Secret Sex Lives by Suzy Spencer: book review

Suzy Spencer
photo by Randy Austin-Cardona

Since first grade, when I first lusted over a gorgeous dark-haired boy named Travis, I prayed to Jesus for a boyfriend. I never got one. The closest I ever came was a couple of briefly consummated associations with married men. . . I don't trust men enough to be emotionally intimate with them. And I don't know why men terrify me so. They just do. God, they do. 

Does that sound like the kind of person who interviews strangers about their sexual behavior for a book? Yet that's what Suzy Spencer did. At age 50, she took a yearlong detour from writing true crime and placed an ad on Craigslist, asking for people who were willing to talk about their sex lives.

Her "sex freaks" -- as she dubbed them -- contacted her in droves. They were eager, often titillated, to talk about their sexual encounters, desires, and secrets -- including cheating on their spouses, swinging, kink play, Dom/sub, phone sex, cross-dressing, and more. The result: Secret Sex Lives: A Year on the Fringes of American Sexuality.

Was Spencer kinky and wild herself? Quite the opposite. She hadn't had sex in ten years and admitted feeling out of her element about the whole subject. Raised Southern Baptist and never having experienced satisfying sexual freedom personally, she was uneasy about her own reactions to some of the wild stories and confessions she was hearing. Sometimes she was fascinated past journalistic curiosity. Sometimes she pushed journalistic boundaries* as well as personal ones. Sometimes she was disgusted. And occasionally she described trying not to laugh.

Those last two reactions interfered with my appreciation of the book at times. I don't think she realized how judgmental she was (or if she did realize it, it didn't bother her). For example, she told a round-bellied, truck-driving Texan that he didn't look bisexual ("I am just shocked -- I mean, no one would look at you and think -- ever."). She had to fight back "something putrid" rising in her throat when one of her interviewees described having daddy/daughter phone sex. She described Lady Sapphire, giving a presentation on bondage, this way:

Lady Sapphire's demeanor is pure rural. Her eyeglasses look like one-hour wire frames. Her...dress reveals white, scarred, toneless arms. Its neckline...covers her breasts, which are aligned with her protruding stomach...Slump-shouldered, Lady Sapphire looks like she's about to go grocery shopping on a hot summer day.

* About the boundary pushing. At one point, a man who has been describing his phone sex encounters invites Spencer to listen in on his multi-orgasm-producing conversation with phone sex partner of the moment. However, the recipient of this call -- and of the multiple orgasms -- would not know that Spencer was listening in. Spencer agreed and went through with it, which struck me as highly unethical. The phone sex was consensual -- but would it have been if the recipient had known that a journalist was listening and taking notes, and would later record this conversation in a book?


I appreciated seeing the changes in Spencer's attitudes about sex as she delved into other people's sex lives and how they felt about what they did. She was painfully aware of how tightly closed up her own desires were, and she realized she was living vicariously through her "sex freaks."

Much as I didn't like Spencer's judgmental reactions to her subjects, I respect her as a writer for her courage in revealing the jarring flaws in her own sex-positivity. She easily could have cut comments like "I need a break from cross-dressing, enemas, slaves, sluts, and whips" or "I was so tired of hearing men rationalize their cheating by complaining that their wives had lost all sexual interest due to menopause or a hysterectomy" or "I wasn't all that interested in watching a beer-bellied retiree with rosacea rub his penis until sperm oozed," and we'd be none the wiser. But the struggles with her upbringing and prejudices are part of the journey for Spencer.

This aim of this book reminded me a little of America Unzipped: In Search of Sex and Satisfaction by Brian Alexander, which I enjoyed tremendously and reviewed in 2008. If you haven't read that one and you like learning about how other people enjoy/ express/ revel in sex (and we're not talking about missionary position with the lights out), check it out, too.

Scary Old Sex by Arlene Heyman: book review

I was prepared to love this book even before I opened it. Scary Old Sex -- what a title! -- and it was written by Arlene Heyman, who had been a classmate of mine at Bennington College in the 1960s. We didn't know each other well (maybe she didn't know me -- Joan Kassman at the time -- at all), but her reputation as a brilliant writer, certain to succeed, was well-known even then.

Now Heyman, a therapist/psychoanalyst in New York City, has written a stunning collection of stories, some (not all) of which feature people our age. What I love most is that her characters, whether old or younger, have bodies and sex drives and sometimes quirky ways of living with both.

This collection is not erotica, and many of the stories are not directly about sex at all. Some of the characters are old; others are not. But overall, the characters' sexual behavior and longings; their feelings about sex, their own bodies and their partners' bodies; the effects of the passing of years on sexual expression and desire; and how relationships work (or not) -- all of this provides both chaos and clarity about how we age as sexual beings.

