Sex and the 60 - NO Sex in the 60

A few of you have commented on the fact that, save Paris, there has been no sex in Sex in the 60. Don’t I know it! In fact, nothing has been in the 60 for quite some time! The 60 is not happy about this. And the 60 has become quite curious about why the same guys who were saying lewd and lascivious things to her on the street 40 years ago don’t bother taking their seatbelt off when kissing her good night --- ON THE THIRD DATE!

Now you young ones might want to turn up the radio or leave the room because I am going to talk about something that I sure am glad I knew nothing about until now. If you don’t want your bubble burst….stop reading! These are things that your mama and papa never told you.

So here goes, there are three kinds of sex that a woman is likely to have in her life – if she is sexually active that is…

• Unforgettable Sex - I needn’t explain unforgettable to you, do I? If you have had unforgettable sex, well, it is just unforgettable and once you have had unforgettable sex then nothing else will do. Sometimes you think you are about to have unforgettable sex because you really, really care for the guy and think, yes, this is the “one”. I want to have his babies, buy a minivan, get a sitter and go to the movies every Friday night and buy a time share at Disney World…Yes - you get yourself all ready for Unforgettable Sex but what do you get? You get the second kind of sex… 

• Undetectable Sex – That’s the story of Max. A great guy I spent several dates falling in love with. He had everything, a burgeoning law career, great apartment, good taste in clothes, fast sports car for quick getaways to the Hamptons and he was oh so interested in me. Kissing, then necking, then petting came quick…and then the big night…his apartment, take-out Chinese, candles, the pop of a bottle of Champagne, jazz - the music of choice and black sheets on the bed! Black Sheets…it was so cliché I swooned. But, whoa there Nellie, the prelims were just ok and I began to suspect that he was in the minor leagues….what a pity that would be. As he took his place at bat…well actually, I wasn’t sure he was standing on the mound (if you know what I mean)….He was making all the right moves but there should have been some kind of ah -- friction, some heat, some --- well, feeling of fullness – if you don’t mind my bluntness, but alas, it was over before I could say…Cucumis anguria – yeah, well – Google it!

I heard he married a lovely young girl of 19 - her inexperience served them both well.

But now, now I have been introduced to the most terrifying kind of sex! Actually the problem is that it is not really sex at all. It is:

• Unerectable Sex – Yes, this is the sex that could have been, should have been, would have been, except….the “crane” does not deploy – ya know? So in my research I have read the following on Wikipedia…

Cranes, like all machines, obey the principle of conservation of energy. This means that the energy delivered to the load cannot exceed the energy put into the machine. For example, if a pulley system multiplies the applied force by ten, then the load moves only one tenth as far as the applied force. Since energy is proportional to force multiplied by distance, the output energy is kept roughly equal to the input energy (in practice slightly less, because some energy is lost to friction and other inefficiencies).

If that paragraph nearly put you to sleep you have experienced something similar to Unerectable Sex. You see! Big problem, big, big problem.

I know what you’re thinking. What about those pills. But the fact is those 40-year-olds with spray on grey hair are only simulating the problem. They don’t need to lay in a bathtub or dance their way into the bedroom. They can sweep everything off the kitchen counter and take you right there. No pill popping prep required. The guys I’m talking about cannot take the pill due to medical conditions or are some of the 24% - they don’t talk about those guys - who gain no effect from it at all. And for those there is yikes….the vacuum pump! Now that’s romantic. You know a girl likes to feel useful but turning a hand crank is not my idea of intimate interaction. Of course there is surgery, but imagine the price in nursing and babying you would have to pay if he got cut up just to please you!

So folks, what to do, what to do….there is always self-reliance, that might be somewhat satisfying, but likely forgettable and dinner and a movie is definitely no substitute for something hard against your back first thing in the morning. So, I’m working on my own personal solutions. Once I figure out what they are I’ll clue you in. Meanwhile, if you have any suggestions – other than sleeping with you – feel free to comment below. I am anxiously waiting.

See you next time.

