Here's Ted
“There are some men who are 80 who have sex daily.”
Brenda Love stated this matter-of-factly after I asked her the question I imagined geezers like me wanted asked—“Does age have much effect on the frequency of sex?”
Ms. Love, you see, has experience in this. . . What I mean to say is, she’s done considerable research. . . Well, let’s just say she’s the author of the Encyclopedia of Unusual Sex Practices, a former counselor, and before that a certified emergency medical technician. All of which, I feel, qualifies her to talk about seniors and sex.
When she mentioned the 80-year-old man, I didn’t confess that I lie on surveys, too, but I did ask what seniors can do to continue enjoying this practice, even if performed in the usual ways.
“You need to focus on good health,” she said. “If you don’t exercise and keep the body in good shape, you can’t do a lot of things.” The cumulative effects of smoking and drinking also will cause problems in the romance department, she added.
“Attitude is certainly a factor,” she declared. “Don’t buy into the idea sex is just for younger people. As people age, they make better lovers because they do spend more time on foreplay rather than rushing through it.”
Ms. Love allowed as how some seniors take their time with foreplay out of necessity rather than as an option before fiveplay.
A strict religious upbringing in Texas made her reluctant to discuss billing and cooing and related birds-and-bees type small talk.
“I made a checklist—and it was a short list back then—of things we might enjoy doing, or at least would be willing to try once. And this took the fear out of it.”
Now at the age of 45, she’s done such fearful things as appearing on TV and radio talk shows and lecturing throughout the United States.
Concerned men of all ages, she said, inquire about impotence. Urologists are able to install implants that provide an uplifting boost of the morale of men with problems, but the big news is the “Muse System” being brought by the Vivus Company.
There’s this plastic device with a section about the size of a pencil lead at the top. The little tip is inserted into the urethra and, voila, in 20 minutes an attention-getting change occurs and lasts for from 20 minutes to two hours. The product will be on the market in 1997 if all goes well.
Back when she started as a volunteer on a sex information telephone hot line, she found her training hadn’t dealt with the topics of her first two calls—date rape and exhibitionism. So she started researching these and other subjects. The notebook that evolved during the next four years reflected 10,000 hours of reading, and numerous on-the-scene visits, including various 12-step programs and one call on a nudist colony.
The practices she discovered range from a man who likes having oranges thrown at him to people aroused by, ugh, licking the eyeballs of their inamorata. Who relies on the encyclopedia? Therapists, the FBI and a few rock stars are among a wide variety of buyers.
As for sex and seniors, Brenda Love, who now lives in California, sums it all up in one word: “Adrenaline.”
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As a callow fellow, the author confused the golfer’s warning of “Fore!” with the term “foreplay,” and has been over par ever since.
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