Now and Forever--Let's Make Love

by Joan Elizabeth Lloyd

  “The repairman will be there on Monday,” the landlord had promised, but now it was Thursday night and the air conditioner was still dead.

  Claire slipped a light cotton cover-up over her damp skin and opened the back door, leaving her husband asleep. She glanced back and watched the even rise and fall of his chest, his body illuminated by a shaft of moonlight through the open door. She smiled at the corner of a sheet he had pulled across his groin, conservative even in his sleep.

  Sighing, Claire slipped out the door and walked through the backyard, wiggling her toes in the cool grass. She slid her hand under her long hair and lifted it from her overheated neck. Nothing seemed to cool her off. She approached the swing set that the landlord had installed for the previous tenant, lifted her dress to her waist, and sat down on the plastic swing strap. She took little backward steps until the swing was as far back as she could get it, then lifted her feet and spread her legs.

  The feeling of the warm air rushing across her hot, wet skin as the swing swept forward was exhilarating. Back the swing flew, then rushed forward again, the wind between her spread legs incredibly erotic. She pumped her legs like she had as a child, but the feel of the plastic on her naked buttocks and the air on her skin was most assuredly a grown-up feeling. She let her head fall backward and closed her eyes.

  She swung for several minutes, her eyes still closed, savoring her feelings. Suddenly, she felt the swing stop, held a few feet forward. Her eyes flew open and she looked into her husband’s face.

  “What a sight you make,” he said, his voice hoarse.

  A bit unsettled, she said, “It just felt so good.”

  “I could tell.” He stood there holding the swing partway forward in its arc. “You look good enough to eat.”

  Claire wasn’t sure she was hearing correctly. Did he mean that double entendre? He was usually so serious about love-making, preferring it in the bedroom, at night, in the traditional missionary position. She had wanted him to loosen up for a long time, so now she said, “So? What are you going to do about it?”

  His hands on the plastic chains, Glen pulled the swing closer and pressed his open mouth against his wife’s. Unable to hold her against him with his hands, he used the force of his kiss to pull her to him. Long moments passed, their mouths fused together under the moon-bright sky.

  Claire wrapped her legs around Glen’s waist and pressed her wet cunt against his bare belly, just above the jeans he had thrown on over his naked body.

  “God, baby,” he growled. “You will get yourself into a lot of trouble if you do that.”

  Claire was delighted at the way Glen was loosening up. How far could she push him? “What kind of trouble?” she teased.

  “This kind,” he snapped, letting the swing down into its resting position. He sat on the ground beneath the swing, his mouth at exactly the height of her pussy. He pressed his hands against her buttocks and held her body against his mouth. Like a man starving, he lapped at her wet flesh, stroking the length of her slit with the flat of his tongue. “Oh God,” she moaned. “Oh God.”

  He licked, then sucked her engorged clit into his mouth and massaged the tip with his tongue. Rhythmically, he sucked, flicked, then released, until Claire felt her orgasm boil from low in her belly. “Don’t stop,” she yelled. “Oh God, don’t stop.” Over and over, he licked until, with her thighs tight against his head, he felt her climax.

  While she was still coming, he quickly stood up and pulled down his jeans. He lifted her from the swing and set her on her feet on the grass. Almost unable to stand, Claire watched him sit on the swing, then motion to her to sit on his lap, facing him, her legs over his thighs. A bit awkwardly, she climbed over him and felt his cock against the entrance to her passage. “Do it,” he groaned, and she lowered herself onto his shaft, burying it to his balls.

  He moved his feet backward, lifting the swing, then let his feet go. The swing dropped, then rose like a pendulum. Back and forth they swung, Glen’s cock buried in Claire’s pussy. Screaming, Claire’s orgasm began to peak again, continuing as Glen pulled the front of her sundress down and took a hard nipple in his mouth. Holding the plastic chains, sucking and swinging, he arched his back and erupted deep inside his wife’s body. With a loud scream, Claire came again, as well.

