Published in Best Sex Writing 2012
Grief, Resilience, and My 66th Birthday Gift
By Joan Price
During my extreme grief after Robert died, I cried all day. “I cried” is such an understatement: I wailed, I screamed, I keened. I exploded in great, ripping waves of crying that felt like I was vomiting tears uncontrollably from my gut. I understood the term “a broken heart” -- it felt like my heart was literally breaking, sawed to pieces by a huge, merciless, serrated knife while an elephant kicked me in the chest.
What does this have to do with sex? Nothing… and everything. For the first months, I didn’t have sex at all, not even with myself. Grief buried my sex drive, except that in my memory, I made love with Robert all day long, celebrating our erotic highs, his beautiful dancer’s body, his touches, his howls of pleasure – and my own.
Robert and I met in the line dance class I teach. I was 57 and he was celebrating his 64th birthday on the evening he wandered in, looking for a new place to dance, and altered my life. I was fired by lust immediately, especially after he started to dance, his gracefulness and mobile hips revealing a lifetime of dance training.
I couldn’t take my eyes off this sexy, white-haired man with ocean-blue eyes and a “touch this, please” tuft of curly white chest hair peeking from the V of his shirt. I imagined holding him, unbuttoning his shirt, nuzzling that chest hair.
Nine months later (“I don’t get into sex casually,” he had told me), I got to do just that. I nuzzled his chest hair, his head hair, his belly hair, his pubic hair. Even now, three years after his death, I can feel the soft, springy texture in my memory, as vivid as the last time I touched him.
Our lust and our profound love thrilled us. We scheduled whole afternoon sex dates, reveling in the power of our aging bodies and minds to rise to exhilarating heights. It was the best sex of our lives.
Was it the same as 20-year-old sex? Not even close – we weren’t driven by the biological urge to reproduce, but by the drive to bond and touch and share pleasure. And our bodies didn’t go into ready mode right away. In fact, my arousal time was so long that at first, I was embarrassed. Silly me, I even apologized to Robert for the amount of stimulation I needed.
“I don’t care if it takes three weeks,” he told me, “as long as I can get up sometimes to change positions and get something to eat.” His humor, creativity, and enjoyment of his own physicality – combined with our deep love – made our sex soar and roar.
We loved, I wrote a book about senior sex, Robert painted beautiful art, we moved in together, we married.
Robert died of cancer exactly seven years after our first kiss.
“Can you see yourself dating again, getting in a relationship again, having sex again?” friends and even curious readers of my sex and aging book and blog would ask me as I mourned Robert.
At first, I said no. I had found and lost my great love – no one could follow that. My sex life with Robert, the love of my life, had been so dynamic, so passionate, so thrilling that his loss felt like the end to everything. Yes, I was still interested in sex, but more as a writer and sex educator than in my personal life.
Then, amazingly, about six months into my grieving, I started to feel stirrings. I found myself feeling turned on by men who radiated that enticing combination of sexuality and gentleness. I didn’t act on those feelings, but I admit I was surprised and happy that I was feeling them. I didn’t feel the need to satisfy the urge – it was enough to marvel at still being able to feel it. We human beings are amazingly resilient.
I remember having a dream at that time that I was responding sexually to a fully dressed, sexy man who was pressing his aroused self against me. I awoke, excited, and filled with wonder. “I’m still alive!” I said aloud.
A year and a half after Robert’s death, I prepared to face my sixty-sixth birthday alone. I longed for a man’s touch, but still hadn’t felt comfortable enough – or attracted enough – to welcome another man into my body. I wanted to be aroused and I wanted to orgasm from a man’s touch – but (was this selfish?) I wanted the pleasure without giving back just yet. There were men in my life who offered their services, but it didn’t seem fair to take and not give, and a real relationship was too complicated. I feared I would dissolve into tears if I made love with a new man.
I wondered, though… could I hire this pleasure? Men bought “happy endings” easily – could I?
I started looking on the Internet. Most ads and websites were sleazy and scary enough to make me run for cover. Then someone I trusted recommended Sunyata:
Our Sacred Session may involve sensual, intimate, touch —unconditionally loving your body with sacred, sensual and erotic, touch that catalyses holistic energetic shifts and nurtures your soul to vibrant life. This touch may stimulate you and result in a climax of pleasure -however, the goal of orgasm is not the focus of the Sacred Session.
