I want you to imagine soft lighting. Pretend this is a scene from a movie, a romantic comedy maybe, not the pages of a national newspaper. Because it's going to get a little, er, intimate. It's about midlife sex, and the challenges and discoveries (not all pleasant) of the 20-year dating gap -- what older men and women deal with as they emerge onto the dating scene from the cocoon of their marriages, following divorce or the death of a spouse.
Pause here to adjust comfortably in your chair.
There is a fortysomething divorced man (let's imagine Kevin Bacon) in the midst of undressing rather hurriedly. He and his new 30-ish girlfriend (conjure Reese Witherspoon) are on their fourth date.
You know what that means.
Let's just say that Reese has been a happening singleton for a while.
She understands contemporary sexual customs. Kevin is back in the game after a long marriage.
His pants drop. Off come the boxers. She takes a look and delivers the ultimatum: "Clean up the forest" -- or don't expect any foreplay. (It was not reported - by a friend of Kevin -- how sweetly she uttered this directive, but let's imagine Reese cutely smiling.) Poor Kevin is shocked and a little mortified. His smile has drooped and so has his ...
It's a brave new world of clipped and waxed romance. A lot has changed.
When boomers were first dating, there was no such thing as online matches, for one. People mostly met in bars. And condoms were primarily for birth control.
The boomers may have lived through the advent of the sexual revolution, but those in their wake have taken it to a new level.
Cue a fiftysomething man marvelling about his dating life postdivorce from a long marriage: "When I was dating in my 20s, there just weren't as many things on the sexual menu," he tells me. (He has a sheepishly delighted look on his face.)
He is referring to a sexual act, once taboo, that Sue Johanson, Canada's own sex granny, can explain to you in the same manner she offers instructions on how to bake muffins.
And now this is where I quote a relationship expert -- as a helpful intermission.
It's true that the altered sexual landscape is enough to turn some older people off the idea of dating again, or even continuing to read this column. But fear not.
"What is different now is that sexual rules are much more individual," says Judith Sills, a relationship expert in Philadelphia, who spoke to many boomer men and women for her latest book, Getting Naked Again: Dating, Romance, Sex and Love When You've Been Divorced, Widowed, Dumped or Distracted.
"The biggest sexual change is that you have to find your own way, and that means you will probably find out what is not for you before you settle on what is," she says.
"We have removed the external value judgment about sexual practices, but we will never remove the internal physical and emotional drives that are gratified or not in the sexual context."
Thanks, Dr. Sills. And now, another scene from a different romantic comedy. This one illuminates the hilarity (yes, it's possible) in unveiling the middle-aged body.
Our heroine is in her 50s. She looks a bit like Meryl Streep. She recently left her marriage of about 20 years. She is into this new guy a lot, and listen, after years of unhappiness and little sex, she is very happy. The man -- maybe Pierce Brosnan -- is sweet, a bit James Bondy in his way with women.
They are undressing in haste. Heavy breathing ensues. He removes her blouse, her bra, her shoes, her pantyhose, her panties -- every woman should strive never to have to undress herself, after all -- but when his hand reaches for the button on the waistband of her skirt, she pushes it away.
"The skirt stays," she whispers in his ear.
Pierce stops kissing her for a moment, pulling his face back to give her a quizzical look.
"My cesarean-scar tummy," the mother of two murmurs, apologetically, shaking her head.
"It's better that you don't see."
Time to cue another expert: "Midlife women worry about the bags and sags, and they think that their lovers are going to lose interest in them as soon as they remove their push-up bras and their breasts sag. That is so not true," observes Joan Price, a 65-year-old author in California who wrote Better Than I Ever Expected: Straight Talk About Sex After Sixty.
"A man is attracted to you because he is attracted to you, not the shape of your breasts, and chances are he will be happy to see breasts again, anyway," she adds.
Well, maybe Pierce has seen a few sets. Who knows? It doesn't really matter because he is a gentleman. So, eventually -- two months into their sexual relationship -- Meryl ditches the skirt during intercourse.
"You are beautiful in every way," coos our smooth man.
He may have worries of his own, of course, despite his suave swagger. You know the kind I mean. Which is where Keith Jarvi, a urologist and expert in male sexual dysfunction at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto, comes in. "A lot of men have the expectation to be as they were 15 years ago, but that is not a reasonable expectation," he says. "They worry about what their partner will expect, but if they worry about that, chances are that makes matters worse and they won't be able to have an erection."
Many men take Viagra, of course. "They treat [the dysfunction] like they have a cold," he says.
But there are men who don't want to use Viagra or can't for medical reasons.
So, another kind of intimate sexual discussion has to take place under dim, cinematic lights.
But when it's all over and done, there arises an epiphany - best emphasized by a swelling, tear-jerking sound track.
"When I was younger, these were just not the kind of conversations I had to think about or know how to have," says another fiftysomething divorced woman.
Her new lover, also in his 50s, confessed to her that he was impotent. "We worked it out. It requires a certain acceptance, because you realize it's not going to change, and you have to decide if you can live with that. But the sex was amazing. You realize that you are here to make love, not screw your brains out."
I will leave the kind of conversation they had -- the tone of it, its humour and kindness -- to your imagination, dear reader. But I add this. She looks like Sissy Spacek. And her lover? Think Kris Kristofferson. The name of the romantic comedy could be A Kiss Is Still a Kiss. Directed by Ron Howard, that genius filmmaker of everyday human drama.