  Too exhausted to do anything but hold on and let the swing come to a stop, the two rested for long minutes. “Oh my God,” Claire said finally. “That was amazing.”

  Eyes downward, Glen said, “I don’t know what came over me.”

  Claire squeezed her vaginal muscles and giggled. “I know what came, all right.”

  “But I’m not like this,” he said, his speech hesitant.

  “You aren’t usually,” Claire said, sensing her husband’s discomfort. “But this was sensational and I loved it.”

  “Really?” Glen said softly.

  “Really. I have always wanted our lovemaking to be fun, spontaneous, and creative like this.”

  Glen looked at his wife, her body drenched with sweat, gleaming in the moonlight. “This certainly is creative. I was so hot, and I saw the door open, so I stepped outside for some air. When I saw you swinging, your body so beautiful in the moonlight, I just needed you like this.”

  Glen’s voice suddenly interrupted her reveries. “Honey, are you out there?”

  Claire opened her eyes and saw her husband wander out the back door. “I’m here.”

  “I am so hot,” Glen said.

  Claire smiled. “So am I. Come join me.”

  5

  We’re Not Kids

  Anymore

  A seventy-three-year-old man is seated in his doctor’s office after his semiannual physical. “You’re in great shape,” the doctor says. “Healthy and fit, for a man your age.”

  “That’s wonderful, Doctor,” the man answers. “And that’s very good news, since I’m getting married next week.”

  The doctor leans across the desk and shakes the man’s hand. “I’m so happy for you both,” he says. “Tell me about her.”

  “Well,” the man says, hesitating, “she’s gorgeous and sexy, and she’s twenty-seven.”

  The doctor clears his throat. “Well,” he says. “You know you’re no spring chicken. Sex … Well, you understand…. You might consider—to keep everyone happy, you know, sexualy—you might take in a boarder.”

  The man thinks a moment, then says, “That might not be a bad idea.”

  Six months later, the two are again seated in the doctor’s office. “Marriage seems to agree with you,” the doctor says. “I’ve never seen you healthier.”

  “Thanks,” the man says. “And by the way, my wife’s pregnant.”

  “Congratulations. I guess you followed my advice and took in a boarder.”

  “I did,” the man says. “She’s pregnant, too.”

  Many people, like the doctor in the story, have written sex off among older people. “Make the best of it,” they say, “because the best of sex is behind you.”

  While I was listening to the Frank Sinatra song “It Was a Very Good Year” recently, I realized how pervasive that idea is. The song tells about the women with whom Frank had relationships at seventeen, twenty-one, and thirty-five. Now, he sings, in the autumn of my life, I look back and think about how good my life was. That’s all well and good, but Frank, of all people, should know that it’s not all over just because you’re past sixty, or seventy, or eighty. As the old line says, “Just because there’s snow on the roof doesn’t mean the fire’s out in the furnace.” I can testify that my furnace—and Ed’s, too—is still functioning perfectly, and I intend to keep it that way for a very long time. Maybe our days of hanging from the chandelier are over, but the days of good sex can continue as long as we want them to.

  Allow me to introduce you to the role model for good sex in later years.

  As an avocation, I am an emergency medical technician and I take ambulance calls with two local volunteer organizations. In my town, there are se
veral residences for seniors, and, as you can well imagine, we get called there frequently. Recently, we got a call to respond to one of the residences to aid a man with a hip injury. I’ve changed the names to protect the delightfully guilty.

  We arrived and were met at the door by one of the residence’s senior administrators. “You’ll find Mr. Smith in room one fourteen,” he told us. “But please, be discreet.”

  “Is there a problem?” I said, wheeling the stretcher down the long hallway.

  “Well, one fourteen isn’t exactly his room.”

  Still puzzled, I looked at him while one of my partners began to snicker. “Oh,” I said, comprehension dawning. “Is there a need for secrecy?”

  “Well, no, not really. He and Ms. Jones are certainly consenting adults, since she’s eighty-one and he’s eighty-three. But I don’t want it to set a bad example.”