For example, in "The Loves of Her Life," 65-year-old Marianne needs both Vagifem and a progression of explicit fantasies in order to make love with her second husband, 70-year-old Stu. "For them, making love was like running a war: plans had to be drawn up, equipment in tiptop condition, troops deployed and coordinated meticulously, there was no room for maverick actions lest the country end up defeated and at each other's throats."

In "Dancing," Matt, who is hospitalized for cancer treatment, must devise constant work-arounds for the pain when he tries to eat. Yet he is absorbed by how to make love to his wife, Ann, despite the fear that their tongues touching might kill him, as immunosuppressed as he is. Their resolution: he triple-gloves his hand, they both wear masks (she also wears a hospital gown, hairnet and booties, taking no chances), and he brings her to orgasm manually. "And he wept. Because she came and because it was over so fast and they were back to themselves with her underpants down around her ankles, the pad beneath her, and leukemia."

Sometimes the bodies Heyman describes sound quite alien -- except that we (who have lived this long) know them to be ours: "Aged flesh is so fertile, grows excrescences: papules, papillomas, skin tags, moles that have to be checked yearly; yet the hair thins out, underarm and pubic, as if the soil had changed to one that no longer supports that verdant shrubbery, but instead nourishes an astonishing variety of wild mushrooms -- beautiful, if you have an eye."

I highly recommend Scary Old Sex if you're fond of literary short stories and you're willing to look at aging, bodies, relationships, and sex with a magnifying glass.

I invited Arlene Heyman to answer a few questions:

Arlene Heyman

JP: Kudos for this collection of beautifully crafted short stories that portray our age group with compassion and insight. Your scenes of older-age sex are powerful because they are realistic and fully human – no caricatures, no derision, no skipping the joys and challenges of sex in older bodies. What went into your decision to write about “old sex” this way?

AH: I didn't decide to write about old sex. Scary Old Sex contains two stories about old people and their sexuality; five other stories are about people of different ages. There is sexuality and the body in almost all of the stories, because the body is with us throughout life and we live to a great extent through it.

JP: Were the sex scenes difficult to write?

AH: I think it is hard to write about sex at any age. The Guardian ran 3 articles about writing about sex, one by a guy in his twenties, one by a woman in her forties, one by me in my seventies) and we were all scared to death of what others would think of us. Frankly, I think it's hard to write about anything. I find writing very difficult. Some great writer said, "Oh, writing is easy. You just sit down at the typewriter and open a vein." (Note from Joan: this quote has been attributed to Red Smith, Paul Gallico, and Ernest Hemingway.)

JP: Why do you think it’s so rare to find books that treat older people as sexual beings?

AH: I think it's because of oedipal taboos that it's rare to find books that deal with old adults having sex. The little girl loves her mother, then her father; the boy loves his mother, and then again his mother until the age of 5 or 6. Everyone who has had children and was open-minded saw that the boy wants to marry mommy and the girl daddy. 

Then the passionate intensity goes underground and in adolescence the main job is breaking the passionate attachment to parents and turning the passion towards one's peers. It is a period of mourning, of giving up the parents, and it is hard.(It is also a time of great excitement because one is entering the larger world.). 

Part of the way one turns away from the parents is by finding them disgusting as sexual objects. One tries not to think of them as sexual. That barrier one has to set up to start out on one's own life remains firmly in place. And it extends throughout life: one views one's parents as asexual throughout life. Old people are people's parents. They must be asexual. 

And then old people do it to themselves; they neuter themselves as they had to neuter their parents. Hence, books about sex in old age--disgusting. And no one writes them.

JP: What else would you like my readers to know?

AH: A fiction writer doesn't have an ax to grind. I'm not a politician. I didn't write that book to propagandize anyone. As a person, I do hope to stay alive until I'm dead, and part of being alive is having a body. I wish for myself (and so I suppose for your readers) to think freely, know what I think, and to try to act on it so long as it doesn't hurt myself or another person. Life, more life!

Consensual Non-Monogamy: A Relationship Choice

I'm recovering from ankle-replacement surgery* and watching far too much TV and far too many films. Why is it that mainstream TV shows and films never show ethical, consensual non-monogamy as a relationship choice that works for many? We only see sexual exclusivity as the gold star of relationships, and when someone strays from the monogamy agreement, love turns into hurt and hate -- almost never into a renegotiation of what the couple wants the relationship to be going forward. (Showtime's "Masters of Sex" is the only exception that I can think of, and it's not mainstream.)

