LICK THE COCKSICLE

The alarm blares. She buries her weary face further in her pillow and rolls onto her side. He wakes up and quickly turns to tap off the annoying ring. He glances to his wife and exits their room, leaving his robe on the hook. After grabbing a pill from the cupboard, he turns the coffee maker on and thumbs through the San Jose Mercury News. The coffee finishes filtering through the grounds and his penis begins to perk. He finishes preparing her coffee with a couple spoonfuls of Splenda, and while he’s at it, sprinkles some more on his six-inch. He enters the bedroom to wake up his wife with coffee and a surprise. She rubs her eyes and peers at her present. She places the coffee on the nightstand, licks her lips, and gives him a morning blowjob.

David and Ardis Williams are unique to mainstream culture. They have an active and healthy sex life and are over the age of 65. A common public misconception is the notion that senior citizens are asexual, just living in recliners, watching television and knitting. Getting older for many senior citizens doesn’t mean their sex is getting old — it's just an opportunity to find new ways to use that cane.

They give blowjobs, masturbate, eat out, do it doggie-style, lube dildos, like bondage and stick it in any possible place perceivable. Picture rough wrinkles thrusting against sexy, sagging skin, and aged varicose-veined hands reaching for the lube. It’s hard thinking of senior citizens that way. In our minds we see them baking cookies, weaving tiny fishing flies, golfing and gardening.

Our grandparents and parents do enjoy all those activities. Who doesn’t love a fresh batch of chocolate chip? However, sex is also on the to-do list. The Williams just remodeled their kitchen, and spend many afternoons in their colorful backyard; the fountain trickling in the background. They enjoy many different sexual experiences with solely themselves and often with others. But this isn’t a swinger story, it is a story about getting over societal prejudices in such a youth-infatuated culture and exploring the many emotional and physical obstacles of having great sex while aging.

Like many senior men, David Williams has erectile dysfunction and, like many post-menopause women, Ardis Williams has low hormone levels. The couple is fit, riding bicycles, dancing their shoes off and keeping up with their grandchildren. They also keep up with each other by alleviating their sexual problems with medications, like Cialis for Dave and hormone replacement therapy for Ardis. However, after she was diagnosed with breast cancer, Ardis decided to discontinue use. Since then she has had some difficulties with her libido.

A WORKSHOP TO WORK OUT THOSE MOANS

For these reasons, this couple of 44 years decided to attend a workshop hosted by Good Vibrations in Berkeley, related to a new book, “Better Than I Ever Expected – Straight Talk about Sex After Sixty,” by Joan Price. With a group of 12 men and women of various ages, they sat in a circle of gray metal chairs while Price coached them on the secret of spicing up the sex soup and not mistaking the loss of sex-drive for an end all, but seeing it as a consequence of inevitable age.

“Despite the challenges, the sex we are having is the best we have had in our lives,” said Price, a spunky attitude, short curly-haired firecracker and a personal fitness trainer.

Tips were being acted out for some, while others were counseled on the natural intimidation of introducing a vibrator to their sexual practices. Price stressed the use of certain toys to help aid in orgasm, when hard-to-reach positions become a pain. The truth is that with age, certain sex acts become hard to execute with hip or knee problems or osteoporosis.

“The wedge!” said Price as she plopped a purple, 3’ by 4’, vinyl covered acute triangle Styrofoam cushion in the middle of the floor. “Robert has knee and back problems and the wedge lets us have real comfort and long, long, long –– long sexual encounters.”

Other tips offered by Price stressed the use of lots of lubrication since aging reduces the blood circulation to vaginal tissues, which then become prone to tearing. She found it to be important to use a lube that is similar to the particular natural moisture.

Rather than spend the whole night accessing the problems with aging, Price instead focused on what most times gets ignored in our youth driven culture.

“One of the great things about aging and being sexual is that it takes longer,” Price said.

