AS YOUNGSTERS we're repelled by the idea of older folks having sex. Assuming, that is, one is imaginative enough to accept the possibility of this even occurring. I hadn't realised that the same vague queasiness would overtake me in middle age, when forced to acknowledge the sex lives of young persons whose bottoms I've personally wiped, powdered and re-diapered.
Seeing the box of condoms in my godson's bathroom cabinet (just hunting for loo roll, honest!) evoked two responses. First: Bless! How responsible of him to take precautions. Followed swiftly by: Precautions?! When did children start having sex? (I s
hould explain that he's 20 years old, is more than halfway through university, and that I was similarly unnerved when he procured a driving licence.)
This reaction is linked to having reached the age when "hot" is mainly followed by the word "flush" and frantic fanning motions, rather than wolf whistles from appreciative builders. (Technically, I've never experienced a hot flush, but then I've never been properly hot, either. If I allow myself to get bogged down in specifics I'll be here all day. Chalk it up to columnar licence and go with the flow, will you?)
Undoubtedly there are numerous anthropological and psychoanalytical explanations for this phenomenon, which also explain the psychology behind our fear of female sexuality, especially when it persists into the bus pass years.
It'll connect to motherhood and biological imperatives requiring us to produce an endless stream of new humans from the sprightliest possible eggs, presumably.
But we don't want to give you that. The question nagging me is a proper chicken-and-egg conundrum: are we more freaked out that older people experience lust and enjoy participating in sexual intercourse, or by the concept of ordinarily attractive, if not actually downright plain people doing same?
The easy answer is that this is a non-question. They're identical, because we tend not to find older people aesthetically appealing. Oh sure, we're cool with the likes of Susan Sarandon or Helen Mirren getting jiggy with it, but they're hardly representative specimens. And remember the shock-horror headline when news emerged that board-certified babe Julia Roberts – (a woman in her forties] – had the audacity to star in a romantic comedy? (At her age, tsk tsk.)
But what is a girl to do when she has the libido of a teenager and the loins of a worse-for-wear mature specimen? I'm sure I read that the Japanese invented a new genre of porn featuring greybeards, but for the life of me don't know how to verify that without opening myself up to endless investigations and possibly jail.
I do know where I read a recent blog entry about Yuri Adachi, 51, who's about to launch a career in pornography. But it seems that, in order to make this a viable money-earner, she took a page out of Demi Moore's book of radical renovation, dropping more than six million yen on cosmetic surgery. Boo hiss.
There are vast hoards of us clogging the upper reaches of the age demographic, so we really ought to get comfy with the seven signs of ageing, instead of trying to eradicate them – and all the idiosyncrasies that make the human face and form so beautiful and interesting.
So how do I feel about the prospect of peeling the golfing gloves off a liver-spotted gent? In theory, fine, though it has to be said that the last person whose proximity sent me dashing into a cold shower was a much younger man.
Thus I wander dangerously close to pot-kettle-black territory. Ultimately, I hope I'm open to the possibility of swinging from a range of chandeliers, whether they be candle-lit, gas-fired, or electrified.
As long as they have a good sense of humour, that is!
