Burn After Reading

So here I am, holed up in this funky little hotel in Greensburg, Pennsylvania, right outside of Pittsburgh. I'm here to meet my new lover, or paramour as he likes to be called. M lives in Pittsburgh; I'm in State College. He came to see me last weekend, this weekend I'm here to see him. Because we're both caregivers, living with our parents, if we want to fuck, we need to get a hotel room. That's okay - I think that excites us both. 

The place I picked to meet is perfect. Once respectable, maybe even upscale, this inn has grown weary around the edges - the carpet a bit stained, the walls marred here and there by past visitors, careless with their bags, hurrying on their way to somewhere else. It's like a faded celebrity. Not quite sad, but no longer vibrant, vital. I love it.

Because the hotel doesn't entice prospective guests the way it once did, the rooms are cheap and I was able to book us a suite. It's like the public spaces, charming and frayed and maybe a little mysterious, too. The wood of the dining room table has been worn to white in spots, but there's a massive whirlpool tub backed by mirrors in the bathroom and a working gas fireplace I'm sitting in front of right now. The heater is waging a losing battle against the chill of the rooms, probably thanks to the big arched windows overlooking the highway that I believe M plans to fuck me against at some point over the next two days.

M. He's exactly what I need now, as if he were dropped out of heaven by the dating gods. Young, at least much younger than I am, taller than me by half a foot (a rarity for a woman 5'9") and spectacularly hung - enough so that he hurt me our first time together, a little. I actually saw my gynecologist today to make sure everything is in working order. She told me that I'm in good shape, red and plump and juicy with no signs of vaginal atrophy, a terrible affliction which hits more than 60 percent of women in postmenopause and can cause dryness, painful sex and all kinds of other evil bullshit like incontinence and clitoral shrinkage. I plan to absolutely not ever have vaginal atrophy. The best defense against it, by the way, is lots and lots of sex. 

Which is actually what I need in order to stretch everything out and end my newfound pseudo-virginity, according to my doc. Lots and lots of sex.  M is happy with this prescription and I am, too. We both are of a mind to push each other's limits sexually; there's much we can teach each other and learn together, too. I told him this time to leave deeper bruises with his mouth, purple, black. He agreed. I feel set free, and I guess I have been - my ex kept me caged in more ways than one. I don't know what exactly I like yet or how much of it I want. But to be able to discover what pleases me, safely, with someone I very much enjoy, who arouses me with merely the sound of his voice on the phone - I know how lucky I am.

My life feels absolutely new. I came off of Aconcagua, it turns out, with exactly what I needed. Somehow the mountain taught me that don't need to ever be anyone other that who I am. I will never again apologize for being too boisterous, too sexy, too needy, too loud, too angry, too flashy, too prideful, too adventurous, too strong, too weak, too emotional. I'm 51 years old. I've got red curls and long legs and a big mouth. I laugh loud, I love sex. There isn't a country I wouldn't visit. I want to climb mountains. Still. I'm writing a book and I'll sell my soul to make it great. 

I will not ever, ever seek, or find comfort or strength in invisibility. That's a big thing now - older women, in their 60s, maybe even my age? - embracing how little they appeal, or matter, or are simply seen in every way, but especially sexually. Frances McDormand talked about it positively in a New York Times interview, which disappointed me. With age comes a fuck-it-all freedom in which I revel, but it is the freedom of someone who has finally, after a lifetime of pain, learned to love herself. Or at least like herself. I will be loud and proud, wearing short skirts and shiny lips for as long as I wish, which will probably be forever. As a sometime lover and longtime friend recently told me, "Jill, you'll be talking about orgasms when you're 90."

Accepting invisibility of any type in this fucked-up patriarchal society feels like capitulation, at least to me. But then I've always seen all the world as a stage. And if we're merely actors, we can be anyone we want. Why not be women in our 40s, 50s, 60s and beyond, who teach the world that sexuality doesn't end with fertility, or firm breasts or even with the onset of the dreaded vaginal atrophy - which, if this weren't a patriarchy, we'd all know a lot more about. (Like, for example, that it can be reversed with estrogen cream or pills.)

I spent a year disconnected from my sexuality while I tried to believe I was a person worthy of love and lust and success and satisfaction and the other good things life can bring. I don't know if anyone looked at me twice in all that time. Since coming back from Argentina more happy than I've been in years, since beginning to date M, I see men give me appraising glances all the time, which I return with a grin. The only invisibility I want to know about is Wonder Woman's plane.