Because sexual climax takes longer, Price suggested couples make a date to allow enough time to be intimate with each other without being rushed or just giving up on sex. So many images of sex involve sticking it in, getting off, pulling it out, lighting a cigarette and asking if it was good for you. The whole nine yards, we think, should take 10 minutes. However, for these couples, a good hour is given to making love that means something. And the importance of foreplay begins early in the day with playfulness and compassionate words.

“There needs to be more awareness about all the possibilities and the fun parts about being older,” Price said while introducing an activity where all the women and men split apart to think of questions to ask each other.

Their questions show that it’s not just younger people who are anxious about sex and aging. Folks over 50 are nervous about wrinkles, weird smells and being appealing to their partner. In small gender specific circles, their hand gestures pointed, swayed, and jittered with excitement when formulating questions for the opposite sex, those pesky queries that lurk in the back of curious minds.

Even though these minds have been aged with wisdom, the discussions were timeless. The women were afraid of losing their men to a younger culture and the men were afraid of losing their genitals and sex drive to cancer. Both sexes were fearful of losing what they used to be physically. When the men finally spoke toward the last five minutes of the workshop, one man who chose to remain unidentified consoled the women with timeless words:

“There is a connection — the deepest. Older women can be very provocative and very sensual. You can feel the experience that most younger women don’t have.”

MRS. ROBINSON WAS PROBABLY JUST A FEW YEARS OLDER THAN HOFFMAN

Unfortunately, there are only a handful of representations of these older, sexy, provocative and wise women who melt hearts and heat erections. And usually they are seen as desperate, or as alcoholics.

“[Senior citizens] watch more TV," said Brian de Vries, a professor in the Gerontology Program at SF State. “They are non-represented or misrepresented and, over time, those images will become internal. People hear those messages enough and relate to the experience.”

What results is a society that won’t talk about elder sex and what’s worse, doesn’t believe that senior citizens have booty calls, tax dat ass, or do the wild monkey dance. Children swear their parents don’t have sex and proceed to think they only did it missionary-style to have them. And this might have a similar result for the children when they reach that ripe age, making this senior citizen myth loop around to the next generation.

Older people aren’t seen as sexual beings to begin with. Society ends up castrating people who are increasingly dependent. Whether it’s turning a blind eye to people in prison or to people with disabilities, senior citizens are also out of the spotlight of being sexually able. As a result, all the fun belongs to the fit, flexible, healthy hottie.

“More than just a social context, the way in which we talk not only is a issue feeding against notions later in life, but also foster again with older people themselves,” de Vries said. His office is piled high with books about sex and aging, especially in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trangender community.

Aging in the LGBT community can be even more complex when a group of people’s identity is already sexualized. However, de Vries thinks the LGBT community might talk about it more, but not in anymore depth. This puts the community in this bind of being immersed in sex, yet still falling short to a youth culture. This is drastically apparent in the gay male population in urban areas, where there are separate bars based on age---cough, Twin Peaks Bar on Castro.

BACK TO THE BOOTY

“We are the most judged amongst ourselves,” said Ardis Williams, sitting with her husband on her floral couch in the quiet Willow Glen neighborhood of San Jose. “It is just time to get over yourself and say who you are.”

Some senior citizen couples are like the Williams and go the full extent to express themselves sexually, whether it be participating in a nudist club in Los Gatos, swinging with other couples or sexin’ each other in new, exciting positions. Other couples are more reserved and consider their sex romps as more sensual; happy with the old fashion way they are comfortable with.

“They feel less pressure to participate in the activity and appreciate each other with a gentle touch or a hug,” said de Vries. “As before it was a prelude to sex, but now those gestures are itself sexually heightening and enriching — they are not just making due with the absence of ability.”

So many times we are victims of society, assuming what others do in the bedroom. Some folks have sex, others don’t, but what these seniors illustrate is that despite popular belief, seniors are just as crazy about the big “O.”

Log on to xpress.sfsu.edu to read a review of the book "Better than I Expected - Straight Talk about Sex after Sixty"