Out From Under

A friend was taking a psych. course a couple of years ago. He was the sole almost-forty-something in a class of 19- and 20-year-olds. The prof. casually mentioned that their grandparents probably quite enjoyed sex. The response, from the two hundred or so kids in that room?

“Eeeeew!”

You know, sex is everywhere in America. Sex sells cars and jeans, beer and furniture. Viagra commercials let us know that even when you’re “mature”, you can still perform like a young stud. We even feel a little smug, politically-correct pride, we do, that we’re broad-minded enough to accept these older folks’ right to sex. Even if they’re not young and hott any more. Older, that is. Attractive specimens of healthy middle age have sex. We can manage to wrap our heads around that. Just.

But old people and sex? Truly aged, not just “not young”?

It makes us really, really squeamish. Dentures in the glass, wrinkles and age spots are clear signals that a person’s sexual life is over. O.V.E.R, over. Because really, we say, we smooth, taut, wrinkle-free youngsters, that’s just… I mean, my grandparents? That’s just … gross!

Sadly, this attitude doesn’t end when the kid grows up gets a little older. In nursing homes across the land, aged adults are hitching up for a little adult play. And some of their kids don’t like it. They are trying to put a stop to it. They are insisting that staff keep lovers apart. They don’t care that this will cause their parent anguish. They can’t allow that at a time of life when many other pleasures have had to be given up, sex might be one of the few still available. Hell, finding an able and willing partner is not a given at that age; if they’ve managed it, that’s an accomplishment! No, their children haven’t that much care and compassion. Their (possibly senile) parent in love? They are just grossed right out, and it has to stop!

Okay, so no one really wants to see their parents having sex. (This, by the way, is a healthy response. The “incest taboo”, which is what is what churns your stomach here, also prevents you from wanting sex with close family members, thus preventing biologically detrimental inbreeding. No babies with three heads in our family, thanks!) So. Mom and dad in the sack? You don’t even want to envision it. Ick.

But we all know our parental sex happens. We know they’ve done it — you’re the evidence of that — and, assuming they’re still together, we can safely assume they’re still doing it. And our response, as children of the union?

We don’t think about it.

Fair enough.

So why is it that when the parents are frail enough to need supervision and care, some adult kids are not only willing to think about mom or dad’s sex life, they also think they get veto power over it?

We all know about The Talk, the conversation when mom and dad told you about sex for the first time. I think mom and dad need to start drafting The Talk, v2. The one that a person has with his/her grown children. The one where the parent says “No matter how old I get, no matter how wrinkly and sexually unappealing you may find me at my age, I am, and always will be, a sexual being, and my sex life is NONE OF YOUR DAMNED BUSINESS.”

You don’t like it? Don’t look. And while you’re not looking, close the bedroom door, would ya, take your juvenile squeamishness elsewhere, and give these people their privacy.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 4th, 2008 at 6:16 am and is filed under Ilona's Take, the change it is a-comin'. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.