I read Sunyata’s website over and over, pausing over these words. Then I wrote this email to a man I had never met:
Sunyata, I lost my beloved husband to cancer. I have been celibate for a year and a half (exactly, as of today), despite being a writer about sexuality. Although my toys enable me to keep my sexuality strong, I have been longing to be the recipient of a respectful, gentle, erotic massage with no body parts off limits. Your Erotic Enrichment, as described on your website, seems to fit what I am seeking.
He emailed back, then we had a phone conversation. We made an appointment for my sixty-sixth birthday.
Me? Hire someone I’ve never met to give me an “erotic massage,” with every intention that it will lead to orgasm? Yes. I did it, I loved it, and it still brings a smile to my face and a tingle to my nether parts remembering it. (Now I’m really shocking my family.)
Brave? Maybe. Typical of me? Absolutely not – I had never done anything like this before. Foolhardy? It didn’t seem so. He was recommended by someone I knew, and his website and client references seemed professional and impressive. Sure, a bad guy could construct an appealing website and concoct convincing testimonials, but would a bad guy go to the trouble of claiming to be a Certified Tantric Healer, Reiki Master, and Universal Life Church Minister? Would a bad guy even know what these terms meant?
Face it – it’s a fantasy of ours: a pair of skilled hands focused on giving erotic pleasure, no reciprocation expected (or allowed), non-sleazy, all pleasure, orgasms included. No, no, I wasn’t buying sex, Sunyata assured me. I wasn’t buying any outcome. I was simply hiring his services. And if I happened to get carried away experiencing his services – these are my words, not his – every response would be accepted and celebrated.
I still missed Robert like crazy. I had been with Robert exclusively for our seven years together, and his face, hands, and body were the images that stirred my fantasy life when I aroused myself. I pictured Robert as he was through all but the last months of our relationship, vital and strong: a dancer’s body, an artist’s hands, a lover’s smile. I imagined that he was the one touching me when I touched myself. I heard his murmurs of love. I saw his body responding to my touch. I felt his kiss.
And now I wondered: If another man were to touch me intimately, would I even be able to respond?
Sunyata seemed a safe way to find out. I would pay his fee, lie on his massage table, and receive his full attention for two hours.
Sunyata started our session with a discussion, seated on a couch in the massage room, both of us fully clothed. (He would remain so – I would not.) He asked me about what brought me there, and listened compassionately to my story. He explained the basic premise of the massage, which was a way to move tantric energy (I think – I admit I was too nervous to retain what he was saying). He explained that he was offering his service to honor me, and it would not be reciprocal.
“The session’s intent is to provide service in one direction—to you, my guest,” he explained. “You are welcome to touch me in non-erogenous areas of my body for connection and emotional support, but not to engage with my eros or my genitals. My sexual desire or need for gratification does not enter the space of our sacred session.”
In other words, I was to get naked, climb on the table, relax, and receive.
But would my sexual desire and need for gratification “enter the space”? I couldn’t ask directly, because I knew we were hovering on the edge of what was legal. I concentrated on listening between the lines.
“I focus on being present with your desire and what wants to release or be revealed,” he continued. That answered my question.
It started out as a traditional massage, relaxing and unhurried. Traditional except that he didn’t skip my breasts as nonsexual massage practitioners do. I felt my nipples harden to his touch. I arched my back in response to his gliding hands – strong, sure, gentle.
Would Robert approve of what I was doing? I couldn’t help flashing on this, which put me on the verge of tears. No, he wouldn’t approve or understand. But Robert would never touch me again, and I had to find my own way to reclaim the sensual and sexual life within me. I pulled my awareness back to the present, the gentle touch of this stranger offering pleasure, as much pleasure as I wanted. And I wanted it.
As Sunyata continued massaging me for a very long time (an hour maybe? time stopped), my whole body and brain began to quiver in anticipation. I felt my own body rise and fall with his touch, his rhythm in sync with mine. I kept my eyes closed, focusing on the sensation.
I parted my thighs, and I could feel my own heat drawing his hands closer to my pleasure center. Finally, his hand cupped my vulva and waited. I rocked into his hand, my clitoris on fire. His hand moved expertly, slowly, gently, waiting for my response with each movement.
“May I touch your yoni?” he asked quietly. Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes. Fingers entered me, slick with massage oil. He massaged me slowly and gently, inside and out, as if his hands had known me forever. He and I were the ocean – timeless, our rhythm primordial and certain.
