[ MAUKA MAKAI ]
‘Carpe diem, I FOUND my father's bottle of Viagra during a recent trip to the mainland, although "found" is perhaps the wrong word to use. Rather, the pharmaceutical wonder sat unabashedly alongside its more restrained colleagues -- a blood pressure medication, an anti-cholesterol drug -- on a shelf near the bathroom sink, in full view of potential visitors, not to mention the young grandchildren Dad inherited as a result of his recent remarriage.
dammit!’
Sex when you're 70?
With today's potions and advice,
anything is possibleBy Scott Vogel
svogel@starbulletin.com
At first this discovery seemed enlightening. After his marriage ended in 1999, just as he was entering his seventh decade, my father boasted of having gone on "21 dates with 21 different women in 21 days," a social and sexual feat that at the time left me dumbfounded. Now, as I stared at the prescription for 50 hits of Viagra (of which just two or three pills remained), it all began to make sense.And it all came back to me -- that brief intermarital lull during which Dad registered at Match.com. Initially an Internet novice, he quickly mastered the basics, publishing a profile that amply communicated his love of cooking and dancing and expressed his fervent wish to find a woman "within a 25-mile radius of New York City." My father's a good writer and a charismatic guy. Still, to our mutual astonishment, within a month he'd received more than a thousand responses. ("Son, I might've gotten 10,000 if I'd upped the radius to 50 miles," he laughed.)
But staring at one of the little blue pills later -- he wouldn't miss one, right? -- I came down with my own case of the blues, for some reason. Maybe it was thoughts of my father's desperate attempts to stem the ravages of time, or perhaps I was having flashes of my own flaccid future. Then again, my mood might have been colored by the hundreds of plaintive e-mails my father received from women -- some divorced, many widowed -- who'd pinned their hopes at happiness on a bald, potbellied man whose dancing left a lot to be desired. They all seemed trapped in a 25-mile circle of melancholy.IT'S 7:55 on a recent Saturday morning, and the sun is still rising over the KHVH studios in Dole Cannery. The technical director and call screener are drowsily wrapping up "The Moving Body," a phone-in show that seems to revolve around bone spurs, when suddenly Dr. Diana Wiley blazes into the studio.
A torrent of caffeinated energy in a smart green pantsuit and matching handbag, Wiley exchanges a few pleasantries and then immediately begins poring over her notes for this morning's episode of "Fifty-Plus and Fabulous," a popular, nearly 4-year-old program whose sympathies should be self-explanatory.
Today, and in defiance of the early hour, the topic is sex -- specifically, sex and the post-menopausal woman. The clock strikes 8, and Wiley gets her cue from the director.
"Good morning!" she says, greeting her listeners like the band of old friends they've no doubt become. "Who would have thought it would come to this? Almost 30 years ago, 1972 to be exact, when the original 'Joy of Sex' was released, the sexual revolution was reaching a very lusty crest. And you 50-plus listeners remember those times."
Within seconds, Wiley's voice, smoky and seductive, has transported me to that long-gone hedonistic decade, and I find myself becoming nostalgic for a time I never knew. For 30-plus and un-fabulous types like me, the '70s had always meant only two things: bad hair and even worse clothes. But in the 58-year-old Wiley's hands, they became something else, a cultural treasure that is the exclusive property of those who experienced that era of abandon firsthand. And even as their AARP days are fast approaching, memories of the sexual revolution remain vivid among this set, a touchstone that may well produce another revolution -- this time in geriatric sex. Can it be a coincidence that a baby boomer turns 50 every 7.5 seconds while, according to Viagra maker Pfizer, four tablets of Viagra are dispensed every second?WHEN YOU'RE 65, male and available, the ranks of voluptuous young actresses are generally closed to you. Unless, of course, you're Woody Allen -- perhaps the patron saint of geriatric sex -- whose on-screen doppelgänger bags both Charlize Theron and Helen Hunt in "Curse of the Jade Scorpion," which opened in theaters Friday. (Elizabeth Berkley, whose career proves that there is indeed life after "Showgirls," stares at the Woodman adoringly but doesn't cross the line.)
At least Hunt puts up a fight, spitting out insults faster than Rosalind Russell in "His Girl Friday" before succumbing to the director's charms. Theron, on the other hand, falls hard for Allen almost immediately, showing up uninvited to his apartment wearing only a negligee under her coat. It's a moment of patent absurdity that leaves even Woody's character shaking his head, but at least the joke appears intentional. "If I happen to pass away while we're doing something," he says while preparing to bed Theron, "have the mortuary leave the smile on my face."
Needless to say, Hollywood's come a long way from the days of "On Golden Pond" and going gently into that good night.
As it happens, the subject of Allen's casting habits comes up on "Fifty-Plus and Fabulous." Wiley's guest today, on the line from Los Angeles, is Lou Paget, the author of discreet-looking sex manuals with "tasteful line drawings" and names like "The Big O" and "How to Be a Great Lover: Girlfriend-to-Girlfriend Totally Explicit Techniques That Will Blow His Mind."
"This is a man," Wiley jokes, "who apparently says, 'A man is only as old as the woman he feels.'" And later, another crack: "I heard another guy say, 'Well, I may be 50, but every morning when I get up, I feel like a 20-year-old. Unfortunately, there's never one around.'" Both Wiley and Paget giggle, the latter eventually pausing to offer a sober assessment: "This is a man who likes women ..."
"And women can tell that," interjects Wiley, "and plus he's so intelligent and funny."
