Hi, Boomers,
I had a busy week and no time to blog. It made me cranky because from time to time I have things to blog about and can’t find the time to do so.
However, I find myself in Denver, CO, at this moment at a tango festival with some free time, lying in bed with my sore right foot propped up on a pillow. I come to Denver twice a year (Memorial Day and Labor Day) to dance tango like a maniac and to visit with old friends who are dear to me. One of the most interesting aspects of these festivals (I go to Portland , Oregon, also twice a year) is the opportunity to talk to my favorite people and get down an dirty with what’s on our minds. It is curious to me, however, that all my friends are male in the tango community, except for my one long-time female friend who sells her tango clothes collection. In Los Angeles, I have three close female friends and one very best male friend and I feel lucky to have them for support and love. As I get older, I am more particular about who my friends are in my life.
Inevitably, conversations run to male/female relationships. It doesn’t matter if the man is 63 or 46, emotional adolescent outpourings, yearnings, longings, hopes, lost and found loves pour out of us like a faucet without a turn off value. This seems to be the human condition: the search for fulling relationships. My friend, Philip, can attest to this because his psychology practice is all about finding happiness in mid-life relationships. Sometimes I think it’s rotten luck that people have to endlessly search and sometimes flounder to find love. It’s hit and miss. It’s sad and happy. It’s right and it’s wrong. We can’t get there from here. Where is the love? as the song lyrics ask.
I heard an outrageous story from my 63 year old friend who fell for a woman in the baby boomer category. From the moment he met her a year ago, he knew he shouldn’t get involved with her. The bells and whistles were out there for the viewing and the signs indicated that this was not going to be the nurturing, supportive relationship he was seeking. But he fell for her anyway and it was a hard fall because he put in a huge amount of time and effort. And all the while, something in the back of his mind knew intuitively the chase was wrong. In this case, the object of my friend’s affection wasn’t well-educated; she had been divorced a long time, had no children, was not responsive to his professional or artistic pursuits. In short, she was a woman who was into trying out men but not necessarily wanting to commit to long and loving relationship. So what did this woman want from my friend?
This woman was after was the perfect penis! No kidding! It turns out after four months of dating, she told my friend that his penis shape wasn’t quite right for her. She was looking for something a little different, something a little thinner, something a little shorter, something that would give her an orgasm because it seemed that she had had only two orgasms in her life and she was on the search to find that perfect penis again. She told him she wasn’t in to my friend in a sexual way. On the next penis!
My mouth is still open in wonderment about this story because (a) I know his penis (he is a former lover and a man who is a lost to me in love due to our inability to sustain a long distance relationship), and (b) a man of 63 who is still active sexually is a real find. In boomer speak, hang on to the sexually active and sexually interested.
This situation hits me in the face with everything that is wrong about looking for love in all the wrong places. Of course, I did it, too. Not with a penis, mind you, but with wanting a loving commitment from a man that was never going to happen even if I spent four years trying to make him my partner in life.
We’re in our 60’s, for God sake, and our intention is to find a relationship that not only possess an intimate component (and hey, girls, a penis is a penis is a penis and if it works it’s an even better penis), but the couple has a spiritual connection that inherently contains caring, support, fun, way loads of fun. I don’t want to drag around a sad-sack for the rest of my life. I need energy to match mine and we both have to be going in the same direction. At the age of 60 or more, we should know the nuances of what makes a good relationship. On the other hand, this relationship business can be a mystery of huge porportions.
You wouldn’t think at a tango festival that you could learn so much about men. But I’ve learned a lot about the state of the male mind as it relates to females. My 46 year old friend and I were discussing how to spot a “crazy” woman quickly and then how he astutely avoids these kinds of women. My friend is so very intelligent and sane and knows exactly what he wants in a female. He is very conscious about certain psycho signs in a female as she approaches him to dance or to talk. He’s got his male relationship check-list in his head and he quickly makes an assessment about the woman who is coming on to him. It probably takes him about thirty minutes to gather information from her to see if she is a prospective date. This guy saves an awful lot of time in his life. He doesn’t get too attached at the beginning. And for sure, he isn’t thinking with his dick.
More from Denver later. I’m going to dance this afternoon.
Namaste
Joan