Can there be anything sweeter than what he wrote to me after that first meeting:
I was driving back from picking up something for my computer, and I just started thinking of how much I wanted you. YOU, not just sex. Sex with YOU. NOTHING else will do. I didn’t think of cumming. I thought of looking into your eyes, caressing your legs, hearing you sound loving and full of desire, feeling that I am making you feel that way. Every sigh of love and scream of pleasure that oozes out of you flows through every vein in my body. There is no better way of giving me pleasure than for you to feel it yourself. Just be a selfish lover and you will have a happy lover in me. Miss you so fucking much I could scream. Please come and spend the night with me. I’m willing to beg.
Bob kept sending me ardent love emails that derailed me. I thought I was going to burst. There was almost no difference between being in love at sixty than at sixteen, except at sixty, I knew I wouldn’t die if it didn’t work out. Age and divorce had given me enough perspective to know I could survive anything, and that just the experience of having this powerful emotion again in my life was a gift.
It didn’t work out. Bob was only a few months out of a seventeen-year marriage, and it was much too early for him to make a commitment. When they say that timing is everything, they—whoever they are—are right. It was too soon after divorce for both of us. We were each other’s transitional relationship, the first one after the divorce, and no one ever stays with the transitional relationship. We broke up.
The pain of our breakup hurt more than my breakup with my husband, but unlike my marriage, I’ll never regret that thrilling affair with Bob. He was my Shaman Lover, and for that I’ll always be grateful.
BEYOND THE DOUBLE DOORS
Sue Katz
It’s been many decades since Regina last had automotive sex, although today it is just her imagination taking over as she daydreams in her car, the oldies murmuring from the radio. As a mobile podiatrist, she travels for the elders’ health services from senior center to assisted living to nursing home. Today, having arrived too early to this new venue, she is parked outside Kenmore Pines.
She reclines her car seat one more notch and tries to use the extra half-hour to relax. Lately she’s been, as they say, “living in the moment.” She has a hard time picturing her own future since Ronald passed away. She had often thought they would end up together in a fancy assisted living facility like Kenmore Pines. She shakes her head, preferring to think about the good times. That last year before Ronald died, they had shared some amazing experiences, full of creativity and surprising passion. After he turned sixty, he had started complaining about the unreliability of his erections; then once he got ill, his medications made the situation much worse. But Ronald was more committed to pleasure than he was to his ego, so he had refused to accept his lack of hard-ons as an impediment.
Regina recalls the day he came home with “his and her’s” vibrating anal toys and heavy-duty lubricant. Together they discovered a whole new realm of excitement. Her eyes close and she settles more deeply into her seat, as if she were in their king-size bed, while she relives that first time . . .
Ronald strokes her with long, firm caresses and bombards her with breath-stopping kisses. As he rolls her onto her side, she hears the familiar snapping sound of him pulling on what he calls his “sex gloves.” He slathers his fingers with the new lubricant and begins to gently play with her rear opening. Circling the tender outside tissue with his slicked-up fingers produces an electricity very different from the usual ways he touches her. As soon as she abandons herself to this new excitement, he reaches around her hip with his other hand to pinch the hood of her clit. What a whirlwind of contrasting sensations!
At first he only puts the very tip of his finger into her. But as he feels her pushing back with increasing hunger, he graduates to fucking her anally with his thumb. Her panting is audible, so he decides that she is ready to take her new toy. The pink silicone butt plug is about a half-inch thick and three inches long. It is attached to a battery pack adorned with buttons. Regina feels self-conscious, but committed.
Nudging her onto her hands and open knees, Ronald kneels behind her. He carefully slips the slender toy into her and turns the vibrator on low. Her whole body trembles with the penetrating shivers that spread from her ass to her pussy and down her thighs. Regina moans with ecstatic surprise, afraid to move one inch. She doesn’t want this unanticipated new thrill to ever stop. Suddenly Ronald turns the vibrator up higher, using his other hand to work her clit. She comes in an explosion so quick and powerful that she falls over sideways, immobile. “I came in my ass,” she sobs to him. “I came back there.”
