Ooh folks, I can breathe now. I’m telling you, I’ve been tired. I’m catching naps like a senior citizen around here. Not that anything’s wrong with being a senior but hell, who’s rushing?
You know, when I was over in Saudi, I worked a good three hours a day. It changed to about 5 every now and then but you can’t work a full day over there on account of the heat. Well, least I never tried since I didn’t have to. Now that I’m working full days, I’m like, shit, this is exhausting. Being that it’s depleting my energy, I’m starting to wonder who the hell dictated that 8 hours equated to a full day of work. What’s wrong with 3, or I’ll take an even 4.
Anyhow. During a little rest period, I found myself watching this program called Sex in America. Don’t look at me all funny. It happens. I used to be a big watcher of documentaries but I haven’t in a long time, so I figure this was as good as any to find myself watching, okay? Besides, I was getting myself educated about you folks in America (hehehe!).
See, there was reference to this thing called The Kinsey Report and there were all manner of things in it. You know. How sex was years ago and what it’s like in our modern world. I wonder sometimes if we’re too open about private things. Like, these folk were talking on my screen about what they like to do in the bedroom. Well, obviously I was interested to some degree ’cause I didn’t turn the channel. They were talking and going on and toward the end, the lesbian couple started kissing and going on. I didn’t need to see that but there it was.
And there was this couple in their seventies on there talking about what they did. Nothing in detail really but enough to let me know there was something going on in their bedroom. I was surprised. You know, I’m innocent like that and for anybody who hasn’t done the do at 70-something, so are you. They. Or however I’m supposed to say it. I remember seeing Jane Fonda on some show this or last year, talking about sex was better than ever after 70. Naturally, I’m thinking, how, right? Well, Jane didn’t say how. You have to wait ’til you get there, I imagine.
Did you know homosexuality used to be considered a mental illness? Don’t shoot the messenger, folks. And did you also know that the younger folk are using condoms more than older folks? Matter of fact, the younger they are, the higher the use of condoms. That’s the word from the program. Anyhow. How do you feel about this sexual revolution? I mean, we’re in it and got here that way… Well, some of us.
Do we put too much out there or should we back up a little? Based on where we are now, where do you see us, say 10 and 20 years from now? You don’t really have to answer that but I’m on the curious side, so yeah, answer that for me.
I'm an artist who's writing,mothering, blogging and doing a few other things under the sun. I buy toilet paper 99.9% of every trip I make to the grocery store. I'm a people watcher, so I know you're here but drop me a line anyway.
It’s like PDA … sometimes it’s sweet and sometimes it’s just YUCK get a room already! Good news about young folks and the love glove … we don’t want children raising children.
I say get a room too. I don’t know if we’re proving anything by letting it all hang out and on some level, it seems that’s what’s happening. Yes, I was glad to know the young folk are gloving up. The reasoning was that they are growing up in an age of condom use as commonplace.
Yeah … letting it all hangout should be done in private … oh my noodle is imagining the swayings of pendulous parts all off a sudden … sorry about that Totsy.
It’s nice that the information is available, but damn I’d like to have to work just a little to find it. I suppose being VERY single isn’t helping my attitude. Who knows. Maybe by the time I’m 70 I’ll be getting a little somethin somethin again.
I’ve heard guys express the same thing.
Perhaps being VERY single isn’t helping, as I’m going on the Caps and all. It’s all good though. You have your 70s to look forward to.
Sexual revolution, huh? Did you miss the 1960′s? This is no revolution; this is just people refusing to hide the stuff that people in my grandparents’ generation went to great lengths to hide: Getting their freak on big time. I’m not 70 – yet – but, God willing, I’m still gonna be handling my business… with some help from Viagra, no doubt, but I’m gonna do it ’til I’m dead.
You ask about pulling back… and my counter-question is what would be the point in doing that? Should we all go hide in the closet and hide like good little prudes, acting as if we’re all chaste? It makes me wonder if all those people who start screaming, “TMI! TMI!” whenever sex comes up does so because they’re embarrassed to discuss or listen to something that, again, they themselves have been doing… and maybe with some extra freakiness tossed in for good measure? That “sex is private” shit has long since gone by the wayside; it’s not a sexual revolution, it’s a sexual evolution – we’re growing up and putting things like shame over what we do and even who we do it with aside.
And, yeah, I knew homosexuality was once considered a mental illness… just like masturbation was. But, did you know they didn’t take masturbation off the mental illness list until 1974?
Back to the other thing. Okay, so it’s not like you’re gonna stop some stranger on the street and start talking to them about how you got your back all busted up last night; hell, even I wouldn’t do that. But, talking about sex? Hell, that’s fun and even educational because none of us are too old to learn something about knocking boots, are we? What is it that people think should remain hidden? It’s a sign that people are more comfortable verbalizing sex and even being demonstrative, like kissing in public or even playing a little grab-ass and it’s my opinion that it’s high time that we came out of the closet over something damn near all of us do; we’ve overcome that conditioning not to talk about sex except in general terms – and sometimes not even at that basic level.