Paget continues: "Women will often be with men who take care of their heart and who are smart and who are funny. If someone knows that someone has a kind heart, that speaks volumes.""It sure does," concludes Wiley, although later, over breakfast, she admits to reservations over relationships with, say, a 40-year age discrepancy. "There can be problems. You don't have very much in common. The older person will be talking about the Beatles, and the younger person won't know anything about it. You don't have the same reference points."
THE DESIRE to continue making love into one's 60s, 70s and beyond is firstly a social phenomenon, but it's quickly becoming an economic one. As I write this, I'm staring at the latest in over-the-counter aphrodisiacs, an elixir that -- perhaps taking a tip from Viagra -- comes in an attractive blue package.
A blue bottle, to be exact. It's called Niagara (a name that has aroused the attentions of Pfizer's lawyers), and despite a selling price of $3.60 per 6.6-ounce bottle, the product has apparently been flying off the shelves in Arkansas (where it was first imported from Sweden), straight into the hands of couples of a certain age. Thanks to the Internet -- surely the greatest boon to sexual quackery in a hundred years -- the product is now available nationally. The company's press release quotes an Arkansas Times profile of Niagara's Little Rock distributor, who said, "An older couple who bought a bottle from her store (and asked that it be put in a paper bag) 'had to pull over on their way back to Hot Springs,' so delightful were its effects." One of them reportedly returned to the store the following day for six more bottles.
Another product that, according to US Magazine, causes women to "experience a torrent of blood flow to you-know-where" is K Sensual, a bonbon of sorts that Wiley has made available on her Web site, Healthylove.com. "This is 18 Chinese herbs encased in chocolate, formulated for women, and it really does work," she tells listeners during Saturday's program, speaking of a preparation that includes things like hare's ear root, fleshy broomrape and something called horny goat weed.
Although she has occasionally fielded complaints from soccer moms whose children have accidentally encountered "Fifty-Plus and Fabulous" on the way to morning practice, Wiley says that admirers far outnumber detractors. "I don't think there's anybody else talking about sexuality in Hawaii in the media," she says, and indeed she is a bird of rare plumage in these parts, and one whose song seems to have arrived at just the right time.
LISTENING to her interview Paget, doling out advice in a format both entertaining and informative, I'm not surprised that Wiley's show -- with her mantra of "Carpe diem, dammit!" -- has generated a loyal following. Although sex is not the subject of every episode (i.e., there are other ways for 50-plus folks to be fabulous), one gets the sense that this topic is foremost on the minds of Wiley's listeners.
Suddenly, the words "Have more shows on this topic" appear on the computer screen, an off-air message from a listener named Mary who, while too shy to ask a question, is clearly finding the Paget repartee interesting. To paint a vivid mental picture, Wiley has just jokingly compared Paget to Martha Stewart, another woman of "a certain age with a mission." However, "where Martha can tell you how to make Christmas ornaments out of shoelaces and how to cook your goose, Lou can explain exactly what happens on the inside when you orgasm, how to get them in multiples and, as we were discussing before the break, which (sex toys) will actually work." And furthermore, who cares about making doilies anyway?
It's easy to laugh or wax appalled at the conversation between these women, which skips happily from Woody Allen to the 15th World Congress in Sexology to Viagra's early days as a trial blood-pressure medication. ("My understanding is that the men who were in the trials were not returning their samples because for the first time in years, they were now potent," says Paget. "And Pfizer was like, 'You're kidding.' They hit a home run based on a fluke.") But if you think this is mere AM radio titillation (Paget's next appearance on "Fifty-Plus" is scheduled for Sept. 1), you haven't heard the call-in portion of Wiley's show.
"Hi, Chris from Kauai, go ahead," she says. A little static is heard on the line and then a short pause. The man is obviously nervous.
"My heart's beating like crazy," Chris finally says. "I listen to your show regularly, Diana. ... I've been married to my wife since I was 18, and I'm 60 now, so we've been together for 42 years. And what I'm hearing from you and Lou is that there's a possibility for both of us to regain more passion and more love. Because I love her dearly ..."
At that moment the man begins weeping into the telephone, a stifled yet obviously sorrowful cry for help. Impotence no longer seems like a joke, an excuse for jibes at, say, Bob Dole and Pfizer. It's the painful realization that 42 years of pleasuring oneself and one's wife may be coming to an abrupt end. "I'd just like to have more love in our relationship," Chris murmurs.
IT'S 9 o'clock at Sam Choy's, just down the road from KHVH, and already there's quite a breakfast crowd. A few cups of strong coffee later, and Wiley and I are buzzing, the talk jumping quickly from sex shows in Amsterdam to Joan Collins' cosmetic surgery to Viagra divorces -- so quickly, in fact, that I barely notice the occasional raised eyebrows at adjoining tables.
At the blink of an eye, Wiley can have you comfortably discussing masturbation, erectile dysfunction and decreased libido with a near stranger. And it's this talent for encouraging honesty amid taboo that makes the board-certified sex therapist such a charming talk-show host, and "Fifty-Plus and Fabulous" a solid candidate for syndication once Wiley publishes the book she's working on. (The topic? "Sexual secrets for lovers of all ages.")
I mention Chris from Kauai, whom Wiley has vowed to call later, and his sadness in the face of an impotent future. Ever the optimist, however, Wiley firmly believes that Chris has taken an important first step by talking about his problem. And not only is his condition treatable, but believe it or not, seniors like Chris could yet experience "some of the best sex of their lives," she reveals. "And sometimes we don't get there until our fifth or sixth decade. We know ourselves better; there's a gender crossover for heterosexual couples where the man suddenly becomes more romantic and the woman becomes more assertive."
In other words, it may be that yet another lusty crest lies on the horizon -- a message that, whether they admit it or not, legions of elderly and near elderly have been waiting to hear.
Click for online
calendars and events.