Don't get me started on how rarely we see older-age relationships portrayed in any way other than traditional, if they're portrayed at all! Even the new Netflix series "Grace and Frankie"  made me cringe at the stereotypical portrayal of older people and relationships. Yes, the men came out as gay and in love with each other instead of their long-time wives, but even they lapsed into spats and pain when it came out that one of them had either a past one-night stand or a last-night tryst with his ex-wife. Why not just say, "Yeah, these things happen and will happen and because I love you, I'll work to understand and accept -- let's talk"?

And the sweet, vulnerable, free-spirited, hippie Frankie played by Lily Tomlin?  Why isn't one of those cute, ex-convict artists emerging from her bedroom from time to time? (I have to say that as much as I'm dumping on this series, Frank Waterston is wonderful and adorable and the sexiest person on the show. He'd be welcome in my house anytime.)


Back to reality: sex therapists, researchers, and educators know that the sexual exclusivity model works for some but not for all. For others, ethical and consensual non-monogamy (which isn't cheating, because both partners agree to it) keeps many relationships strong. Pioneers like Esther Perel, author of Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence and TED talk speaker on "Rethinking Infidelity," and Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha, authors of Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships, have done brilliant work demystifying the causes and effects of infidelity and whether human beings are monogamous creatures.

My favorite podcaster, Dan Savage, talks about this often. He coined the term "monogamish" to describe couples who are committed, intimately bonded, and who sometimes have sex with others. The partner might want to know all the details or might not want to know anything, depending on the couple's agreement. Savage also says that when a couple has a monogamy agreement -- no sex with anyone else -- and one of them strays once in a while, the strayer is doing "a pretty good job at monogamy."

Please don't misunderstand me -- I'm not "promoting" non-monogamy or any sexual lifestyle. I'm just saying that I know many couples who stay together happily and intimately because they acknowledge that sexual exclusivity is not right for them. Let's not judge them or say (as I've heard some people righteously insist) that they "don't know how to be committed to another person."  

Those of you who are in consensually non-exclusive relationships, especially after age 50, I invite your thoughts here. Was this always the kind of relationship you wanted? Or did you come to it because you tried to embrace monogamy and it didn't work? I hope you'll share your views and experiences. (If you have trouble posting a comment, please email me and I'll post it for you.)

* In case you're curious about my surgery:I was in a near-fatal auto accident in 1979, which, among many other injuries, shattered my right heel and crushed my ankle. For the past 36 years, I've walked and danced on an ankle that barely moved and often caused pain. I sometimes described my foot as "a block of wood with nerve endings." I am extremely fortunate that now a reliable procedure is available that replaces a damaged ankle with a new, mobile one! I had the surgery in November, and I expect to be back on the dance floor in February! 

This Thing We Call Sex by David Steinberg: book review

David Steinberg has compiled a brilliant book of essays and erotic photographs in This Thing We Call Sex: A Radically Sensible Look at Sex in America.

Steinberg, now 71, has been writing about sex since 1985 and photographing couples being sexual at home since 1999. In This Thing We Call Sex, he describes many types of sexual awakenings and insights: his first swing party; his first sexual encounter with a trans woman, where he discovered how much he's turned on by a woman possessing both feminine energy and a penis; the gift of a gang bang for his partner's 52nd birthday; learning to slap a woman he loved because it excited her; and much more. Through Steinberg's candor and beautifully crafted writing, I felt I was getting more than a window into his views and activities -- I was experiencing them myself.

Steinberg grew up in the same era I did. We came of age when sexual repression was the norm, and we were foot soldiers in the sexual revolution (though I was far less adventurous, even in what I considered my wilder days). In 1963, when both he and I were in college, "rumblings of sexual change could be heard on the cultural landscape if you listened really hard, but they were distinctly muted to say the least."

David Steinberg

Steinberg puts his experiences and reflections in the context of discovering our sexuality despite our society's sex-negative view. Sexual acceptance has improved greatly since we were growing up, but sex negativity still persists. We're shamed for wanting what we want, called perverts and worse if what we like is outside the very small box of what society condones. Here, I'll let him say it his own way:

• "Who are we. really, when it comes to sex? Do we ever really get to know the full range and depth of our sexual desires and possibilities for pleasure? If we could strip away the rules, the moralizing, the early antisexual childhood training, the internalized raised eyebrows, what might we find of ourselves underneath?"


• "Sex is such a powerful and unpredictable arena for psychic discovery; it's no wonder it scares us to death. When we let the proprieties drift out the window, when we face our individual menageries of urges and desires without the referees of reason and reasonability, we are apt to uncover the most surprising and disconcerting things about ourselves -- things we don't even begin to understand, things we may well not want to acknowledge."