I gave myself up to Sunyata’s expert hands, and the ocean soared and roared in crashing waves of pleasure. Wild sensations, the culmination of a year and a half of grief and longing. I laughed. I cried. I laughed again.
His massage turned quiet again, relaxing me after my wild ride. As he stroked me, my arousal started to rise again. Though in “normal” life, one orgasm is absolutely fulfilling and plenty for me, his hands responded to my surge and – more quickly this time -- the waves crashed again.
“You must love your job,” I mumbled to Sunyata as I quieted finally.
“I love my job,” he said. I pictured him smiling but I didn’t manage to open my eyes to find out.
My birthday erotic massage from a gentle stranger changed something in me. It showed me that I was still a responsive, fully sexual woman, getting ready to emerge from the cocoon of mourning into re-experiencing life. I realized that one big reason I ended up on Sunyata’s massage table was so that I could get ready to reenter the world.
Sometimes Robert seems to talk to me. I ask him, “Are you really talking to me, or am I making this up?” and he replies, “It doesn’t matter.” As I approach the third anniversary of his death, I receive this message as clearly as if his voice utters it:
Baby, when I was alive I wanted you all to myself. I needed reassurance that in loving you so much I wasn't risking losing myself by losing you. I wasn't sure I could give you enough to make you happy.
I can't make you happy now. I can't hold you except in your memory and sometimes in dreams.
You don't need to ask my permission to live your life fully and zestfully. Or to share that love and lust in you with another.
You have so much life in you, sweetheart, so much love to give.
Give it.
If you need my blessing, you have it.
Love always,
Robert
Although I still miss Robert every time I breathe in or out, I know I’ll have a lover again, and it will be good. I know I can’t replace the love I shared with Robert and I’m not looking for that – but I do need to stay vibrant and alive. Nurturing my sexual self is a part of being fully alive that I will embrace.
- A version of this piece was originally published in Naked at Our Age: Talking Out Loud about Senior Sex by Joan Price, Seal Press, June 2011.
Joan Price (http://www.joanprice.com) is the author of Better Than I Ever Expected: Straight Talk about Sex After Sixty and Naked at Our Age: Talking Out Loud about Senior Sex, both from Seal Press. Visit her award-winning blog about sex & aging: http://www.NakedAtOurAge.com.
Naked At Our Age Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/JoanPriceAuthor
Grief, Resilience, and My 66th Birthday Gift
By Joan Price
During my extreme grief after Robert died, I cried all day. “I cried” is such an understatement: I wailed, I screamed, I keened. I exploded in great, ripping waves of crying that felt like I was vomiting tears uncontrollably from my gut. I understood the term “a broken heart” -- it felt like my heart was literally breaking, sawed to pieces by a huge, merciless, serrated knife while an elephant kicked me in the chest.
What does this have to do with sex? Nothing… and everything. For the first months, I didn’t have sex at all, not even with myself. Grief buried my sex drive, except that in my memory, I made love with Robert all day long, celebrating our erotic highs, his beautiful dancer’s body, his touches, his howls of pleasure – and my own.
Robert and I met in the line dance class I teach. I was 57 and he was celebrating his 64th birthday on the evening he wandered in, looking for a new place to dance, and altered my life. I was fired by lust immediately, especially after he started to dance, his gracefulness and mobile hips revealing a lifetime of dance training.
I couldn’t take my eyes off this sexy, white-haired man with ocean-blue eyes and a “touch this, please” tuft of curly white chest hair peeking from the V of his shirt. I imagined holding him, unbuttoning his shirt, nuzzling that chest hair.
Nine months later (“I don’t get into sex casually,” he had told me), I got to do just that. I nuzzled his chest hair, his head hair, his belly hair, his pubic hair. Even now, three years after his death, I can feel the soft, springy texture in my memory, as vivid as the last time I touched him.
Our lust and our profound love thrilled us. We scheduled whole afternoon sex dates, reveling in the power of our aging bodies and minds to rise to exhilarating heights. It was the best sex of our lives.
Was it the same as 20-year-old sex? Not even close – we weren’t driven by the biological urge to reproduce, but by the drive to bond and touch and share pleasure. And our bodies didn’t go into ready mode right away. In fact, my arousal time was so long that at first, I was embarrassed. Silly me, I even apologized to Robert for the amount of stimulation I needed.
