Nancy Jainchill
Images courtesy of Erika Lust
Marlene, a sixtyish divorcée without prior porn-star creds, arrives on the set with an array of hard-earned skills, though one of them isn’t finagling a condom over the soft penis of a stranger. A behind-the-scenes tutorial before the shoot shows her how to use her mouth while sucking hard on the rubber. Produced by sex educator Joan Price and by adult performer Jessica Drake, this particular film ("Guide to Wicked Sex: Senior Sex") features two couples who are ordinary people, not hot porn stars. Marlene and Galen (the man with the soft penis) are meeting for the first time.
The film is to be a hybrid between shame-free, nonjudgmental factual information and graphic visual eroticism, showing the over-sixty set that we’re still sexy no matter what we think or how we feel—or how we look. As Price said, “If we’re sexually empowered we feel differently about ourselves. We move in the world differently. It’s never just some act done on a bed.”
As Marlene and Galen are being prepped by makeup and hair artists, it strikes me how average they look. It hasn’t been easy for the producers to find everyday folks above a certain age—real people who aren’t already erotic professionals. But they’ve found a few volunteers and I’m learning in real time that it’s never too late to get butt naked for the camera.
In this movie, Price and Drake want to use the tricks of their trade to teach seniors how to outsmart bad knees, back problems, dry vaginas, and floppy dicks in order to have a viable sex life. “We’re taught not to like our bodies from the beginning,” Price tells me. “As we get older we find more reasons to dislike them.”
I’ve always wanted to move differently in the world. Then again, as a feminist, I’ve never been able to reconcile the goals of feminism and sexual freedom. Certainly, accepting myself has become more difficult as my body has morphed over the years. Yet, the early porn feminists I’ve been studying teach that the right to pleasure—at any age—is key to gender parity. I’m hoping that seeing it happen right in front of me will be transformative.
Bonnie and Joel, 70 and 69 years old respectively, have been together for a long time. They love sex and they love each other and they are happy to share their love with the world. At this point in their lives, they have a quiet kind of love. They sure don’t look like they’d be the type to offer workshops with a group called Life on the Swing Set, including lessons on squirting, the release of fluid—usually urine—from the vagina during orgasm. They don’t seem like the sort of couple who’d be vacationing at the Desire Resort—clothing optional. Public nudity and sex isn’t new to them, although they’ve never done it professionally. Whereas Bonnie wonders about how many people are going to be focused on her pussy, Joel is concerned about erectile dysfunction. He says that he’s put this opportunity to the “end of life test.” How will he feel if he passes up the chance to have a celluloid sex adventure? Though the prospect is scary, they both agree: “Let’s do it.”
With a tattoo of a scorpion on his left upper arm, long white hair, and a full beard, Joel looks like an aging biker. Defying his appearance, he is soft-spoken, more tender than gruff, and open about how age is impacting him sexually. He doesn’t always ejaculate when he comes and staying hard is difficult. Wearing a floral shirtwaist dress, Bonnie looks like a perky grandma. Yet her black panties are the first I’ve ever seen with a clit slit. Aside from fibromyalgia, she has a bad back which can “compromise”—maybe a better word is “tailor”—what they can do. “He loves watching me with a vibrator,” she says— a sizeable piece of equipment called a Magic Wand that is meant for external use only. Her other favorite toy is an eroscillator, the only sex gadget endorsed by Dr. Ruth. When Joel lubes her up—lube is ever present—and wields the eroscillator, she warns him that the shoot might come to an early climax. Writhing with pleasure, there’s no evidence of her former pre-performance anxiety and she seems oblivious to the audience. Joel switches to the Magic Wand and smiles as Bonnie exclaims, “Right there, oh oh oh FUCK”—and then, “I think that’s enough for now.” After all, the shoot has just begun.
To introduce the next segment, Joan offers a tutorial about penises. If PIV (penis in vagina) sex isn’t working for you, she says to let it go. “You don’t need an erection to feel good. And don’t be goal-oriented. Kind of like practicing mindfulness, settling into the foreplay.”