• "We are told repeatedly, and we come to believe ... that if we acknowledge, honor, and embrace the erotic impulses of our sensual selves we will destroy the order in our world and be cast into chaos. This terrifies us. We turn against desire itself, against our erotic impulses and feelings, as well as the erotic expressions of others. we set ourselves the task of keeping the erotic down at all cost."

Copyright (c) David Steinberg, 2000

And the photos! Deliciously erotic and intensely personal photos of faces smiling, grimacing, laughing in ecstasy; intimate gazes; entwined bodies. The diversity of the people in the photos is startling because it's so rare. As David told me in an email interview,

One of the core statements that I hope my photographs of people being sexual makes is that we all can be vibrant, alive, sexy, sexual people, despite the cultural biases that would restrict that appreciation to people who are young, thin, physically fit, etc. I make a point of including as wide a range of subjects as possible, including people of all ages, body types, ethnic backgrounds, sexual orientations, gender identities, and sexual proclivities. I have photographed people ranging in age from 19 to 75, from 90 to 300 pounds, and over a dozen couples that include someone with a physical disability.

Hopefully, when people see my photographs they think, "Oh, look, this is someone like me being wonderfully sexual," rather than seeing someone whose sexuality confirms all the insecurities and self-doubts that we are encouraged to have about ourselves almost from birth.

Copyright (c) David Steinberg, 2007

I'm a sex geek -- I'm fascinated by all things sexual, and I love learning about how people think and express themselves sexually. In this book, Steinberg educates and fascinates me. I wholeheartedly recommend This Thing We Call Sex to my fellow sex geeks.

Book Roundup #1: Interviews with Arlene Schindler, Lynn Brown Rosenberg, and J.F. Silver

I receive review copies of many books that the authors and publishers hope I find of interest to you. Even restricting my choices to those that treat older-age sexuality specifically and positively, I'm unable to keep up. So instead of reviewing these books singly, I'm going to do a series of roundups of books aimed at our age group by authors who understand us. This is the first in this series of mini interviews with the authors. Enjoy, and please support these authors who are writing with candor and fire about sex and aging.

The Last Place She’d Look by Arlene Schindler

Arlene, describe your book and what led you to write it:

Midlife was freeing for me. My novel explores relationship possibilities for single women past 50. I used to say, “My dating pool is so small, soon it will be a shot glass.” If I was lucky, a love connection would last about as long as a good haircut. I knew others felt the same. I wanted to shout out the absurdities of these experiences with a madcap, defiantly spirited outlook. 

Why would my readers want to read The Last Place She’d Look?

Arlene Schindler

Women of a certain age become invisible in our culture. In reality this is the time of life when we become bolder, braver and more adventurous. We’re peaking, and no one is looking. Exploring why we should be noticed, my novel exposes our desires, passions and relationships. 

What drew you to write a story about a woman finding herself attracted to other women on her fiftieth birthday?

Too many women think that if they are not with a man, their life is incomplete. Yet friendships we have with other women grow deeper with maturity. A possible alternative for a world of lonely women who’ve been influenced by outmoded values and religious beliefs, but hungry for appreciation, is being responsive and open to deeper, intimate experiences with women whom we know, love, and admire.

My Sexual Awakening at 70 by Lynn Brown Rosenberg 

Lynn, describe your book and what led you to write it:

My Sexual Awakening at 70 is about my search for sexual freedom at a later age, and at the same time an exploration of my past and the effect that decades of repression had on me. Despite that upbringing, midway through my journey, I was having the best, most exciting time! I realized I couldn’t be the only woman who had a distressing sexual education or no sexual education, and I thought it could help others.

Why would my readers want to read your book?

Lynn Brown Rosenberg

It is a roller-coaster life about my search for love, self-confidence, creative expression and sexual expression that will resonate with other women of our age. Men also enjoy my book because it gives them hope for the future, and helps them understand women better. Plus, it has erotic stories in it that both men and women can get pleasure from, individually or together!

How has your life changed after writing this book?

It has opened up a whole new world for me. I am now speaking about my journey, writing articles, doing podcasts, writing a monthly column for XBiz.com, and most of all, I love that I'm connecting with people who tell me they've been inspired and empowered by hearing me speak or reading My Sexual Awakening at 70. 

Mr. and Mrs. AverageJoe (series) by J.F. Silver

 J.F., describe the Mr. and Mrs. Average Joe series:

Mr. and Mrs. Average Joe is an erotic series about discovering new pleasures later in life. Joe and Elaine are baby boomers and empty nesters with a healthy sexual appetite. They had fantasized about inviting others into their bed, and one night the scenario presents itself in a ménage with another woman. From here it becomes a polyamorous tale of two sexually adventurous couples. There are three books available and a fourth releases in November 2015.

