I found my first grey hair about a year ago. I always wondered where I would be when the inevitable happened. Turns out it was in the bathroom of my office. I felt betrayed by the mirror. This mirror is one of those perfect mirrors that sits under the perfect light, at the perfect angle, providing the perfect selfie. And even though you have to maintain a level of preparedness in case anyone comes in or out, it’s always worth it.
I loved the way I look in this mirror. Rarely could I just go right back to my desk after seeing my reflection. I was too turned on. I’d have to sulk around the office in search of someone to flirt with (which was easy since I always had a minimum of 3 crushes around me). The mirror gave me a source of power. Every day it whispered, “You’re perfect, baby.”
Until that day.
When my mirror revealed to me that my body was out of my control and indeed aging, I wondered if there would be a time when my reflection turned me off instead of on. A time when my sex drive...stopped.
The idea of losing my sex drive scares me more than an entire head of grey hairs. From my late twenties until now, my comedy, my writing, how I walk has been designed around my desire. I’m naturally aroused, naturally wet, and very accustomed to that being me. Like the grey hair, I wonder, Where will I be when that goes away? Who will I be?
The past year living in lockdown, quarantined, social distancing—however you choose to describe it—have felt somewhat like a preview of the above scenario, a weird game I wasn’t quite prepared to play. I’m confronting this fear, or at least a version of it, faster than I thought. No, my sex drive may not be gone, but my sex life as I knew it is.
It’s a hard pill to swallow. Ah, swallowing! I’ve done a lot work on my sex drive and sex life these past few years. Many of us did! The amount of books and articles and entertainment that have finally started talking about personal pleasure more honestly are way easier to find. Sites like omgyes.com even offer a ‘toolbox’ of research that “take[s] a clear-headed look at the many nuances of women’s sexual pleasure.” The taboo of women’s pleasure is shifting in a forward and positive direction. But what happens when the direction goes the opposite way, or stops altogether?
I don’t know much about menopause and, besides Grace and Frankie, I don’t know many women experiencing it. The change continues to be shrouded in mystery and scares me. Dry. Hot flashes out of nowhere. Not easily aroused. I want to fuck when I’m sick. When I’m bleeding. When I’m sad. When I’m fucking. Ugh. Can I start Hormone Replacement Therapy now? I wonder what I’ll think of myself but I also wonder what the world will think of me.
Around the same time I found my grey hair, I went to a ‘town hall’ about sex. It was one of those town halls where there were too many pillows and not enough chairs. I was uncomfortable sitting cross-legged on the floor. My discomfort grew when an older male in the crowd who went by ‘Coach’, started talking about his wife. They had been married for 40 years and now in their 60s, he was challenged by his wife’s changing, menopausal body. I braced myself for his disappointment, his disgust with her now overheated body. “Asshole!” I thought as he spoke.
But instead of belittling his wife and their relationship, Coach shared the secret to their still satisfying sex life: slowing down.
So often to me, slowing down feels like I’m giving up or not doing enough. I get FOMO, I get sad, I get antsy, I get disappointed in myself. But people are forced to slow down all the time. And not always due to age. Disability, injury, even a pregnancy, disrupt sex lives. What can I learn about how people work around those roadblocks? And what can I, the actual asshole, be grateful for? Perhaps Coach’s advice of slowing down was the something to consider now. Instead of bracing for a screeching halt, I could anticipate the cars in front of me. Afterall, I didn’t look in the mirror and find a full head of grey. I only found one.
In Work Clean, Dan Charnas speaks of the pace chefs move for a calm mind, body and better food. When we are tempted by procrastination or resistance, he recommends not disengaging completely, but slowing down to speed up. Instead of freaking out and shutting down, one can be mindful of each action. If slowing down can lead to better food, then can it also lead to a better appreciation of myself?
Since I’ve stopped going to in-person dance classes, I’ve made an attempt to dance on my own every week. And even though I’m dancing alone now, I still look forward to the parts in the songs where the music becomes fast, loud and chaotic. I gyrate to the point of ridiculousness, drool from pleasure, feel electric. In the moment, I never want to give it up, yet, inevitably, I always do. Because what comes after the chaos is the physical and mental memory of it coursing through my body. In her book Maps to Ecstasy, Gabrielle Roth, founder of the 5Rhythms movement I will hopefully one day participate in again, recognizes this moment as “Pure energy, constant dance, totally connected to the life force that vibrates through you.” From an onlooker I’m standing still. Inside I’m buzzing.
I haven’t completely given up on ‘fast’ but I am finding more ways to embrace slow. Slow in all her forms. Slower steps and bites, yes, but also slowing down what were once my bursts of arousal. When I break down what turns me on into smaller parts, I can start to see those parts everywhere in life, and they’re not always sexual. So, like a charging battery, I have started to collect them. Because when the more obvious and physical become too hard, or even impossible, I’ll have them (and my greys) keeping me buzzing.