Check out my new blog --- 2-1 -  new entry posted June 16...see link to the right.

Hi Sex and the 60 Fans,

Most of you know me and my story by now. My husband Kevin passed away going on three years ago and I have been attempting to pick up the pieces of my life and move on. Sex and the 60 chronicles that attempt and I hope has and will continue to amuse you as well as be provocative and thought-provoking. Yes, Sex and the 60 follows a significant part of my life – the part that is “moving on”, “getting over it”, “getting past it” and finding my way. But frankly there is another me – one that is equally valid and is as powerful in intent and meaning. That is the grieving me. I have not shared that part of me with many people but live with her everyday. She too needs an outlet - a place to deposit her thoughts.

It is for that reason that I have started a second blog. It is called 2-1. I warn you that it is not for everyone and I will not be hurt or disappointed if you cannot or don’t want to read it. It is painful to write and may be painful to read but it is what I and millions of others who have lost someone so dear to them live with. They, like I, no longer know their own life, their purpose and can no longer clearly imagine their future. There was a quote attributed to Colette (although I cannot find it on Google). It supposedly comes from a letter she wrote to her lover after his death. It is: “The kindest thing I ever did for you was to outlive you” …and truer words were never written.

So I will continue to regale you and myself with the misadventures of trying to find a new romantic connection at this ridiculous age and I will continue to try to move my life ahead to a happier, lighter place, but I am compelled to and will write of the endless yearning and bottomless grief I feel at the loss of my love – Kevin.

If you would like to read it you can find it at:
www.2-1melessyou.blogspot.com or click the link on my list of blogs at the right of this page.

Sex and the 60 – Things Like That Don’t Happen to Me

The strange events in Paris continue to perplex me weeks after returning. Whatever happened there – real or imagined - was just what the doctor ordered - at least for a while. Believing that dreams might come true is the way most people live their lives – or at least should…and I want to be like most people – when it comes to dreams anyway. But really how could something so romantic and apparently destined happen to me…things like that don’t happen to me.

Jump cut to 1969: I was a 20-year-old wild child who, with Carrie, was out three or four nights a week – dancing till dawn, having breakfast, then going to school and work. Wasn’t everyone? My on-again, off-again boyfriend was a big burly Irishman named Bernie, a mover by trade. Although he was not well educated and came from a very traditional family (bring on the virginal wives! – ooops too late!) He was self-taught and smart, a great kisser and despite being pigeon-toed, a good and willing dancer and best of all he treated me like I was made of precious metals. I walked all over him!

I remember the night, I was at our regular hangout, but that night I was standing outside crying because Bernie was mad at me for something or other. Actually, I was more posturing to get him over it. As I faked my tears I heard a voice “Got a cigarette?” I turned around and saw a fantastic looking man….blue jeans, white shirt with the sleeves rolled half up his forearms, dark curly hair, deep dark pools of liquid brown eyes and amazing eyelashes. He was a bit taller than me and his body was --- well --- hmmmm, his body. A perfect compact body – like the build of a man 6’2” but shrunken down to 5’10” – bite size – just the way I like ‘em…Hey guys, don’t think you have a corner on lusting after bodies.

I found my cigarettes and we sat on a stoop smoking and talking for a while. His name was Kevin. I may not have fallen in love that night or maybe I did, but I definitely fell in lust. He took my number and called the next day. Who the hell remembers what happened with Bernie.

So Kevin took me to a Richie Havens concert in Flushing Park. It was like a cliché - a clear, brilliant summer night and we lay on the grass looking up at the star-filled sky. I remember feeling so out of control that night. It was the first time I had ever felt overpowered by someone. Not in a physical way, but nonetheless my attraction to him was frightening – even to a wild child. I think I instinctively knew I had not yet experienced the real “wild” and wasn’t sure I was ready.

We had made plans to go to the beach the next day and met at Rockaway but the magic was gone. I suspect it was he who found me a bit too immature (six years older than me he was) and I believe he simply “shut off the light”. Willful or not he stopped exuding that sexual energy that had magnetized me. With that, the spark between us extinguished. We parted late that afternoon hardly remembering each other's names.