Regina shifts in her seat, half drifting, half conscious, remembering how she had learned to pleasure him with the thicker toy he had bought for himself. He too loved the sensations of anal play and described to her how it made him orgasm without ejaculating. She could hear the echo of those triumphant cries of gratification that had made her laugh with joy. But within a couple of months, he had become too sick to make love at all. And soon after that he had died.
Regina is startled by the buzz of her cellphone alarm wrenching her out of her sweet memories and telling her that it is time to go in and work. Kenmore Pines has lined up two hours of clients for her. She stops at the desk and a handsome man in his early forties comes out of a nearby office. “Hi, Regina. I’m Ted, the executive director, and I welcome you to Kenmore Pines. Let me walk you down the hall to our health clinic.” By the time they arrive, she is charmed by his friendly and open attitude.
Two and a half hours later, she has packed up her gear to go. However, her exit is deflected by the sound of a party down the hall. She follows the buzz with curiosity. The noise is almost raucous by the time she approaches the set of double doors to the events room. She’s never before heard such high festivity in an assisted living home.
She opens the door to the bewildering sight of a rotund guy in his seventies balancing a tray of plastic glasses while wearing a pink tutu over his jeans, tucked just under his not inconsiderable stomach. Three or four plastic leis in rainbow colors hang from his neck and bounce on his barrel chest. Regina has crossed from the thin, hushed environment of the assisted living to the charged density of a high-energy celebration.
The decorative man stops at the table closest to Regina. There, eight women of a certain age—well, her age, actually—reach out to grasp a glass, each with an affectionate quip to her server. Beyond them are at least a dozen more tables, filled with spirited, chattering folks who, despite being beyond retirement age, clearly don’t need the residential services of an assisted living facility.
One of the nearby women notices Regina standing uncertainly. “First time here?” she asks with a smile as white and full as her luxurious, wavy hair. “I’m Cherie,” she adds, reaching out to shake Regina’s hand.
“Actually, I was just leaving the building, but I was curious about all the noise.”
“You’re just in time for dessert, so sit here next to me.” Cherie raises her voice. “Tinkerbell! Bring another glass of champagne for our newcomer!” The guy in the tutu dances back and presents the plastic glass to Regina with a flourish. “Welcome, Madame!”
Regina squeezes in next to Cherie, who tries, over the racket, to introduce her to the animated women at their table.
“You don’t know who we are, do you?” Cherie asks, sitting with a confident posture that complements her trim, angular build. Regina looks around, trying to come up with an answer. The lively women from a generous mix of ethnicities and fashion styles seem like old friends. On second glance she realizes that—oh!—there are at least two quite affectionate couples at the table.
Cherie’s waiting for her answer. “Not a clue,” Regina says.
“We’re the LGBT Seniors Dinner Club.” Regina knows the acronym—Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans. But seniors? Cherie continues, “Been meeting here monthly for nearly two years. And the crowd keeps growing an
d growing. You should see us in the summer, when it’s easier for folks to get here. We spill right out there into the garden.”
Somewhere in the middle of Cherie’s explanation, as Regina is leaning in very close to hear her over the crowd, Regina feels a flush of heat rising from her belly up her chest and neck and onto her cheeks. It’s not what Cherie is saying—simple small talk—it’s her lips. And the lines at the corners of her mouth. Something about her smile framed by that shimmery white hair with its fabulous lavender lowlights is playing havoc with Regina’s bloodstream.
Regina takes a deep breath, realizing that she isn’t holding up her side of the conversation. “But why just LGBT elders? Are there special issues?”
The flush on Regina’s neck and cheeks does not escape Cherie’s notice. “Oh, there are a million reasons,” she says, casually putting her arm around the back of Regina’s chair. “We’re kept out of each other’s hospital rooms, even when we have all the proper legal documents. We’re excluded from the funerals of our life partners by hostile families or thrown out of the houses we have renovated with our own hands. We’re afraid to be affectionate in senior centers or nursing homes in case our caregivers object.”