What led you to begin writing erotica?

I didn’t start writing until I turned 50, nine years ago, when I wrote my first erotic story as a birthday gift for my wife of 30 years. After receiving that first story, my wife began feeding me plot lines and to this day remains my inspiration and muse. Writing hot, arousing tales for my wife turned into a crazy and secret hobby!

How did this “secret hobby” develop into a published series?

J.F. Silver

About three years ago, we decided to try publishing them. It was a challenge to find a publisher interested in an erotic story about a couple in their fifties, but we did it. Before we'll write it, it has to work for us. Being a male author in a field dominated by women, my wife helps me keep the stories "women friendly." 

The Right Side of History by Adrian Brooks: book review

I have an unalienable, constitutional and natural right to love whom I may...and with that right neither you nor any law you can frame have any right to interfere...I trust that I am fully understood, for I mean just that. 

-- Victoria Hull, 1871

The Right Side of History: 100 Years of LGBTQI Activism, edited by Adrian Brooks, should be in every bookstore and library and adopted as a textbook in every college-level, American history course.

Adrian Brooks has assembled a formidable body of work that chronicles the events and the people who have worked towards and spoken out for gay liberation and LGBT issues since before Stonewall. Yes, before Stonewall.

I was born in 1943. It hit me hard to realize these injustices were happening during my childhood:

• In 1948, homosexuality and adultery were criminal, masturbation purportedly caused mental illness, and premarital sex was deemed shameful. But Kinsey showed such “perverted activities” to be prevalent, thereby torpedoing a cozy concept of manhood rigorously reinforced. The nation reeled.
• In 1950, a Senate subcommittee issued a report, calling homosexuals a threat to national security...Even the appearance of homosexuality—butch women, effeminate men—became grounds for firing and arrest...it was still a crime to be a gay man or lesbian with myriad sodomy and lewdness laws on the books.
• In 1953, one of President Eisenhower’s first actions in office was to issue an executive order barring all gays, lesbians, and bisexuals from federal employment. 
• Cops would walk in slowly like they owned the place, eyeballing everyone, pushing people with nightsticks. If they put you in a paddy wagon, you’d be hauled off to the Tombs (jail). If they put you in a car, they’d take you to some alley or empty parking lot, make you suck their dick, take all your clothes, throw them in the trunk of their car, and tell you to go home naked.

Look at the diversity of topics and the big names in the table of contents:

Part I: Before Stonewall

• The Divine Discontent of Isadora Duncan by Adrian Brooks 

• Henry Gerber’s Bridge to the World by Hayden L. Mora 

• The 1934 Longshoremen’s Strike by Adrian Brooks 

• The Cradle Will Rock by Eric A. Gordon 

• Bayard Rustin: Offensive Lineman for Freedom by Patricia Nell Warren

• The Kinsey Reports by Anahi Russo Garrido

• Criminals and Subversives: The Mattachine Society and Daughters of Bilitis by Victoria A. Brownworth 

• The Beats: Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac by Neeli Cherkovski

• Frank Kameny: Advocate for Freedom by John D’Emilio

• Josephine Baker’s Dream without Fire or War: An Interview with Jean-Claude Baker by Adrian Brooks

• April 4, 1968 by Adrian Brooks

• Ground Zero by Miss Major Griffin-Gracy

Part II: After Stonewall

• The Revolutionary Joy of Gary Alinder by Paul Gabriel

• Lesbian Nation: Jill Johnston and the Revolution of Women by Victoria A. Brownworth

• The Angels of Light: Paris Sites Under the Bourgeois Sea by Adrian Brooks

• Anita Bryant’s Anti-Gay Crusade by Jeanne Córdova

• “The Mayor of Castro Street” by Adrian Brooks

• Interview with Charlotte Bunch: Human Rights and Gender Equality by Anahi Russo Garrido

• The Enemy Is Me: Becoming a Man inside a Feminist World by Max Wolf Valerio

• My Battle with the University of California by Merle Woo

• The Quilt by Julie Rhoad

• The Red Camaro by Matt Ebert

• Between the Sexes by Tiger Howard Devore

• A Hero in Search of a Myth: The Navajo Journey of Jack C. Jackson, Jr. by Max Wolf Valerio

• Interview with Judy Shepard: Remembering Matthew Shepard by Adrian Brooks

• Interview: Barney Frank by Brenda Knight and Adrian Brooks

• Black, Gay, and Muslim by Sultan Shakir

• Bullying by James Gilliam

• A Conversation with Evan Wolfson: Freedom to Marry Leader by Angela Dallara

• Diana Nyad by Rita Mae Brown

• Our Lives, Our Words: Newspapers, Bookstores, and Gay Liberation by Victoria A. Brownworth

I recognized many of the writers and subjects -- others were new to me, and I'm grateful to know them now. Most of the writers in of The Right Side of History: 100 Years of LGBTQI Activism are of our generation. We grew up not knowing this information. Let's change that now. I hope you'll read this book and purchase another for a friend. I did.