Bonnie returns to the set after a break. She has changed her lingerie and is wearing thigh-high fishnet hose. Joel has untied his hair and arrives with what—under his clothing—appears to be an erection. He tells the audience that he’s abstained for three days to assure that he’ll be able to perform. Bonnie’s fishnet stockings are the only clothes she keeps on. When she is about to come—when her pussy is juiced-up and ready for the “PIV moment”—Joel puts on a cock ring to facilitate a stronger and longer-lasting erection. This is a show-and-tell moment for the viewer. An instructional opportunity.
Joel and Bonnie laugh a lot and they don’t take themselves too seriously. Their relationship could be a model for many seniors who feel particularly vulnerable about their bodies and their sexuality. Showing off her cropped hair, rolls of flesh, and flabby upper arms, Bonnie is extremely comfortable with herself on camera. Essential for their sexual success, Bonnie and Joel actually talk about their needs and wants, instead of merely relying on pantomime, habit, or silent innuendoes. For Bonnie the transition from spontaneous desire (always ready and wet) to responsive desire (needing more coaxing) is notable but not insurmountable. The soft, tender moments they share have as much of an impact as the more explicit demonstrations. Looking at them and seeing all the same “imperfections” that I see in myself is jarring. To embrace who we are out in the open—as opposed to with the lights out and under the covers—is sexy as hell. That’s my takeaway so far.
“Her pleasure seems limitless, and I lose count of how many orgasms she has. Her squirting makes Galen happy. Marlene makes me wonder about my own limits.”
Marlene and Galen are meeting for the first time on set. Joan Price discovered both of them. Both single, they are very sexually active. For Marlene, solo sex is like a gift to herself. She sets time aside for masturbation—with music, candles, and sex toys. This is her escape from the rest of the world. Her commitment to pleasure is obvious. She is fully at ease with every part of being made “camera ready.” Wearing a short red dress with spaghetti straps, she says she is surprised at how relaxed she feels. She talks about how the interplay of fear and excitement can be arousing. For Marlene, sex was once extremely vanilla. Kink has been a game changer. The challenge is finding men who know how to make her feel good. She has learned how to speak up for herself, how to be clear about what works or what doesn’t. This has been critical to getting what she wants. She says she is even more active and comfortable with her own sexuality now than when she was younger, which makes her a model for showing how desire and desirability don’t have to tank as we age. She says she’s gained confidence from her years of experience.
Galen thinks of himself as a “wild elder” whose mission is to stamp out the shame surrounding sex. He talks about “the depths of eros” that women have shared with him from the dungeon to the bedroom. Though dealing with ED, he focuses on the range of opportunities for pleasure, including bondage, emphasizing the world of possibility that extends beyond PIV sex. When they are asked what they hope that seniors might learn from their film, they say they want others to know that our sexuality is innate and that it is a birthright without an expiration date. They insist that being open and honest about our sexuality exposes us to deepening intimacy and arousal.
Though they’ve each been tested for a range of diseases prior to meeting, Galen uses a dental dam—a square of latex originally designed for dentists—to perform cunnilingus. Holding the dam in place so that it won’t slip off can be tricky. Galen is a pro at keeping the dam secure while delivering pleasure through it. When it’s Marlene’s turn to reciprocate, she is equally dedicated to getting Galen hard.
You’d never know they were strangers until a few hours earlier. How have they pulled off appearing to really care about each other? Marlene’s enthusiasm is contagious. “I’m not going to sit back and not do things,” she says. “I did that for too many years.” When she and Galen return for round two she’s wearing the best getup I’ve ever seen, a black teddy with blue roses that wraps around her neck, black stockings with a lace border, and “fuck me” stilettos. I worry about those stilettos. One unintentional misstep would put Galen in the hospital. Producing a vibrator the size of a small baseball bat, he spanks her with a flogger used as much for teasing as for slapping. Her pleasure seems limitless, and I lose count of how many orgasms she has. Her squirting makes Galen happy. Marlene makes me wonder about my own limits.
These brave couples offer us a window into real life senior sexuality. The nature of the overwhelming waves that carry us to orgasm—almost impossible to put into words—may change as we age, but that doesn’t mean that they ebb. In fact, Marlene’s and Bonnie’s pleasure hardly seems muted. Women may have the advantage here—they don’t need much preparation to be “ready.”
“Don’t wait for the mood to strike,” Price advises. Climaxing may take more time, she says, but usually you’ll get there.
