Wild Thang!

From StarMag, 2nd January, 2005

A ROUND-HEELED WOMAN: My Late-Life Adventures in Sex and Romance

By Jane Juska

Publisher: Villard, 273 pages

IMAGINE if your grandmother put an ad in the papers that read something like this: “Before I turn 70 at the end of this year, I would like to have a lot of sex with a lot of nice men. We can also talk, preferably about Venezuelan soap operas.”

Freaky or what? I guess we will never be entirely comfortable with the idea of our parents, never mind our grandparents, as sexual beings. The thought of the APs doing the wild thang is enough to put most of us off our dinner. Why is that? I mean, I’m 37 and in a few years I will probably be considered too old to “do it”. Yet, my first instinct is to gaze askance at 50-somethings and think: “They can’t still want to!”

Posing the question to a 20-something recently, I elicited retching noises and a derisive remark about wrinkly nether regions. (Her original words were much more colourful!) I think this book, A Round-Heeled Woman: My Late-Life Adventures in Sex and Romance, would definitely put her off her food.

In it, Jane Juska, a 60-something divorcee, describes how she relaunched her sex life by placing a personal ad, similar to the example above, in a national newspaper. The response she received was so overwhelming that she had to take a sabbatical from her job (teaching) in order to meet the men who had replied.

Juska is extremely frank about what happens during these dates, but don’t expect blow-by-blow accounts a la Penthouse magazine or even the average romance novel. It’s not that she skimps on details. Her meaning is clear as crystal, but when she describes her sexual encounters, there is nothing suggestive or titillating about her words or phrases.

However, while Juska is as candid as they come when she’s talking about sex, there is a tendency for her not to address other issues which crop up when she’s talking about her life in general. What becomes increasingly apparent about her is that while she’s confident about her right to have a good time, sexually, she seems less sure about her right to have more than sex, that is, a loving relationship.

Could this be anything to do with the fact that she was abused as a young girl? And could that experience also have any bearing on her alcoholism, her poor parenting skills (her son ends up homeless at 17) and her uneasy relationship with her own parents? Juska mentions all this in passing, but doesn’t make any attempt to make sense of any of it in relation to her little “project”.

So, this book isn’t the light-hearted romp it’s made out to be (the saucy purple jacket and frisky sub-title are misleading). Juska (and certainly her publishers) probably meant it to be an entertaining, enlightening and liberating look at sex after 50, but then she has inadvertently turned it into an account of an elderly woman’s attempt to find love through sex – not that she admits this for a second. It makes for a rather pathetic and depressing read. In fact, an undercurrent of sadness runs through the entire text, which is unfortunate really, because moralists will say, “Well, what can you expect from someone who behaves like a trollop.”

Ah, well, at the very least, Round-Heeled Woman makes a case for life not ceasing after menopause. When I was still practising as a nurse, my aged patients would often say that what they hated most about growing old was no longer being counted as feeling, thinking human beings. At a certain age, it seems, one is relegated to the rubbish heap, considered past one’s sell-by-date, and useless.

In I Look into My Glass, a poem by Thomas Hardy, an old man gazes at his reflection and wishes that his spirit were as wasted as his body. Instead, he laments, Time, to make me grieve/ Part steals, lets part abide;/ And shakes this fragile frame at eve/ With throbbings of noontide.

It’s a common supposition (and misconception) that one’s emotions and urges, including sex drive, wane with old age. A Round Heeled-Woman (this is an old-fashioned term for a promiscuous woman), at its most basic, acts as both a warning and a lesson. One can enjoy an active sex life for as long as one is blessed with good health. And if there are teens and 20-somethings reading this and rolling their eyes dismissively, imagine how stupid they’ll feel when they’re hale and hearty 70-year-olds and get called dried-up old prunes!