North Bay Bohemian: Birds, Bees, and Oldsters Do It
Thanks to Cole Porter, we know that birds do it, bees do it, even overeducated fleas do it. Well, apparently oldsters do it, too.
Happy Valentine’s Day! I was delighted to be profiled in the North Bay Bohemian‘s 2007 Sex Issue in a lively article by Brett Ascarelli titled “Certain Age.” Here are some excerpts:
Last fall, ABC Nightline sent a crew to Sebastopol to interview author Joan Price about seniors, sex and dating. Price, a former high school teacher turned fitness author and guru, fell in love a few years ago, drawing media attention when she claimed that she was having the best sex of her life. In 2006, she released Better Than I Ever Expected: Straight Talk About Sex After Sixty (Seal Press; $15.95), already in its second printing. The book features interviews with “sexually seasoned women,” experts’ advice about keeping the nethers in shape and Price’s own musings on the challenges of being a sexy senior. The book’s popularity spawned a related blog, in which Price moderates discussions about sex for the mature set.
One recent afternoon at her Sebastopol house, the 4’11” Price is wearing a rhinestone-covered blouse and Mary Janes. No wonder she’s getting some; at 63, she’s super-fit, thanks to a frequent work-out regimen and what must still be damn good metabolism, given the chocolate cookies she’s munching.
… Price is a poster-adult for the cause and now fields sex-related questions from mature adults at workshops across the country.
“I call myself an advocate for ageless sexuality,” Price laughs, “but maybe I’m trying to do more than that: I’m trying to change society one mind at a time, I guess.”
Ascarelli, a young woman, took to heart my comments about the need for society to change its ageist attitude toward sex. She quoted me saying, “I think it will be easier [for women in the future], especially if younger people pay attention to what we’re going through now and don’t see us as the Other, but just as themselves in a few decades.”
photo by Brett Ascarelli
Hooray for Claire, who’s obviously off to a great start in life!
Here’s a love story about older people. In college my mom dated a man who became a painter (artist). She didn’t marry him, but over the years she talked about him with such fondness.
Well move ahead fifty years. He’s been dissed by the New York art world for being a realist painter and picked up by a gallery in the same town where my mom lives. (Where by the way he’s making lots more money.) Then his wife of fifty years dies. So he asks out my mom about 7 months later. My mom was just like a teenager on the phone telling me about this. I think this guy was her first true love.
They are now married and having a great life together. They go to the movies and hold hands, and they still have sex. They’re a joy to be around.
They both turned 80 this year. I told my mother I was thinking of sending her Joan’s book for her birthday and she told me “We don’t need lessons.”
I’m a seventeen year-old high school student in Santa Rosa. I read the article in The Bohemian that interviewed you, and I felt compelled to respond to it.
Sex and aging are truly two topics that are practically taboo in “polite” society. I find this medieval. Both are natural, inevitable parts of life, and since when does someone’s sex life have a shelf-life?
I’m ecstatic that someone like you is speaking up about sex after 50, 60, and beyond. The general treatment and opinion of seniors today is appalling. Many of my age-group view seniors as a nuisance, or something almost alien. This is part of the reason I am writing to you, to let you know there are young people who haven’t been brainwashed into equating sexuality with youth.
I’d like to thank you for doing what others cannot or will not. It takes a strong person to stand up the way you have and will continue to do so.
with respect,
Claire
P.S. I wonder what the boneheads who left the insulting comments on your blog will think once they hit fifty…