Adrian Brooks (born 1947, 68 at the time of the book release), who curated this book and wrote several of its essays, is a social and political activist, poet, performer and writer who has been working for change since the 1960s.

Best Sex Writing of the Year 2015 review

I love the Best Sex Writing series from Cleis Press. I've been a loyal reader since the first edition in 2005. I collect them, give them as gifts, read them cover to cover. This year's edition (titled inexplicably "Best Sex Writing of the Year, volume 1" instead of "2015"), edited by Jon Pressick, has the breadth and quality I've come to expect.

Realize that this series isn't erotica (although Cleis is known for erotica) -- it's a collection of non-fiction essays about all colors and stripes of sex-themed topics. Some of the essays are intensely personal (e.g. my own contribution, "Sharing Body Heat"), some are commentary on sexual issues in the news, some are sex-nerdy opinions, many open windows to sexual practices and worlds that might be new to you.

The best way to convey the range of topics and writers is to share the chapter titles with quotes from a few of them:

• Foreword • Belle Knox
• Captain Save-A-Ho • Fiona Helmsley
• How a Former Porn Star’s Sex Tape Helped Him Reclaim His Sex Life • Christopher Zeischegg aka Danny Wylde: "I'd done it a thousand times with people I'd barely met, and in the most stressful environments. Yet, I couldn't get my cock hard while in bed with the girl I loved."
• What Should We Call Sex Toys? • Epiphora: "I own over five hundred dildos, vibrators, and anal toys, which I routinely hold against my vulva (not my 'lady bits'), stick in my vagina (not my 'vajayjay'), press against my clitoris (not my 'love button') and push up my butt (not my 'backdoor')."
• We Need a New Orientation to Sex • Cory Silverberg
• I Am the Blogger Who Allegedly “Complicated” the Stuebenville Gang Rape Case—And I Wouldn’t Change a Thing • Alexandria Goddard
• Porn Director: I Changed My Mind about Condoms • Nica Noelle
• Pregger Libido • Ember Swift
• The White Kind of Body • Alok Vaid-Menon
• Sex, Lies and Public Education • Lynn Comella
• Sharing Body Heat • Joan Price
• Being a Real-Life Accomplice • Cameryn Moore
• Oops, I Slept with Your Boyfriend • Charlie Nox
• Pump Dreams • Mitch Kellaway: "I don't have a clitoris. Or, rather, I used to have one. But since starting my gender transition a year ago, my relationship to it has become quite complex."
• Prostitution Law and the Death of Whores • Laura Agustín
• Fisting Day • Jiz Lee: "What I love about fisting someone vaginally is feeling them take me in. There's a moment where the person just opens up to you. Once inside, they're so warm, wet, and every little movement you make can be felt."
• Tell Me You Want Me. • Mollena Williams: "What about submitting, what about service, what about taking a thorough flogging, what about menial chores, what about being useful, is sexy? Why is it eroticized? What makes it hot? In a word? Passion."
• The Gates • Tina Horn
• The Choice of Motherhood and Insidious Drugstore Signage • Stoya
• Kinky, Sober and Free: BDSM in Recovery • Rachel Kramer Bussel: "Can you be clean and sober and still engage kinkily?"
• Crazy Trans Woman Syndrome • Morgan M. Page
• Let’s Talk about Interracial Porn • Jarrett Neal
• When I Was a Birthday Present for an Eighty-Two-Year-Old Grandmother • David Henry Sterry [see below]
• What an Armpit Model Taught Me about Sexual Language • Jon Pressick
• Growing Through the Yuck • Ashley Manta
• I Was a Teenage Porn Model • Lux Alptraum
• Disability and Sex • Jason Armstrong
• Fumbling Towards Humanity: How “Trans Grrrls” Helped Me Open Up to My Partner • Amy Dentata
• In Defense of Celibacy • Lauren Marie Fleming aka Queerie Bradshaw: "There are times in your life when a quick fuck can be beneficial, but sometimes all sex does is add to the confusion that is life. Sex with others muddies the emotional waters; take sex away and there's a better chance of finding clarity within yourself."
• No Restrictions • Dee Dee Behind: "My very first session with a client with severe disabilities was while I was working as a professional dominatrix on the third floor of a dungeon in an elevator-less building."

