Cantankerously Yours
50 Shades of Gray Hair
By Wendell Abern
Dear Readers,
About six years ago, I wrote a column bemoaning the fact that I had reached the dreaded age of less: my son considered me hopeless; my daughter considered me helpless, and all other women considered me harmless.
Now that I have been a widower for five years, I think to myself … who the hell wants to be harmless?
Refusing to accept the fact that I am no longer a threat to some woman’s virtue, I decided to make a list of women that I will avidly pursue, with nothing but salacious thoughts in mind. Having made a decision, I called my daughter, Amy, for advice.
“Honey,” I said, “how would I go about getting in touch with HalleBerry?”
Silence.
“I’ve decided she would be perfect for me. But how will she know I’m perfect for her if she doesn’t even know me?”
“Dad.”
“I figure I send her a funny greeting card, or write her a short letter or something. You know, just to get the ball rolling.”
“Dad.”
“I think we’d be perfect together. I can teach her to play bridge!”
“Da-ad.”
Conversation went nowhere. She had no helpful advice for me at all. Three minutes later, the phone rang. My son, Joel. So. My daughter had ratted me out.
“We’re coming down to Florida,” Joel said.
“You’re not coming down to Florida!”
“We are if you start stalking HalleBerry!”
“What, stalk? A letter is stalking?”
Joel and Amy extracted a promise from me that I would not try to contact HalleBerry. I crossed her name off my list and decided not to mention a word about Jennifer Lopez.
But this subject continued to nag at me. I wondered if romance really does happen to octogenarians, and others who have reached their dotage.
Then, a recent newspaper article stopped me. The headline of this article announced that seniors (for which I qualify) have sex more frequently than we suspect (for which I plead the Fifth).
The article, beneath the sub-head, “We still get frisky,” the reporter wrote, “It may come as a shock to younger generations, but nearly three in four men and about half of women age 57 to 72 report that they are sexually active, having sex an average of about four times a month, according to a 2011 study in The Journals of Gerontology.”
Shocked? If I had read such a statement when I was a teen-ager, I would have barfed. The idea of someone my grandparents’ age having sex was unthinkable. In fact, if we even considered anyone over the age of 40 having sex, it was always in terms of, “Ew-w-w!”
While once again pleading the Fifth, I have decided to do my own investigating. Truthfully, I had hoped to appeal to your prurient needs with some juicy bits of porn. Sadly, what most people confessed to me was too bland to report. There were, however, a few chuckleworthy exceptions. (And yes, these actually happened; names have been changed to protect the guilty.)
Ned, a frequent bridge partner I have known for about ten years, is about 70. He has met several women through dating sites. Just prior to a recent game, I asked how his latest venture had gone.
“Not so good,” he said.
“You didn’t hit it off?”
“I thought we did. Met for coffee. Talked for about 45 minutes. Then I asked her to dinner at my house. She was a little reluctant at first, but she finally agreed.”
“So what happened? You insist on a little momby-palomby as an appetizer?”
“Hell, no! Never got that far! She got up and left, right in the middle of dinner!”
“What? What’d you make?”
“Didn’t make anything.”
“So … what? You ordered in pizza or something?”
“Nope.”
“So what’d you serve?”
“Leftovers.”
“Leftovers?”
“Yeah. I had some Chinese left over from Szechuwan Panda; a Greek salad from Lester’s Diner; you know, good stuff. I figure, why spend money on dinner when I’ve got good stuff like that? She got up and left just as I was bringing some two-day-old chicken piccata from Carabbas.”
“Imagine that,” I said, at a genuine loss for words.
I changed the subject to bridge conventions.
And then there’s Larry, a great old friend I’ve known since grammar school. Larry has been divorced twice, and about a year ago resurrected a romance with Susan, a woman he had gone steady with as a sophomore in high school. (Does anyone “go steady” any more? Does the phrase even exist?)
Anyway, Larry brought Susan down to Florida for a week and I had dinner with them one night. She looks great. Fred could lose 40 pounds.
After he’d had two drinks, Larry said, “Susan gave me permission to tell you this great story.” I looked at Susan. She winced.
“My grandson, Andrew, is a sophomore at the U. of Illinois in Champaign,” Fred said. “Susan’s grandson, Mickey, just started there. She asked if I would have Andrew call Mickey and invite him to his fraternity. Andrew said, ‘Sure.’
“A few days later, Andrew calls me. He says, ‘Hey, dad, I’m sending Mickey an e-mail. What do you think of this? Dear Mickey. Hi. My name is Andrew. My grandpa is boffing your grandma.’”
Fred roared. I chuckled. Susan blushed. Then changed the subject.
There have been a few others. Nick, a computer whiz who is older than I am, told me had placed a video of himself on one of the dating sites.
“No one even responded,” he said. “Not one single hit.”
“What’d you say?”
“I didn’t say anything. I danced.”
“You danced? By yourself.”
“Well. Sort of. I twerked.”
“Oh.”
“Not one single response.”
“Imagine that.”
There were a few other anecdotes of a very graphic nature, but I’m sure my editors would never publish them. If I reach Jennifer Lopez, you’ll hear about it in my next column.
Cantankerously Yours,
Wendell Abern
Wendell Abern can be reached at [email protected].