Great blog!
Evolutuon. Revolution. Whatever. It’s all about sex. Go ask Patraeus.
I definitely think some self-restraints should’ve been in place where that matter’s concerned. There’s a time a place for everything. It’s not that one is defined as inhibited or prude. I just wonder where we’ll be years from now. Just because we talk about it more openly doesn’t mean the direction is a good one.
So what, in your opinion, makes it a bad direction? And that Patraeus thing is just another illustration that government minions are not immune to the lure of flesh – we just think they should be. You get you some and someone finds out, it’s no big deal; some government lackey gets some and it’s a scandal…
I do wonder about the esteem of folks who carry sexuality as a badge of honor. Not that we shouldn’t embrace who we are but sometimes it’s so overdone, which sends the wrong message.
What is the wrong message? What is considered overdone? I carry my sexuality as sort of a badge of honor… and there’s nothing wrong with my self-esteem because, yes, such things should be embraced and accepted so that you can be comfortable in your own skin.
I am so waiting to find out your view of wrong messages and things being overdone…
Overstating is typically a lack of something else. I don’t know if we’re really making profound statements in exercising sexual liberation or we’re just kinda out there. It’s all too confusing for young folk. I see kids who have challenges in identifying their sexuality more now than when I was in school. So, it’s a little thought I had. A time and place for everything and sex is everywhere all the time.
With younger people – and I’m assuming we’re talking about those folks who aren’t quite legal adults yet – I can see how it can all be confusing and more so since parents are preaching one thing… but they’re seeing something else. Add to this the fact that bullying because of one’s sexual preference has been on the rise, well, who wants to be a target?
I can’t say if we’re really making profound statements but it seems that more people are, indeed, expressing their sexual liberation in ways that haven’t been seen since the late 1960s. Not only are people re-embracing “if it feels good, do it!” but they’re coming out of the closet in droves… and, in my opinion, because society has long demanded that such things, even for straight folks, be suppressed and locked away from sight… and now people see there’s no reason to not be expressive in this way.
True, some folks are just plain stupid about it and, yes, some folks just need to be better educated so that if they are exercising sexual liberation, they can do so tastefully and not appear to be a pack of ravening, slobbering sex fiends.
You’ve learned such fascinating stuff, Totsy. I hadn’t even heard of this show. I knew that tidbit about homosexuality. Some still think it. That’s why there are folks out there like Michele Bachman’s husband, running conversion camps to get gays back to a straight “normalcy.”
Some still think that? I wonder how they came to the conclusion that homosexualtiy was a mental illness. But that was before my time.
Bachmann and her husband are on the wacky side.
Oh, that one’s easy; they determined, way back in the day, that anyone who wasn’t straight or masturbated were mentally unstable because neither thing contributed to making babies. It was deemed to be unnatural for people to not be straight or to get themselves off and a lot of people suffered through some pretty barbaric “cures” in an attempt to make them straight and stop them from masturbating. If I remember correctly, it wasn’t until the 1990s when they took homosexuality off the list of mental illnesses…
My mother-in-law told me one day that she and her husband were still active in bed 2-3 times a week: she was 68 and he was 75.
It amazed me at the time (to say the least!), but now, 42 years later ( and in the same mariage), my husband and I are in a fair way to following their tracks (at 66 and 72).
What is better is having plenty of time (remember that kid knocking on your door because he/she cannot sleep/ is hungry/ has a nightmare/ forgot to ask for a signature for school?), plenty of trust, plenty of understanding and knowledge of self and each other
And several of my friends enjoy the same situation, sometimes even seek new partners…This is common, if rarely talked about. Think happily about your future
))
Now, that’s a cool empty nest.
My dad remarried in his sixties, he and his wife were happily active and proudly horny. All of their children were grossed out by their PDA but loved their affection.
My children (adults) are a bit grossed out that I married a man younger than me, they know there must be something going on, some bedroom tango.
I think the revolution that happened in the 60′s gave us all the freedom to talk about sexuality. It isn’t so much that we do it more or less, we talk about it more. You learn so much Totsy and see, even with your post you open the door for us to talk about sex.
Yep. It does kinda gross one out to think of the parents in the bedroom. A universal feeling, I think.
Revolutuon. Evolution. Whatever it is, it is. It was kinda interesting to watch the documentary, relating the old and new ideas about sex.
I didn’t realize you were only working 3-4 hours over there! My goodness, what did you do with all the time you had on your hands?
I agree, we need to adopt that over here — that 8 hour a day/5 days a week idea is old. Just think all the things we could do, like have more sex — hehehehehe!
Yeah, you should’ve been there.
And more sex can be had with a shorter work day. 
Hahaha, so that’s what you were doing!!!
No. They could hang me or something for being unmarried and having sex. Although had I been doing that, I might’ve stayed.
Oh yes, I keep forgetting how strict they are there. That’s a good reason to stay anywhere!
Okay?