“A toast!” the women at the table cry, and Cherie and Regina realize that they have completely missed the group conversation. “It’s true,” a woman named Yleana beams, taking the hand of the pretty woman sitting next to her who holds a gorgeous carved cane, “Next month Ruth and I are moving into an assisted living on the north shore that will give us a couple’s room.” They all drink their good wishes. Regina feels an elation she cannot explain as she and Cherie click glasses. They lock eyes with a growing sense of excited connection.
By eight thirty, people are getting up and leaving. Regina is afraid to lose sight of Cherie. She opens her wallet and peels off one of her business cards. “Here’re my details,” she says. Cherie slips the card into her back pocket and digs around her own backpack. “And here’s one of mine—a bit scruffy, but with all the info intact.”
They hug with surprising warmth, and neither wants to break the embrace. Cherie whispers into Regina’s ear, “It’s been very special to meet you.” As the petite woman’s lips brush past her earlobe, Regina feels a shivery arousal. But without any other excuse to hang around, Regina exits the double doors back to the car, where just hours before, she had been enveloped in a very different emotional state.
When Regina gets up the next morning and checks her email, there is an invitation to go out to dinner with Cherie. She sends back her answer: “Any time after six thirty, any place in the tristate area! Send details!”
They meet at a quiet, Palestinian-owned café where they sit on beautifully embroidered cushions around tables made of large round worked-silver trays. Sharing hummus and baba ghanoush had never felt so intimate.
“I had a lot of time to prepare for Ronald’s death,” Regina tells Cherie, as they exchange thumbnail biographies, “but never thought about how to live my life once he was gone. I guess I’ve been working hard and reading more mysteries than is good for me.”
“I understand,” Cherie says, laying her hand unselfconsciously on Regina’s thigh, “because when Uta decided to go back to Germany after living with me for more than twenty years, I went through a whole bereavement. She’s not dead, but she sure is gone.”
Cherie walks Regina to her car on the deserted side street. Regina leans her back against the side of her car, pulling Cherie flat against her. Their bodies meld, and for the first time, anticipation transforms into arousal. Regina gasps as Cherie tightens her embrace and then buries her face in the collar of Regina’s coat. They remain leaning as one against the car, trembling, and then turn their faces for a first kiss.
“Good morning, gorgeous,” says the text on Regina’s phone the next morning. “No, change that to great morning!” Instead of answering and deleting, as she usually does with texts, Regina replies but saves this text, feeling that it marks the start of the transformation of her life. “I’ll bring drinks and dessert tonight,” she writes, looking forward to her first visit to Cherie’s home in Quincy.
At Cherie’s that evening, dinner is foreplay. Although the chicken is moist and the pasta salad is fresh, the dessert can wait, for the women have sweeter things in mind. For a present, Regina brings Cherie a CD of the vintage Roberta Flack album that had been the soundtrack to their generation’s youthful romances. The two women dance to “Killing Me Softly” from the dining corner into Cherie’s bedroom, where she has a view of the Boston skyline from Quincy’s special bayside perspective.
The moon lights up Cherie’s silky white hair, even the edgy lavender stripes in her bangs. The red fairy lights that are draped around the room cast a luscious luminosity over Cherie’s light skin. Regina likes the mahogany sheen it gives to her own darker skin, too. Petite but wiry, Cherie shrugs off her own clothes and then crawls onto the bed, smiling. Regina is mesmerized by the woman’s beauty and proud of her lack of self-consciousness as she pulls off her own jeans and sweater.
How quickly her own self-image has adapted to this change in her life. She feels so admired and so much a peer that she is happy to reveal more of her body to Cherie than to anyone ever before, including Ronald. And there is more of it to reveal, for she has gained at least thirty or forty pounds since his death, weight that settled in her breasts, her tummy, and her thighs. She had found herself increasingly alienated from her body. That is, until she met Cherie.
