I had no idea how naïve I was, or how sexually repressed I had been.
It all started when, at 70 years old, after being widowed for 12 years, when I decided to move to a smaller place. I was evaluating what to keep and what to give away. Then I evaluated myself. I realized I had not had sex—or even the desire to—since my husband died. I decided right then and there I was not going to go another year, or even month, without doing something about it.
I was on the antidepressant Prozac, and went to my psychiatrist to see if that might be the problem. He said it could be, and he switched my medication. About the same time, I saw my urologist for a routine checkup, and as she was about to leave the room, I said, “I haven’t had an orgasm in a really long time.” To my surprise, she said, “Get a vibrator and some porn.” I did just what the doctor ordered.
I had never been in a sex store before and was extremely nervous about it, but once I entered the store (The Pleasure Chest in Hollywood), I was surprised by how nice and how friendly the staff was. I was even more surprised to find I was almost feeling comfortable in there (all the while glancing around to make sure I wasn’t seen by anyone I might know).
I took my little products home and began having orgasms twice a day! If only I could bottle this! A few months went by and I debated telling my male doctor about it until he said, “I’ve heard it all.” That relaxed me. I told him I would like to watch more porn, but I didn’t want to keep going back to the sex store. He said, “There’s free porn on the net.”
“Oh,” I said, amazed such a thing existed. I went to my computer that night and checked it out.
I enjoyed that for a while, especially one clip where all the woman did was talk and touch, touch and talk. In the end, there was a happy man.
The next time I saw my doctor I told him I was yearning for some interaction with someone, but didn’t have a boyfriend. That’s when he told me, “There are free sex sites.”
OhmyGod. “There is no way on this earth I’m joining a sex dating site,” I said to myself.
But in my life, I have found I often say no before I say yes. So, I thought about it, and after weighing it again and again, I Googled sex dating websites and found two. Benaughty.com was one of them.
I happened to have a photo of me with a hat pulled down over my eyes. Since it would have been very hard to identify me, I used that one. I also lied about my age, by a lot. I put down that I was in my late forties. I knew I was never going to meet anyone from that site, so what difference did it make?
But I was hard-pressed to figure out what in the world I was going to say. And then I remembered the tape with the woman who talked and touched. I went back to that tape and wrote down word-for-word what she said, and that’s what I used for dialogue. I felt emboldened! Once I started, I had fun! It was so much fun, in fact, and so freeing, that I thought other women who were as repressed as I was, or who wanted a sexual adventure that could be completely anonymous (I didn’t use my real name, of course), could benefit from my experience. That’s why I wrote my erotic memoir, My Sexual Awakening at 70.
I actually found the men nicer than on the regular dating sites I’d been on. Though I’d told myself I’d “never” meet anyone from that site, I actually met two men. I wound up having a brief affair with one, and the other one lived out of town, so it developed into phone sex, which I had also never done before. Again, I asked myself what I would say if I did it, and then remembered the woman who talked, and used her dialogue as my own.
I’m no longer on the site now, but for me, it was a worthwhile and valuable experience, even if I never do it again.
For more on Lynn Brown Rosenberg’s sexual journey, see her memoir My Sexual Awakening at 70: And What Led Me Here, available from Amazon.
Hear Lynn Brown Rosenberg speak on sex and aging on Saturday, February 11, 2023 at the Residence 11 Desire Summit on Sex and Relationships in Los Angeles and livestreaming worldwide. Get tickets here.