“I don’t care if it takes three weeks,” he told me, “as long as I can get up sometimes to change positions and get something to eat.” His humor, creativity, and enjoyment of his own physicality – combined with our deep love – made our sex soar and roar.
We loved, I wrote a book about senior sex, Robert painted beautiful art, we moved in together, we married.
Robert died of cancer exactly seven years after our first kiss.
“Can you see yourself dating again, getting in a relationship again, having sex again?” friends and even curious readers of my sex and aging book and blog would ask me as I mourned Robert.
At first, I said no. I had found and lost my great love – no one could follow that. My sex life with Robert, the love of my life, had been so dynamic, so passionate, so thrilling that his loss felt like the end to everything. Yes, I was still interested in sex, but more as a writer and sex educator than in my personal life.
Then, amazingly, about six months into my grieving, I started to feel stirrings. I found myself feeling turned on by men who radiated that enticing combination of sexuality and gentleness. I didn’t act on those feelings, but I admit I was surprised and happy that I was feeling them. I didn’t feel the need to satisfy the urge – it was enough to marvel at still being able to feel it. We human beings are amazingly resilient.
I remember having a dream at that time that I was responding sexually to a fully dressed, sexy man who was pressing his aroused self against me. I awoke, excited, and filled with wonder. “I’m still alive!” I said aloud.
A year and a half after Robert’s death, I prepared to face my sixty-sixth birthday alone. I longed for a man’s touch, but still hadn’t felt comfortable enough – or attracted enough – to welcome another man into my body. I wanted to be aroused and I wanted to orgasm from a man’s touch – but (was this selfish?) I wanted the pleasure without giving back just yet. There were men in my life who offered their services, but it didn’t seem fair to take and not give, and a real relationship was too complicated. I feared I would dissolve into tears if I made love with a new man.
I wondered, though… could I hire this pleasure? Men bought “happy endings” easily – could I?I started looking on the Internet. Most ads and websites were sleazy and scary enough to make me run for cover. Then someone I trusted recommended Sunyata:
Our Sacred Session may involve sensual, intimate, touch —unconditionally loving your body with sacred, sensual and erotic, touch that catalyses holistic energetic shifts and nurtures your soul to vibrant life. This touch may stimulate you and result in a climax of pleasure -however, the goal of orgasm is not the focus of the Sacred Session.
I read Sunyata’s website over and over, pausing over these words. Then I wrote this email to a man I had never met:
Sunyata, I lost my beloved husband to cancer. I have been celibate for a year and a half (exactly, as of today), despite being a writer about sexuality. Although my toys enable me to keep my sexuality strong, I have been longing to be the recipient of a respectful, gentle, erotic massage with no body parts off limits. Your Erotic Enrichment, as described on your website, seems to fit what I am seeking.
He emailed back, then we had a phone conversation. We made an appointment for my sixty-sixth birthday.
Me? Hire someone I’ve never met to give me an “erotic massage,” with every intention that it will lead to orgasm? Yes. I did it, I loved it, and it still brings a smile to my face and a tingle to my nether parts remembering it. (Now I’m really shocking my family.)
Brave? Maybe. Typical of me? Absolutely not – I had never done anything like this before. Foolhardy? It didn’t seem so. He was recommended by someone I knew, and his website and client references seemed professional and impressive. Sure, a bad guy could construct an appealing website and concoct convincing testimonials, but would a bad guy go to the trouble of claiming to be a Certified Tantric Healer, Reiki Master, and Universal Life Church Minister? Would a bad guy even know what these terms meant?
Face it – it’s a fantasy of ours: a pair of skilled hands focused on giving erotic pleasure, no reciprocation expected (or allowed), non-sleazy, all pleasure, orgasms included. No, no, I wasn’t buying sex, Sunyata assured me. I wasn’t buying any outcome. I was simply hiring his services. And if I happened to get carried away experiencing his services – these are my words, not his – every response would be accepted and celebrated.
I still missed Robert like crazy. I had been with Robert exclusively for our seven years together, and his face, hands, and body were the images that stirred my fantasy life when I aroused myself. I pictured Robert as he was through all but the last months of our relationship, vital and strong: a dancer’s body, an artist’s hands, a lover’s smile. I imagined that he was the one touching me when I touched myself. I heard his murmurs of love. I saw his body responding to my touch. I felt his kiss.
And now I wondered: If another man were to touch me intimately, would I even be able to respond?