And a year goes by, Carrie and I are in one of our usual haunts – this place with no tables or chairs – you got your drink at the bar and sat on the floor. Once seated we scanned the room and that’s when I saw him - Kevin and it was like the room burst into flames! That was the start of a four year love affair…well it was really more like a Lust Affair in which sometimes we saw each other for who we were and liked those parts too, but the main event was Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll. Oh baby, oh baby, oh baby.

Now wild was definitely the right word – wild and unpredictable. For the sake of sanity I dated others but so did he and occasionally we would talk to each other about them. Sometime we would even talk to our respective others on the phone when in bed with each other. It was weird but freeing in a way. Those years with Kevin taught me one of the most important lessons I learned in my life – do not build your life around a man. He taught me that lesson by saying he would call on Wednesday and then a month later – on a Wednesday – he would call. There would be no little house with a white picket fence, 2.5 children, a dog and a station wagon in the cards for us. No, but oh baby, oh baby, oh baby.

Like the tortured artists of lore, so was Kevin – running from a sad childhood, finding solace in drink and drugs, he somehow functioned well on catnaps and Bennies with some Valium to “take the edge off”. But I needed sleep! I’d been at this wild child dating thing for four years, it was exhausting. Try as I could I couldn’t tame him, couldn’t fit him into my life – nor me into his. So, after four years we drifted apart – me toward my soon-to-be first husband – the sweetest man on earth. And Kevin toward a rich, troubled woman with multiple homes in exotic places. And that should have been that – right? That’s how things end in real life. Except now, in the 21st century, we would have found each other on Facebook.

But let’s jump cut to 1978: Divorced and having the affair with that married guy, career blazing and really quite happy with how things turned out – at least then, my phone rang. It was Carrie. “Hey, Samantha, you’ll never guess who I saw last night.” She didn’t wait for me to respond --- “Kevin – your Kevin.” Oh my God, I remember my whole body getting prickly. “He asked for your number but I wasn’t sure you’d want him to have it so I took his.”

Kevin never really left my mind over the years. For me he had no equal. He had set the bar so high no one else could ever reach it. But he was so complicated, so difficult – truly an “off road vehicle”. Although I was living an untraditional lifestyle, it was clearly much more traditional than his. So, I keep the number in my wallet for a while and then it must have fluttered out onto the streets of New York City one day when I went to pay for a bunch of lilacs.

Jump cut to November 25, 1981: The married affair over, career in a lull and pretty depressed and unhappy, my friend Annie says, “Come on Samantha, let’s go out to dinner.”

I had been hibernating, feeling sorry for myself and licking my wounds. “OK, but no singles bars, no men, nothing that can screw up my life any further than I’ve screwed it up myself.”

“Ok, ok”, she soothed, “We’ll just go to Oren and Aretsky, have a nice steak dinner and come home. You just need a night out. For heaven sake, wash your hair, wear something presentable and put on some makeup. You’ll see it’ll make you feel better.” I knew she was wrong but I didn’t have the will to fight her so…

I was paying the check, $24.80. I paid with my American Express Card and kept her cash – yes, I still have that receipt under a magnet on my file cabinet – why? Because as we rose to leave I looked up and there, walking down the middle of the restaurant aisle was Kevin! Our eyes locked on each other. I can’t remember if we spoke. I only remember him kissing me, in the middle the aisle, right there, like a movie and I remember the rest of the world disappearing, just like the movies.

We met one time, two times, three times! What are the chances in a city as large as New York that you would met by chance, for the third time your most memorable lover – the man who turned out to be the love of your life? And “just by chance” you would meet him for the third time three days after he returned from several years living in Australia. And that you would meet him, “just by chance” as he celebrated his birthday and that he would be celebrating it alone? What are the chances? And what are the chances that you would never leave each other again until you were forced to leave his coffin at the funeral home 26 years later? Oh, baby…

Romance, Destiny…Things like that don’t happen to me.

Next time!