Prelude for Younger Audiences: “Ewwwwwww!”

So what’s the deal with Sex in the Fifties? Despite the hemorrhaging availability of botox, breast bags, hair weaves, penile implants, financial security, liposuction, hormone helpers, testosterone patches, mobility, anonymity, familiarity, butt lifts, viagra, and f***buddies, are we really getting any? Or are we just sick of the whole last-year’s-dance, preferring instead to curl up with a bottle of cabernet?

Frankly, we look old. We feel tired. We are Not in the Mood.

I wasn’t planning on giving up sex, ever. But even for those armed with a fistful of dollars and a bulge in the libido, nature keeps cropping up with a plan of her own. My mother always gleefully tittered that the years after menopause were the happiest of her life. Sorry Mom, but I beg to differ. If you’ve never had a hot flash, and by that I mean never been working away happy as a clam only to find yourself suddenly awash in a skim of sticky, smelly, pore ooze, usually in the midst of 1) a business meeting , or 2) clasping the Beloved, then get thee to a more approriate blog.

And what’s with the weight thing, damn it? Decreased Appetite plus Decreased Intake = 10 pounds weight gain. Eliminating soft drinks, chocolate, and cream sauces (kill me now) = 2 pounds weight gain. Increased Exercise = a pleasant 1 pound weight gain. So tell me why, with all the additional padding, are old people always cold? My Dear Mother Nature, if you want me to keep warm, drop the pound baggage and Let Me Have Sex! Friction = Fire, you know.

They say that menopause causes irritability. Not true. Sweat swells, bulky girth, and a dearth of hickies cause irritability. Big time.

The sad truth is that I know why Mother afflicts us in the 50’s. She has caught a whiff of rotten eggs, and wants to protect the Future of Civilization by causing hunkish males to blanch at our bulbous pretties and eau de locker room, fleeing to wantonly spew seeds into the incubators of twenty-somethings unaquainted with palimony.

And what of those man-type humans? Is their procreational rivulet spiked with preservatives? Does Mother just turn a blind eye to their dalliances, secure in the supposition that no DNA will be mangled by the Over-50 Male? I suppose it’s entirely plausible that she anticipates an occasional dip in the fertilizer population. I, myself, have considered popping off a few somewhere between the gynecologist’s office and the bank.

No one cares if a man grows fat and bald, least of all the man. But I can’t complain, really — as my Dearest insists, “I didn’t marry you for your body.” Ass.

And yet we manage well, all things considered. And, all things considered, perhaps extraordinarily well. We kiss and clutch in restaurant parking lots as gratefully as adulterers, and roll about gamely on sundry pieces of furniture more carelessly than teenagers . . . until I heave him to the floor gasping for a deep throat of air conditioning, nipples thrust greedily toward the ceiling fan, “Faster . . . faster . . . come to Mama NOW, you Bladed Beauty, NOW!”

At least the neighbors think we’re doing it.

(Copyright 2007. All rights reserved Pamela Goode.)