Read Online Best Sex Writing 2013: The State of Today's Sexual Culture by Rachel Kramer Bussel - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Rachel Kramer Bussel
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may be true,” she responds.) Herb and Henrietta met in the hallway shortly after she moved in four doors down from him, and she says, “He didn’t give me a chance to look for anybody else.” Tony and Alice became “companions” after dancing together at the New Year’s Eve party just a few months after he became a resident.
This last coupling was a particular disappointment to a number of the single women. Tony has a twinkly, Frank Sinatra vibe. He walks without a cane. He dances with panache. But while Tony will amiably two-step with anyone, his real attentions are
directed at Alice, for reasons even he can’t articulate. (“It just grows, I guess.”) She’s the one he takes on walks, the one whose hand he holds, the one he cares for ever since her memory started to slip—and the one whom he might do a few more intimate things with, though as a rule he stays tight-lipped on that par- ticular subject.
Al decidedly doesn’t. “I’m eighty-nine, but I’ve still got that zing.” Along with chewing gum and sugar pills, he keeps Viagra in a plastic bag in the breast pocket of his shirt. “I get the best from the V.A.,” he tells me, fingering the blue tablet. “They’re better now than ever. They get me crazy… You know, sex isn’t everything, but it has a lot to do with it. An awful lot to do with it. That’s three quarters of your battle won.” And it’s a battle he won with Sally, even though she was the one to initiate the ro- mance, following him home one night from poker. “She made a right turn. I asked, ‘Where are you going?’ She said, ‘To your apartment.’ And that was it.”
Traditionally, nursing homes don’t encourage sex. Not only do many, including Flushing House, have religious affiliations to contend with, but there’s also the fact that the people footing the bill are often children and grandchildren not thrilled to imagine their forebears shacking up with someone new. Then there’s the fear of sexually transmitted diseases, which, owing in part to Vi- agra, are famously on the rise among the geriatric population. As Al puts it, “Sex takes a little longer now, but it’s wonderful for the woman. I can go on. You know?”
In response to the rising STD rate, Flushing House has in- vited the Visiting Nurse Service of New York to come in and lead two sex-ed programs: one for the men and one for the women. “They can’t get them to talk if they do it together,” Katie, the activities leader, says of her clients. “They just don’t
think about [STDs], because in their day and age, they didn’t.”
But Flushing House is an independent-living facility, not a nursing home, which drastically limits the level of supervision. Sure, the staff can stop someone from looking at porn on the communal computers, but when one resident started going out clubbing, for example, they turned a blind eye. If anything, re- lationships—as a useful antidote to loneliness—are encouraged. There’s a darkened TV room that plays a constant cycle of ro- mantic oldies. There are tables for two in the dining room. There are even frequent dances in the glass solarium on the roof, from where you can see all five boroughs; security cameras recently caught one couple up there going at it in the nude.
The population is overwhelmingly heterosexual—though, until recently, there was one transgender resident—and more than two thirds are female, meaning that the men typically get to do the picking. When a guy comes on the scene that the women consider a catch—someone who you can tell was handsome years ago—jostling ensues. One male resident confessed to me that he hadn’t had sex in three days, as if it were a crime. Another con- fided that he still gets blow jobs.
The dining room is the social nexus of the facility. There’s Tony and Alice’s group, which is usually one of the first to be seated, with their friend Hilda begging Abraham (a staffer who escorts residents to their seats) not
This last coupling was a particular disappointment to a number of the single women. Tony has a twinkly, Frank Sinatra vibe. He walks without a cane. He dances with panache. But while Tony will amiably two-step with anyone, his real attentions are
directed at Alice, for reasons even he can’t articulate. (“It just grows, I guess.”) She’s the one he takes on walks, the one whose hand he holds, the one he cares for ever since her memory started to slip—and the one whom he might do a few more intimate things with, though as a rule he stays tight-lipped on that par- ticular subject.
Al decidedly doesn’t. “I’m eighty-nine, but I’ve still got that zing.” Along with chewing gum and sugar pills, he keeps Viagra in a plastic bag in the breast pocket of his shirt. “I get the best from the V.A.,” he tells me, fingering the blue tablet. “They’re better now than ever. They get me crazy… You know, sex isn’t everything, but it has a lot to do with it. An awful lot to do with it. That’s three quarters of your battle won.” And it’s a battle he won with Sally, even though she was the one to initiate the ro- mance, following him home one night from poker. “She made a right turn. I asked, ‘Where are you going?’ She said, ‘To your apartment.’ And that was it.”
Traditionally, nursing homes don’t encourage sex. Not only do many, including Flushing House, have religious affiliations to contend with, but there’s also the fact that the people footing the bill are often children and grandchildren not thrilled to imagine their forebears shacking up with someone new. Then there’s the fear of sexually transmitted diseases, which, owing in part to Vi- agra, are famously on the rise among the geriatric population. As Al puts it, “Sex takes a little longer now, but it’s wonderful for the woman. I can go on. You know?”
In response to the rising STD rate, Flushing House has in- vited the Visiting Nurse Service of New York to come in and lead two sex-ed programs: one for the men and one for the women. “They can’t get them to talk if they do it together,” Katie, the activities leader, says of her clients. “They just don’t
think about [STDs], because in their day and age, they didn’t.”
But Flushing House is an independent-living facility, not a nursing home, which drastically limits the level of supervision. Sure, the staff can stop someone from looking at porn on the communal computers, but when one resident started going out clubbing, for example, they turned a blind eye. If anything, re- lationships—as a useful antidote to loneliness—are encouraged. There’s a darkened TV room that plays a constant cycle of ro- mantic oldies. There are tables for two in the dining room. There are even frequent dances in the glass solarium on the roof, from where you can see all five boroughs; security cameras recently caught one couple up there going at it in the nude.
The population is overwhelmingly heterosexual—though, until recently, there was one transgender resident—and more than two thirds are female, meaning that the men typically get to do the picking. When a guy comes on the scene that the women consider a catch—someone who you can tell was handsome years ago—jostling ensues. One male resident confessed to me that he hadn’t had sex in three days, as if it were a crime. Another con- fided that he still gets blow jobs.
The dining room is the social nexus of the facility. There’s Tony and Alice’s group, which is usually one of the first to be seated, with their friend Hilda begging Abraham (a staffer who escorts residents to their seats) not
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