Reviewed by Susannah Indigo
(03/28/01)

It is said of Oliver Wendell Holmes that one day when he was in his nineties, he was walking down the street with a friend when they spied a beautiful woman. "Oh," he exclaimed, "to be seventy again!"

One of the contributors, Josephine Kay, started having "masturbation parties" with friends shortly before she turned sixty, and ran a personal ad in the underground press that read: 5'2", 155, outgoing, upstanding, down-to-earth, reaching out, kicking ass, off the wall, on my back, on a roll, sitting pretty, danceaholic, round heels, unchurched, left of center, around the bend, pansexual, ambihandrous, talkin' about it, sayin' it loud, knowin' myself, bottom heavy, air head (NOT) over the hill (NOT)... you get the picture. Oh, yes, popcorn, sushi and circus clowns. Her only disappointment is that of all the folks that she meets, very few are willing to practice her kind of sex, which is sex that does not involve any exchange of bodily fluids.

I was struck all the way through Still Doing It by how well all of the writers know their sexuality, and how well they work at taking care of whatever their kind of sexuality may be. It made me wish to be older, to be free to know, and say, exactly what I want and do not want, to be willing to look less than perfect and young and still parade in the nude, and to recognize exactly what matters in taking care of myself and others. (Not to mention having kids up and grown and out of the house in order to play a little more freely.)

Some of the contributors tell of their kinks, and I think they're having more fun than most of the young people I know. Tony Aiello writes in "Senior Games" about his fantasy life with his long-term partner, Anne. He says they have "straight and conventional" sex about thirty percent of the time, with the rest devoted to erotic play, including garter belts, high heels, a vibrating egg with a remote control to be used in restaurants, and Anne using a dildo/harness to fuck his ass.

Some writers tell of their illnesses, and how they got past them to reclaim their sexuality. One of the most touching stories is written by Clean Sheets' own Fiction Editor, Bill Noble, who writes in his usual lyrical style about what happened after his massive heart attack a few years ago. "When I died, sex stopped," the story begins, and as you read it is impossible not to both cry, and then laugh with him, for joy, for recovery, for the love of his wife, and for those kisses -- "a whole geography of kisses over my back, a warm cheek lying for a long moment between my shoulder blades. Kisses that barely brushed the fuzz over my buttocks, warm breath here and there in the deep place between them, and then kisses trailing down the back of my legs. Playful little kisses flirted from the back of one knee to the other and back again."

The closing story of Still Doing It is called "Vintage Sex," by Lin Stevens, who tells her tale of how, at the age of sixty-five, she decides that she is never too old for love, and vows she will do anything in her power to find a compatible man. She proceeds to place personal ads, and meets too-quick men, boring men, a beautiful overweight man, a man who scolds her for "carrying on like that" during an orgasm, a man who can talk to her all night long, and a man who will show up at the hospital and provide a massage after a heart attack scare. Through it all I had the sense that this woman is a real catch, and I hoped she could find someone to be worthy of her. The story ends when she is seventy-two, and while I won't give away the ending, I will say that she is just one of many individuals in Still Doing It who inspire me to look forward to how fascinating my sexuality might become as time goes by.

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