  Bad example, I thought. It’s a great example. However, I decided to tread gently. We arrived in the room and found Mr. Smith on the bed. “It doesn’t hurt too much,” he said, “but I can’t seem to move.”

  Ms. Jones was seated in a chair, dressed in a chintz robe, looking very distraught. “I’m Barbara Jones, his er … friend. We were just, well, we were …”

  “Don’t worry, Ms. Jones,” I said, “we’ll take good care of him.”

  “Hey, Barbara,” Mr. Smith said to Ms. Jones, “go ahead and tell ’em what we were doing. I’m damn proud of it. I gave it to you good, didn’t I?”

  Ms. Jones merely blushed and hugged her robe more tightly around her.

  “Well, lady,” he said to me, “I give as good as I get, maybe better.” He winked, then added, “What are you doing later?”

  “My name’s Joan,” I told him with a grin, “and let’s not worry about later right now.”

  Preserving what modesty we could, we examined Mr. Smith’s naked body and concluded that he probably had indeed broken his hip. We carefully transferred him to our stretcher and covered him with a sheet and a light blanket. Then we wheeled him back down the hallway toward the main front room, through which we had to go to get to the front door and out to the waiting ambulance.

  When we arrived in the main sitting room, several older women were waiting to wish Mr. Smith a speedy recovery. Suddenly, Mr. Smith whipped off the blanket and yelled, “Hey, ladies, who wants to see my injury?”

  There were titters, giggles, and, from myself and my crew, hearty laughter.

  Thank heavens this case isn’t unusual. There was an article in the New York Times recently about a very prestigious senior residence facility in New York City that had issued a residents’ bill of sexual rights. The men and women had the right to explicit material—books, movies, and the like—and they had the right to date, carry on, and such, as long as they did so without upsetting others.

  It isn’t that this hadn’t been true in the past, but the facility was now openly admitting that their residents were, and had every right to be, sexual beings. How wonderful. And this is happening more and more as the population ages.

  Sexual age discrimination occurs all over. Dozens of times a day, we are bombarded with this message: I’m still young and useful and sexual, but if I don’t do what the commercial demands, I’ll be old, dried-up, and useless.

  “I’m over forty and I still look wonderful.” First we are led to believe that the fact that she is over forty and hasn’t fallen apart yet is simply due to the power of the advertiser’s product. And, more important and more insidious, we are being told that if you don’t look good, you’re finished; your life is over.

  If one more nubile twenty-five-year-old says, “I’m not going to age gracefully; I’m going to fight it all the way,” I think I’ll scream.

  “For the young and the young at heart.” I particularly hate that phrase; it’s as though old is a dirty word.

  Okay, let’s get realistic. Aging does bring about many changes in our bodies. After menopause, a woman can have difficulty lubricating properly. Men can have problems with getting and maintaining an erection, and that erection may not be as hard as it once was. So what? We will get to specific problems and solutions later in this chapter, but it’s that awful mental image of used-up, nonsexual people that I’m fighting first. You’re older, not dead yet. Let’s get together and stamp out pejorative phrases like “dried-up,” referring in part to a lack of lubrication; “sexy senior,” as if that’s an oxymoron; and “dirty old man,” as if it’s worse to have sexy thoughts when you’re older and supposed to be beyond that. Okay, I’ll get down off my soapbox now.

  Let’s begin with one of the most basic problems that comes with aging: our body image. Although I’m discussing it here, body image can be a problem at any age, and I’m living proof.

  As a young person, I had a Nose. Not a nose with a small n but a Nose with a capital letter. Actually, the rest of my face wasn’t half-bad, but, as I saw it, who could ever know? My large nose overshadowed the rest of me. When I was beginning to think about boys, at about thirteen, I asked my mother if she thought I was pretty. She answered, “You’re good-looking, Joan, and an attractive person. And you may not have as many first dates as some of your friends, but you’ll have lots more second dates.” That was nice, but not what a budding teenager wanted to hear.