I thought the revolution happened in the ’60s and this was the 21st Century extension. Very confusing. A 1980s high school student told me she thought people back in the 1940s didn’t know about sex.
Sounds good to me.
Maybe that student was right but you nor I know nothing about the 40s.
We were reading Arsenic and Old Lace, and the student had picked up on a double meaning (MILDLY risque) in a line uttered by Mortimer Brewster.She was shocked! I told her the fact we were here meant someone back in the Dark Ages knew something.
Hi Tots, I think talking about sex is a great thing. What I’d like to see more of is eroticism. I think we confuse sex (the act) with the erotic, and I think our sex lives could be enhanced by a greater focus on the erotic.
I went with a big group of people last week to see the movie The Sessions, which is the true story of a man named Mark O’Brien who spent most of every day in an iron lung and who, at the age of 38, decided he’d like to discover sex. It was the most amazing movie about sex and people with a disabililty; it was one of the best things I’ve ever seen, and at the end, all of us turned to each other with tears in our eyes. The trailer is here:
I apologize but I could not watch this. I’ll leave it for others to view, however. I suppose after working with people who have special needs and seeing self-stimulation on a regular channels my thinking with the video. I do, however, agree that focus on the erotic can deepen the sexual experience.
Being a senior citizen, who is also fond of napping, I can affirm that sex is still good in ones latter years. Pronlem is just remembering to do it.
Put a post it note on the fridge.
Hell Totsymae.. I intend to still be having sex when I’m 90!!
Hmmm…I really hadn’t thought to be doing it that long. Interesting.
Great trailer thanks for that, can’t wait to see the movie. Why couldn’t you watch it Totsy?
OK, I AM 70 (actually 71 at Christmas). So I was around during the 60′s and the so-called sexual revolution. Moreover, I was a successful musician and played with many big names and therefore had close up experience of the ‘Groupie’ phenomena. I spent some time living with Davy Jones (Monkees) with him and his wonderful family in the Hollywood Hills in 1970. And I saw how teenagers at that time would literally scream on the street when they saw his car driving down the road. I know because when this happened I was driving one of his cars that he had given me on loan for my stay, and the girls weren’t too happy when they found it was me in the car and not David. I could name many names all of whom are world known and tell many stories, but I shan’t for many, many reasons.
I think that in the 60′s we did think that we had invented sex, after all we had just been given the Contraceptive Pill and there was no such thing as HIV/Aids, but as I have gotten older and wiser, I think it is fair to say that every generation from Henry VIII and the Tudor wives right up to today’s generation, have all thought they had invented sex.
For what it’s worth I don’t think we should ‘let-it-all-hang-out’. I agree with Totsy and others there is a time and a place for sex and that is not in any public place. Take a walk down the Reeperbahn (Hamburgs’ Red Light district) and look at females in windows dressed in their ‘nothings’. Or in Holland the same, where they sit in the front room of their homes on a raised chair in the window. The window is open so one is able to discuss business and once again they are wearing very little. I’m not a prude, in fact I think the Germans and the Dutch have got it right. There is a place for prostitution and if it’s legalised and managed by the government and the government’s doctors, it therefore has a tendency to keep the gangster/Pimp element out of it, so if a girl wishes to enter that business, she can without the fear of being physically assaulted.
But that is ‘sex for sale’…fine…but I wouldn’t want mine or my wife’s personal sex lives to be on public display. But, what concerns me the most is this. I have been reading lately how young children some as young as 10, but more commonly teenagers, are sharing sexually explicit photos of themselves on their smart phones with their friends, and some are being pressurised into doing this by their peers. Furthermore, in many cases the pics and videos are ending up on the internet where they can become prey to the Peados dregs of society!
Being a grandfather of a couple of girls one of whom is about the right age, this worries me. Plus, in the 60′s we didn’t have girls going out on Hen Nights dressed as St Trinians Tarts, getting absolutely smashed off their faces and then flashing all their ‘hidden bits’ to anyone who wanted to see. I played in most, if not all of the entertainment Hot Spots in the world from Las Vegas to Australia and I never ever saw anything like that. Yet today on any given Saturday night, I can go out to my nearest city in Wales and see young women off their faces, on pills and booze and flashing their bits. I wonder if their parents know what their girls are up to, and I wonder if they would worry if they knew that they are letting it All Hang Out!
Good post Totsy..
I don’t know what the video contains and to be honest, I didn’t want to know. Simple as that really.
I’ve been to Amsterdam on the red light district strip to say I was there but I didn’t pay for window dressings. It’s amazing that can be satisfying to men but different strokes for different folks. Seems safe enough unless somebody decides to toss a rock through the window.
Like yourself, I don’t go along with the concept that being as open as we are is appropriate. There’s just too much access to it [sex] and the folk who are preyed upon. We are more vulnerable for anything to happen. Not letting it all hang out, as you state, does not define one as less open or a prude. Sex isn’t something we must wear to show that we’re comfortable. Pride can walk softly and still be called that. My question is what are folk looking for or trying to prove to others and why?
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