Sex Lives of the Lesser Liver Spotted Oldie

From Archives 2001/2011

The chances are – if you are reading this magazine, that you either bought it or have picked it up in a place where “oldie” people loiter. So, I am assuming you may be interested in views on sex lives of the Lesser Liver Spotted Oldie.

How does one define an Oldie? A young fogy who is now over 55 and grown into his fogieism? A grumpy older man/woman who is now happy to be of a certain age and able to voice opinions without fear of ridicule? One of the greatest plusses that come with advancing years is that we just don’t really give a damn any more. So what if opinions offend. If they don’t injure anyone surely they are worth voicing. Also the freedom that comes with the ageing process is liberating.

So down to basics, the whole sex thing can be so much more fun now. More, for me, than it was forty odd years ago. Then I worried that I wasn’t slim enough, my boobs weren’t big enough, and I wasn’t sexy enough. Was it good for him, who cared if it was good for me? Well, I do. Now more than ever.

After facing up to and dealing with widowhood in my forties there was rather a barren period while I came to grips with grief, being a single mother to a pubescent daughter, trying out living overseas. My own personal life and sexuality was rather put on the back burner and if there was a setting below simmer, then I was certainly set on that.

Eventually the sheer relentlessness of time inexorably passing helped my middle ages to come alive again. It may have taken almost ten years to flower but at last I blossomed again. It started in a spectacular fashion on a Singapore Airline Business Class flight to London Heathrow. I sat next to a very attractive guy with a gold earring and long hair who had spent his life in the rock music business. As he was settling down with a couple of champagne splits he decided that it would be polite to offer one to his fellow traveller. Well one split led to a bottle, which led to another, and we broke nearly all the rules about safe flying without actually resorting to safe sex. Well, it was a beginning and one, which led to a continuing happy and platonic friendship.

Having been reignited and the burner now on full, I progressed to having a fling with a still unmarried lover from my twenties. Far from the inhibited sex with lights out which we had enjoyed, of days long past there was a joyous delight in the safety of sex with a known quantity. I knew exactly what I was doing and where it was going. Or not as it may turn out and that doesn’t matter either.

The differences between then and now are enormous. The post-coital conversation no longer hinges around “how was it for you” but more along the lines of “are you still breathing”. No fags and take away Chinese more the pros and cons or private health, PEPS, ISA’s and swapping inheritance tax ruses. No roughly rolled illicit joints, more debating the benefits of Pilates over Alexander techniques. No fears of pregnancy, no having to remember to take the pill and having checked out his sexual history, no frantic fumblings with condoms. There is no more rushing upstairs at the same time divesting myself of fitted clothes and unsexy tights. Whilst we don’t actually need the chair lift, the climbing of the stairs is more leisurely. Sometimes we don’t even bother making it upstairs.

There was one memorable occasion when I was relaxing on the floor resting my ageing bad back after a day of tramping around Portobello Market when my lover came to join me. All pain was forgotten and it was all very spontaneous and lovely. Unfortunately it took rather longer and we missed our performance of Two Gentlemen of Verona in Regents’ Park but these days one has to pace oneself. The theatre can wait, spontaneous coupling cannot. One has to seize the day, the hour and the minute.

No more long term planning for the future but more celebrations of the present. No more wondering whether he will call but more wondering if he is still alive!! I guess the downside, if there has to be one, is that time is not really on our side. Having had a full life though, that doesn’t really seem to be a problem. We don’t want to get married, move in with each other, and share closet space and shower gel. I love going back to my own home and carrying on with the life I have made. He does too. I really enjoy the odd trip to Paris and places foreign, which don’t need endless planning and luggage. Travel light and shop heavy is one of my new mantras. I can be in London and ready for an adventure at the drop of a Gold Card. I can shut up the house and clear off without answering to anyone.

And I am not the only one. A close friend of mine, a retired classics scholar and 72 in the shade, has just discovered lust, true love and good sex for the first time and has never been happier. Eros is no longer appearing in dusty worthy tomes but in her bedroom nightly. She has been married twice; divorced once, widowed once and with one other long-term relationship under her belt she is now embarking on the most fulfilling and erotic adventure of her life. She has never been happier. Her partner seems pretty pleased with himself as well.

Maybe when I am an older Oldie instead of a Junior Oldie, I may get interested again in the safety of a committed relationship, with his and hers bathrobes, pensions, single beds, shared grandchildren, and slippers gently warming by the radiator. For now bring on the frenzy of friendly intercourse without the sick desperation of younger love. Let me enjoy the freedom of my older body sagging here and here but no longer constricted in 18-hour girdles. I thank God, Buddha and the fashion industry for unstructured clothing with elasticated waists. Let’s face it, he has aged too and is still 10 years my senior. He may have a heart murmur but he can still murmur all the right words. The only thing that is a blot on the landscape is what to do if I wake up one morning in a Paris apartment to find out that when the snoring stopped in the middle of the night the rigor mortis kicked in. How the hell do I get the body into the car and across the channel without anyone noticing? That is one stiff problem not to have raised its head yet. The one thing we haven’t discussed is what to do if that were to happen. Oh, well, it gives me some more interesting pillow talk to look forward to the next time we meet.

And if all this seems somewhat without passion then one of us has got it wrong, Reader. The passion is there; the difference is that the passion isn’t the sum total. The sum total is all the years that made arriving at this point possible. Probable. Enjoyable. Guilt free. Gilt edged.

1235 words.