  Over the next year, I watched my pretty friends start to date. Me? Nothing. So my mother and I seriously considered plastic surgery. We talked about it and then finally visited a doctor and had an evaluation. I decided to have the surgery, and my mother backed me up. So, at fifteen, on the day after my graduation from high school, I had my Nose done.

  It was a relatively simple procedure, and when I was wheeled down from the operating room, I was groggy but conscious. “I’m gorgeous,” I said from below two black eyes and a swollen forehead. And I believed it. My whole personality had changed. I went from feeling like an insecure teenager to a self-proclaimed dazzler of members of the opposite sex. And it was a self-fulfilling prophesy. I began to date and I had an active social life throughout college, meeting, dating, and, I suppose, dazzling my future husband in the process.

  Had I changed that much? No. Everyone said that after all the healing was complete, I looked like a well-retouched photograph of myself. But my feelings about myself had changed dramatically, and that was all that mattered. That was my first taste of the power that body image has on us—that time, for the better.

  It wasn’t all smooth sailing, however. My problems with body image surfaced again soon after the birth of my first daughter. When I got pregnant, I weighed only about 115, and at five seven, that wasn’t really quite fleshy enough for my husband. “Maybe after you have the baby,” he said at one point, “you could weigh a little more. I’d like a bit more meat on your bones.” What could be better for a pregnant lady? French fries, hot fudge sundaes, and Milky Ways. Life was good.

  My body changed dramatically almost immediately. In my first month of pregnancy, my bra size went from a 34B to a 36E. My husband was delighted, but I was less than thrilled. Not only did my clothes not fit properly but also I was extremely sore and uncomfortable. Despite my eating habits, however, I didn’t gain scads of weight during my pregnancy—about twenty pounds, as I recall, six pounds twelve ounces of which I lost during childbirth. By the time of my visit to my obstetrician for my six-week checkup, I had lost most of the weight I had gained and was doing what I could to flatten my stomach. And, to my husband’s disappointment and my very mixed feelings, I was back to my 34B bras.

  My obstetrician gave me a thorough going-over and pronounced me healthy and ready for the first comfortable sex in fourth months and the first sex of any kind in eight weeks. “Okay,” he muttered, “let me just make a few notes here.” He mumbled as he scribbled on my chart. As I dressed, one muttered phrase leapt at me through the curtain: “Breasts, pendulous.”

  I looked down and saw that there was lots more skin than there was stuff to fill it up. Breasts, pendulous. I looked in the mirror that covered o
ne wall of the dressing area and had to admit that he was right. I drooped. I had a few stretch marks, an old but quite large appendectomy scar, and pendulous breasts. I was devastated.

  I can’t say it ruined my life. I returned to my adequate, if uncreative, sex life without too much change in my attitude. But many times as I dried after my shower, I glanced in the bathroom mirror. Breasts, pendulous. And I’ve been self-conscious ever since.

  Let’s talk about body image. Answer these four questions for me—quickly and without censorship.

  1. Thinking of yourself above the neck, what’s your worst feature?

  2. Thinking of yourself above the neck, what’s your best feature?

  3. Thinking of yourself below the neck, what’s your worst feature?

  4. Thinking of yourself below the neck, what’s your best feature?

  Don’t read on until you’ve answered all four questions as honestly as you can.

  Okay, now that you’ve got your answers firmly in your mind, you can forget them. I don’t care what your responses were. What I’m more interested in is the length of time it took for you to answer. I’ll bet that if you’re honest with yourself, it was a lot easier and faster to think of your worst features than your best. We’re conditioned that way. Find your imperfections and work on them, we’re told. Fix them. Diet, work out, get plastic surgery, have liposuction. Use face cream, eye cream, neck cream, hand cream, thigh cream. Be beautiful and be happy. Be imperfect and be miserable. Well, if you weren’t miserable before the commercials, you are now.

  The kind of perfection the commercials and all the other subliminal gimmicks insist on is unattainable. There’s always a bulge here, a hollow there, a wrinkle here, a pimple there. We can’t win. Even those pictures on the front cover of Cosmo are carefully retouched.