Sunyata seemed a safe way to find out. I would pay his fee, lie on his massage table, and receive his full attention for two hours.
Sunyata started our session with a discussion, seated on a couch in the massage room, both of us fully clothed. (He would remain so – I would not.) He asked me about what brought me there, and listened compassionately to my story. He explained the basic premise of the massage, which was a way to move tantric energy (I think – I admit I was too nervous to retain what he was saying). He explained that he was offering his service to honor me, and it would not be reciprocal.
“The session’s intent is to provide service in one direction—to you, my guest,” he explained. “You are welcome to touch me in non-erogenous areas of my body for connection and emotional support, but not to engage with my eros or my genitals. My sexual desire or need for gratification does not enter the space of our sacred session.”
In other words, I was to get naked, climb on the table, relax, and receive.
But would my sexual desire and need for gratification “enter the space”? I couldn’t ask directly, because I knew we were hovering on the edge of what was legal. I concentrated on listening between the lines.
“I focus on being present with your desire and what wants to release or be revealed,” he continued. That answered my question.
It started out as a traditional massage, relaxing and unhurried. Traditional except that he didn’t skip my breasts as nonsexual massage practitioners do. I felt my nipples harden to his touch. I arched my back in response to his gliding hands – strong, sure, gentle.
Would Robert approve of what I was doing? I couldn’t help flashing on this, which put me on the verge of tears. No, he wouldn’t approve or understand. But Robert would never touch me again, and I had to find my own way to reclaim the sensual and sexual life within me. I pulled my awareness back to the present, the gentle touch of this stranger offering pleasure, as much pleasure as I wanted. And I wanted it.
As Sunyata continued massaging me for a very long time (an hour maybe? time stopped), my whole body and brain began to quiver in anticipation. I felt my own body rise and fall with his touch, his rhythm in sync with mine. I kept my eyes closed, focusing on the sensation.
I parted my thighs, and I could feel my own heat drawing his hands closer to my pleasure center. Finally, his hand cupped my vulva and waited. I rocked into his hand, my clitoris on fire. His hand moved expertly, slowly, gently, waiting for my response with each movement.
“May I touch your yoni?” he asked quietly. Oh yes, oh yes, oh yes. Fingers entered me, slick with massage oil. He massaged me slowly and gently, inside and out, as if his hands had known me forever. He and I were the ocean – timeless, our rhythm primordial and certain.
I gave myself up to Sunyata’s expert hands, and the ocean soared and roared in crashing waves of pleasure. Wild sensations, the culmination of a year and a half of grief and longing. I laughed. I cried. I laughed again.
His massage turned quiet again, relaxing me after my wild ride. As he stroked me, my arousal started to rise again. Though in “normal” life, one orgasm is absolutely fulfilling and plenty for me, his hands responded to my surge and – more quickly this time -- the waves crashed again.
“You must love your job,” I mumbled to Sunyata as I quieted finally.
“I love my job,” he said. I pictured him smiling but I didn’t manage to open my eyes to find out.
My birthday erotic massage from a gentle stranger changed something in me. It showed me that I was still a responsive, fully sexual woman, getting ready to emerge from the cocoon of mourning into re-experiencing life. I realized that one big reason I ended up on Sunyata’s massage table was so that I could get ready to reenter the world.
Sometimes Robert seems to talk to me. I ask him, “Are you really talking to me, or am I making this up?” and he replies, “It doesn’t matter.” As I approach the third anniversary of his death, I receive this message as clearly as if his voice utters it:
Baby, when I was alive I wanted you all to myself. I needed reassurance that in loving you so much I wasn't risking losing myself by losing you. I wasn't sure I could give you enough to make you happy.
I can't make you happy now. I can't hold you except in your memory and sometimes in dreams.
You don't need to ask my permission to live your life fully and zestfully. Or to share that love and lust in you with another.
You have so much life in you, sweetheart, so much love to give.
Give it.
If you need my blessing, you have it.
Love always,
Robert
Although I still miss Robert every time I breathe in or out, I know I’ll have a lover again, and it will be good. I know I can’t replace the love I shared with Robert and I’m not looking for that – but I do need to stay vibrant and alive. Nurturing my sexual self is a part of being fully alive that I will embrace.
- A version of this piece was originally published in Naked at Our Age: Talking Out Loud about Senior Sex by Joan Price, Seal Press, June 2011.
Naked At Our Age Facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/JoanPriceAuthor
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