Jon Pressick

Who could resist a book with this range of topics from such a variety of writers, sex educators, performers, sex workers, and other juicy, sex-positive activists? As Pressick puts it,

Some of the topics you will read about here are very specific while others speak to all of us. Bringing them together is an attempt to throw open those doors. Pull the thoughts out from under the mattresses. Talk about sex in meaningful, thoughtful and creative ways.

David Sterry

One of my favorite essays -- you might guess this! -- was "When I Was a Birthday Present for an Eighty-Two-Year-Old Grandmother." Author David Sterry was 17 when he was hired as a sexy birthday gift for a woman who was 65 years his senior. Although he told his employer yes, his brain was imagining "an ancient naked wrinkled saggy droopy granny spread-eagled in front of me and my poor placid flaccid penis ...a lifeless piece of useless meat... What if she wants to do some weird old person sex thing I don't know about?" The experience, of course, was nothing like his nightmare-fantasy, but I don't want to reveal more and ruin the surprise.



I consider myself a sex geek. I'm interested in all things sexual. Whether or not I'm personally interested in exploring a particular behavior, belief, or milieu, my mind wants to take it all in. This book really satisfied my sex geekery. Thank you, Jon, contributors, and Cleis Press.

Order Best Sex Writing from your local independent bookstore or at this Amazon link.

The Years by Nicholas Delbanco

It isn't often that I find a novel to recommend to you that portrays characters our age in a way that's relevant, realistic, and insightful about aging and relationships. As a reader, I want to connect with characters and plot lines that I can relate to at this time of my life (age 71 as I write this) via beautifully crafted fiction.

The Years by Nicholas Delbanco is a splendid example of the kind of book I love to read. It's literary fiction, not a quick or mindless read. It's achingly honest about aging.

How did it happen, Lawrence wondered, that the person in the mirror was sprouting liver spots and wrinkles and hair in his nostrils and ears?

You'll invest some brain power in following the non-chronological sequencing. We meet Lawrence and Hermia when they re-meet in 2004 on a cruise ship after more than 40 years apart. He's 64; she's 63. The book flits back and forth from 2004 to their past. We learn how they met and fell in love in college, how they broke up and drifted apart, different relationships that shaped each of them as they journeyed through their lives, and the scars and regrets they carry with them.

They leaned toward each other, pressed against each other, and she wondered what her breasts would feel like if he kissed them as he used to, and what would happen next. She saw them in the mirror, two bent gray heads adjacent in the ornate gilt-framed glass, saw them touching lips and cheeks as though performing for the camera in some sort of time-lapse photograph, a present overlay upon the past.

Yes, we can anticipate that this chance meeting will lead to a renewed love connection, but the book is still not predictable. In the latter half of the book, we move forward through the time after they reconnect. There are surprises, which I won't reveal, and even the predictable parts are nuanced, never trite.

It's rare to find a novel that speaks realistically about love and aging and includes sex. The sex scenes are tender, slow to unfold, and not graphic. For example:

They had been passionate together the way the young are passionate, and nothing in her life before had readied her for how they fit together or how she, holding him, felt ... That passion was not spent. It was spent in the physical sense, of course; she could no longer manage, and he could not manage, the revels of the young ... But it was like The Tempest; it was everything restored, made whole, old treacheries forgiven and old arguments resolved. What had been lost was found. They were gentle together now, slow. It was strange to be so much in love with someone she had loved before and known so well and parted from and then spent more than forty years not knowing....

I found the writing masterful. I put post-its throughout my copy to remind me of pages I wanted to return to, and this photo shows what my book looks like now.

The Amazon ratings are mixed, and I'd love to know the age breakdown for those who loved and those who were bored by this novel. I suspect that the negative reviews were by younger readers or those who don't have patience for literary fiction that is slow to unfold. At our age, we know that life is slow to unfold, and we don't need to rush a book any more than we have to rush sex these days! I can't imagine readers in their sixties and beyond being unmoved by this novel.

If what I've written here intrigues you, I hope you'll read The Years and post your own comments.

Nicholas Delbanco, born 1942

Daring to Date Again by Ann Anderson Evans

3/11/15 update: This Sunday, March 15, I'll have the pleasure of being on a panel with Ann Anderson Evans called "Never Too Late to Date" at the Tucson Festival of Books. I'm moving this post, originally published 11/13/14, to the top so that you all know about Ann's book and our discussion of safer sex:

When a sixty-year-old, twice-divorced woman starts to date again, she's not pinning her hopes on an invitation to the prom. She is financially stable and professionally creditialed. She is a matriarch, a pillar of her church, a member of a choir. She has children and neighbors who might disapprove. She has a lot at stake.

