GRAND Magazine - March 2009 - (Page 34)

looking grand Sexy at sixty By Al MArtinez Happy is the man who sleeps next to a grandmother W “do men lose their sexual attractiveness when they become grandfathers?” e were in Bed Asleep when the telephone rang. 34 GRAND MARCH 2009 dreamstime.com My wife, Cinelli, answered, listened for a moment, and as her face brightened she threw her arms into the air and shouted, “I’m a grandmother!” I’ll never forget the moment, not just because it was the birth of our first grandchild, a boy named Travis, but because it was followed by great sex. Afterward, I said to myself, “Not bad for a granny.” Which leads me to a question posed by the editor of this ’zine: Do men consider women less appealing when they become grandmothers? Or, translated into the editor’s syntax, “Do women move from that sexy 40-ish empty nester to a suddenly Lumpenfrau mit Kindern?” Well, as I have indicated, not to me. In fact, I began hoping for more grandchildren to be born at night, and I’m happy to report that four more subsequently came along and it was just, well, grand. There’s nothing like tradition to keep a marriage solid. I asked four of my male friends as subtly as I could whether their wives held less appeal for them when they became grandmothers. Three of them quickly replied, “Of course not,” and one added, “Nonsense.” If at least half of boomer grands are women worrying about their continued sexual desirability, the other half are men wondering whether they should be taking Viagra in order to keep their wives from becoming cougars, a vaguely threatening term that refers to older women seeking younger men, as evidenced by the response from the fourth friend I surveyed. A neighbor, and not yet a grandfather, he answered the question by asking a question, a characteristic of former California governor Jerry Brown when he was in his Aristotelian phase. The neighbor said, “Do men lose their sexual attractiveness when they become grandfathers?” He was the one who introduced the topic of cougars, afraid that when he became a grandfather his wife might start prowling the kinds of Sunset Boulevard clubs frequented by cougar bait. He’d started using Viagra, just in case. “Is ED a problem with you?” I asked. Men are inclined to pose those kinds of questions up front. He said no, it was simply a precaution. A few months later, we were awakened one night by what sounded like erotic howls of coyotes echoing through the canyon. We listened, realized the noise was coming from the house next door, and recognized almost instantly the source: Our neighbors had become grandparents. “I’m so happy for them,” Cinelli said. She turned toward me, eyes aglow. We shared their joy, and then I was happy, too. G

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of GRAND Magazine - March 2009

GRAND Magazine - March 2009 GRAND View Contents GRAND Central Isn't it GRAND? The Hippest Grand of All? Saying Goodbye Necessities, Not The Perils of the Purse Take Care Sexy at Sixty 50 ‘Hidden Treasure’ State Parks Resources GRAND Finale

GRAND Magazine - March 2009

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