Cherie leans over to unclasp Regina’s bra and to slip her panties down, murmuring her joy all along. She gently pulls the bigger woman onto her bed, where Regina lies back, exposed, on the white sheet. “Oh, the riches,” Cherie says, crawling up and burying her face in Regina’s cleavage. Cherie scoops up Regina’s breasts from both sides and squashes them against her own ears in a playful gesture that breaks any tension Regina might feel at lying so exposed. But then Cherie sits up on her knees between Regina’s legs, saying, “You seem very languorous, my beauty, so I’m going to wake you up.” Cherie pinches each dark nipple, drawing up Regina’s breasts until they are stretched and distorted, and blood rushes into the tissue.
Regina moans with the mixed sensations of pain and pleasure, closing her eyes tight. With her eyes shut, she does not see Cherie pick up one of two pieces of dental floss that she had laid on the corner of the bed table earlier. Cherie wraps the thread tightly around one hard nipple, circling from base to tip, and then does the same to the other.
“Sit up and look, Regina,” she says, and Regina obeys, swinging her legs over the side of the bed so that she won’t be straining her arthritic knee. Sitting there, she has her choice of views. She can look down at her fleshy breasts with the tips wrapped firmly in the white thread, or she can look straight ahead into the full-length mirror Cherie had set up and see a frontal view of her decorated nipples, above the tumble of soft rolls of belly.
Cherie crawls around behind her, scooping up her breasts like a push-up bra and then flicking the wrapped nipples with the back of her middle fingernail. Regina gasps at the heightened feeling. The bondage makes her nipples infinitely more sensitive than they had ever been before, and she trembles from the hypersensation. Is she feeling pain? Pleasure? Some hybrid? It doesn’t matter because whatever it is, it is doing the job. She is totally aroused.
Cherie scurries off the edge of the bed to come around with a pillow in her hand. She drops it on the floor and kneels between Regina’s legs. Regina watches, mesmerized and breathless, as Cherie kisses up her thighs to her outer pussy lips. Unprompted, Regina leans back on her hands to support herself and opens her legs wider. Spreading her lover’s inner lips, Cherie uses the flat of her tongue on the hood of Regina’s swelling clit. Once she is lapping at the most intimate crevices, she reaches up to knead those substantial breasts. All this Regina watches, as if in a film, as a mirror image. As her excitement mounts, she gazes in the mirror at the curve of Cherie’s back and buttocks and the movements o
f the back of her head.
When Cherie begins twisting her nipples mercilessly, sucking at her clit at the same time, Regina’s orgasm builds relentlessly and then cascades in echoing waves. The heap of sensations—the bound and abused nipples, the thump of Cherie’s tongue on the hooded length of her clitoris, and, most of all, the spectacular sight of Cherie making love to her—brings on an explosion punctuated by her exultant cries. It takes her some time before she recovers her breath enough to turn her attentions to her lover’s pleasure.
A few weeks later, Regina parks outside the Kenmore Pines for the second time. As she gets out of the car, instead of carrying her podiatrist’s tools, she holds a bouquet of peonies for Cherie. They are meeting at the LGBT senior dinner to celebrate their one-month anniversary.
As she enters the lobby and heads for the double doors, she runs into Ted, the executive director. “Oh, Regina,” Ted says, “I almost didn’t recognize you. Something’s different. Have you lost weight? Did you get new glasses?”
She smiles and shakes her head, but she doesn’t stop. She pushes through the double doors, feeling that in exploring another woman’s body, she has rediscovered her own. “No,” she wants to tell Ted, “I discovered hot sex in the last third of my life, and what you see on my face is happiness. Excitement. Endorphins. And maybe even some love juices.”
MORNING
Belle Burroughs Shepherd
I awaken while it’s still dark, my bladder urging me to get up. Your white hair is barely visible against the glow of your iPhone clock on the nightstand. With a deep aching in my body, I take my first naproxen of the day.
My bladder made content, I sleepily leave the bathroom. I wonder if it’s too early for a cup of tea. A quick glance at the clock and the hint of light coming through the blinds say go for it. Then it’s tea, vitamins, and a quick read of my overnight email.
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