I feel like I should make popcorn or pay admission or something. I find myself checking my texts far more than usual, waiting to see if Amy has responded with a time that we can get together, and I can drink up the latest news she brings of Matt.
At our age – midway between sixty and seventy – Amy finds herself in the throes of a fairy tale, of sorts. With marriages and children and a professional career in tow, Amy wholeheartedly believes that she has recently met the person who will be the great love of her life, an artist named Matt. As with all new love, there is never enough time. They want to know everything about one another, all at once. They relay their histories; they share their revised dreams for their remaining time.
Matt and Amy get together, email and text one another, and stay up into the early hours of each new day, talking and talking. Amy is sleep-deprived, besotted, radiant. She giggles. She gets embarrassed by her own elation.
Imagine my surprise when Amy asked me, well into an evening of shared wine and stories, “Barbara, where would you go to read about sex?”
I was thunderstruck, not to mention a tad tanked. “To read what about sex?”
Amy stood up and paced, such was the level of her embarrassment. “To read, you know, what men like.”
“What men like?” I repeated. “Amy, that’s no different than asking what women like. As if we’re all the same. As if there are universal…things!” I was particularly rattled because Amy had, in fact, just ended a relationship with a highly satisfying sexual component when she connected with Matt. Not to mention everything that came before.
“But our bodies are different. We’re older. Our bodies are so much older,” Amy said.
And there it was, a moment of utterly naked, vulnerable humanity. A truth that is universal: love is always a delicate balance between our hope and faith in possibility, on the one hand, and our fear that we may be hurt, disappointed, or rejected, on the other.
I continue to find many benefits to growing older: an accumulated history of rich experiences and memories, a deeper knowledge of oneself, and with luck, a gratitude for each day. But scars and wounds amass as well. One of the chapters in my upcoming book The Reading begins, “It works differently with old bodies. Aches and pains and injuries of all varieties must be accommodated, those of the body and other kinds as well.” Yes, not everything works in the same ways that it used to. It may even be fair to say that nothing works in the same way that it used to. But sex with a new partner is always a mystery that unfolds. In real time we leap into a joint experience, a uniquely created place where we feel our way along. Where we feel.
Two older human bodies can’t necessarily do all the things together that they once could. But I say to Amy, rejoice in this chance. Let your bodies tell you what works. Laugh at the awkward failures – which have always been a part of sex, we were just too young to let them slow us down. Let’s not let them slow us down now.
Anne Frank wrote, “Where there is hope, there is life.” J.R.R. Tolkien’s character Sam said, “Where there is life, there is hope.” It works in both directions. I intend to be ready for any and all chances that come my way.