So begins Daring to Date Again, a lusty memoir by Ann Anderson Evans about looking for romp-in-the-hay partners after 12 years of celibacy.

Evans is smart, sassy, articulate, and a darned good writer, pulling you right into her adventures. You’ll laugh, empathize, and sometimes worry as she jumps into bed with her Mr. Right-for-the-Moment parade. She wears her heart on her sleeve—or she wears nothing at all—and we share her adventures, her thoughts, her desires, and her evolution from repressed and unhappy to evolved, sexy, and joyful.

Evans finds many men who are interested in having no-strings sex with her, but towards the end of the book, she wonders whether true love even exists -- and if so, where is it hiding? I'm not ruining the book by telling you that she meets Terry -- a fellow professor and a bachelor at 63. They fall in love and marry. But that's not until the last chapter!

I enjoyed this well-written book, and I recommend it to you, whether you're exploring sexual possibilities yourself or you just want to share her escapades vicariously.

However! As a safer-sex advocate, I was concerned because there was no mention of safer sex or any discussions of condom use with the men Evans bedded. I questioned her -- no, they never used protection. Then I challenged her to explain her decision(s). She wrote this to me:

Joan chided me for not mentioning safe sex in Daring to Date Again. Logic suggests that simply interrogating a man regarding his sexual health is not sufficient protection, but that is what I relied upon. Why was I more concerned about cleaning the chopping block after cutting up chicken than about having unprotected sex? Why would I maintain the prophylactic habits of regular dental visits and colonoscopies, and yet have unprotected sex? Good question, Joan.

Indulgence was part of it. Pregnancy had been such a persistent worry when I was a young woman that having sex spontaneously was a joy. It was like winning the lottery.

Growing up in the 50s and 60s, I was taught either nothing or nonsense about sex. The bogus teachings were embedded in religion. “Chastity is the cement of civilization,” I read in the Christian Science scriptural companion, the Science & Health, when I was a student in a Christian Science college. I closed that book and have never reopened it.

The nonsense of the times I grew up in was also embedded in school. My only sex education was a couple of gender-divided classes in 7th grade that explained menstruation twinned with the unforgettable fact that when we brushed our teeth we should also be careful to brush our tongues. I was stunned when I got pregnant at 18. I thought I had to want to become pregnant in order to be so.

Between the church and school, I felt manipulated, demeaned, and endangered. Many of those who matured in the 60s rose up in mighty defiance of the bullying traditions of ignorance. In answering Joan’s challenge, I am surprised at my resurgence of anger when I think back.

Perhaps unconsciously, I placed barrier protection during sex in the basket which also included the bogus virtues of chastity, heterosexuality, sitting primly with your legs crossed, wearing a girdle, avoiding nudity, and virginity upon marriage. These virtues are so often ignored that they can only be seen as vacuous wishes. My failure to protect myself was a visceral, instinctive, and senseless act of defiance.

I take responsibility for my own actions, but it would have been helpful if the doctors (including gynecologists) had asked me if I was sexually active during that time. One general practitioner did ask me, and when I told him I had had sex with four men within the last two years he sidestepped the issue, saying, “I think you should talk to your gynecologist about that.”

I sympathize with the doctors. Discussions of sex with patients are probably minefields of religion, politics, family tradition, and personal history. But the medical profession has obviously given up the fight. How often do you see an ad for condoms displayed in your doctor’s office alongside the latest drug for depression or high blood pressure?

I felt embattled during my three years of promiscuity. Not one of the men I was involved with ever mentioned using a condom. If any of them had one in their pocket, they didn’t mention it. Joan might be better equipped to say whether men are just as likely as women to insist on condom use. In my experience, this has not been the case.

The problem of unprotected sex is far more pervasive than that of a single American raised before the Enlightenment. Our failure to identify and rectify the sociological, psychological, historical, and political reasons why people do not use condoms or other barriers has guaranteed that AIDS and other STDs continue worldwide. Saying the answer is education is simplistic. Why we don’t use them is baffling. The reason begins in the outside world of church, school, family, and government policy and all of these play themselves out in the bedroom.

Thank you, Ann, for your eloquent explanation. I can't help hoisting my 4'10" self up onto my soapbox again to remind my readers: Have all the fun you want, but please have it safely!

Listen to Evans read an excerpt from Daring to Date Again here.