten years younger than my age. A smoke show, in today’s parlance. I was also about as far from a Jezebel as you could get; I was your plain vanilla soccer mom who wouldn’t say cock if she had a mouthful. But I bought what he was selling. By the end, as if we were strangers on the subway, I’d politely excuse myself if I accidentally brushed against him in my daily rounds. After so many years of this, and with the advent of menopause, my interest, and with it my yearning, diminished. I hadn’t forgotten about sex entirely, but with his increasingly erratic behavior finally starting to piss me off, having it with my husband was the last thing on my mind.

For so many years I was devastated by the certainty that I was destined to die without ever having sex again. For the first couple of years after I left my marriage, as I dealt with one catastrophe after another, it was barely on my radar. Then, as I began to surface from the depths, sex would cross my mind occasionally, but only as an abstraction. Because thanks to the iron grip of my 1960s good girl indoctrination, I assumed that to have sex you had to have a committed relationship (cue hooting laughter), and how was that going to happen at my age and in my circumstances?

Enter the man we’ll call Marvin (after the late, great Mr. Gaye and his Grammy-winning Sexual Healing). We made friends. I loosened up a little. There was startling chemistry. Soon I was channeling my long-ago virginal self, eager to change my status. Marvin was more than happy to serve as my unofficial sex therapist as well as my friend.

Initially, the maxim that it’s like riding a bicycle couldn’t have been further from the truth. Not just because my long-neglected lady parts were now menopausal to boot, but also because I was still living in my head and thrashing around the cage I’d created there. I was self-conscious about exposing my tatty bra and granny panties (never mind the appalling pubic hair situation therein), but I was truly terrified of being judged and rejected. I’m quite certain I dissociated at some point.

God bless Marvin. Because he got it. And he was undeterred. And so kind. Soon the part of me that I’d shut down so long ago in self-preservation was flourishing. My gratitude for the rediscovery of this treasure I’d feared lost forever knew no bounds. The fact that I was unabashedly reveling in an active sex life at sixty-something was especially miraculous to me when I was hearing the “I’m done with all that” sentiments expressed by many of my contemporaries. Maybe, always the late bloomer, I was just making up for lost time.

I mourned my sexual drought for so many years. Now I know that without that experience, I’d never have appreciated this phenomenal reawakening. I wouldn’t have discovered that good sex is the best natural remedy for anxiety and depression, or that knowing you’re seen and desired is a close second. (That whole “spring in your step” thing is not a myth.) I wouldn’t have realized that things like lingerie or a Brazilian wax, while a great little boost, are not strictly necessary, because anyone I’m allowing into my inner sanctum at this point is going to be deliriously happy to be there. And I wouldn’t have had the privilege of experiencing the mind-blowing passion born of chemistry combined with true connection and gratitude.

So, yes, please, I’d love another helping. This good girl plans to die happy.

***

Thanks for reading. Care to share your thoughts on sex after 60? Or at any age?