In the next segment, Price and Drake had planned to take us on a journey into solo sexual exploration. However, the talent scheduled to demonstrate this potential for personal fulfillment must’ve had second thoughts about conveying the belief that “solo sex is real sex.” They don’t show up. Is this my big break? I once did a loop porn movie in my twenties that’s always caused me shame and regret. Is this my chance to reverse my failed star turn, rescuing my past self with a new attitude? Solo sex isn’t trivial. Most everyone engages in some kind of autoerotic pleasure.
I’m not asked to fill in. The shoot goes on.
John and Annie. Photo: Adriana Eskenazi
John and Annie are another nonprofessional couple guiding anybody interested into the world of senior porn. In their movie Soul Sex, they talk about how a climax is irrelevant to a truly fulfilling connection. To get their movie made, they approached Erika Lust, a progressive producer of adult entertainment, and showed her their website—a place where they share their own emotional and sexual renaissance with others. She saw the significance of their process and she knew she had to film them, hoping their story would “contribute to normalizing senior sex.” At the time, John was seventy-three and Annie was sixty-nine. Soul Sex went viral, appearing in newspapers, on Snapchat, and in other media outlets. Annie’s nephew, who lives in Thailand, saw clips of the film and alerted her that she’d made it around the world. John and Annie didn’t realize how famous Lust would make them.
The formality of a professional movie set and crew was too much for John’s penis which, Annie said, went into hiding and became a “little cherry.” A soft penis wasn’t a major concern. They looked at the event as “amazingly liberating.”
Sex is a spiritual act for John and Annie, a symbolic attempt to connect with the divine by focusing on the “non-physical part of us.” Yet, how can sex not be physical? A neuroscientist by training, Annie offers a different understanding of what happens during sexual activity. The oxytocin secreted during physical contact keeps you young, Annie explains. It puts collagen in your skin and takes away the wrinkles. On top of that, getting naked is freeing, with or without Erika Lust filming you. “The way we’ve been trained to make love, typically oriented on performance, is ‘stress-inducing,’ ” says Annie. The addiction circuits are triggered so that you need more excitement to get the same pleasure. Sooner or later nothing works. So what’s the solution? Soul Sex. It’s not just a movie: it’s their approach to making love.
In an interview for Spanish television, the host is dumbstruck when John and Annie undress to demonstrate their discoveries, specifically how Annie puts John’s unerect penis inside of her. They call it a “pop-in.” After the program, they receive ninety thousand hits on Instagram. A lot of people have been involved with a limp penis—there are no age restrictions—and going public suggests that you’re not alone and you’re okay. What’s important is connection—slow, easy, and bonding—and understanding the difference between orgasmic pleasure and climax. Orgasmic pleasure can be an ongoing feeling—climax, on the other hand, is an endgame. With John and Annie, there’s no flogging or ropes. There’s no tension. I wonder if some people would find “soul sex” boring. Although, like Annie says, there’s no element of sex that might not become boring eventually.
John and Annie. Photo: Adriana Eskenazi
John, more vocal about his pleasure than Annie, almost seems surprised at how good he feels. When I bring up this imbalance—about how so much of their focus is on John’s “little cherry”—Annie assures me that she’s simply more quiet about her pleasure. Off-screen, the couple makes love every morning and then sometimes again later in the day.
“Having the vagina and the penis together is like magic,” Annie says. “They talk to each other.”
Serious explorations like John and Annie’s into the world of senior eroticism are actually rather rare. More often, age is a fetish. OnlyFans is the most successful of the platforms that feature self-produced content—content that can be individualized to satisfy a particular customer. According to an article in LA Weekly, “some of the hottest OnlyFans models are also the most mature. Specific ages aren’t readily available and admittedly, MILFs—Mothers I’d Like to Fuck—can run the gamut from forty-something onward.
What about more traditional adult movies? While Nina Hartley may be the most well-known woman over sixty out there sucking cock or playing with her pussy, she’s hardly alone. Seniors as actors in films with no other purpose than to be pornographic are becoming increasingly visible. “MILFs”—and “Mom”—are among the ten most popular search terms on major porn sites. Because boys still want their mothers? Or because older women can still be hot?
Stories that showcase older women present them as more assertive sexually and more accomplished in other ways than in films with younger talent, satisfying men who want to submit and satisfying women with power fantasies.
Such scripts often reflect a feminist message in the narrative. For example, Mrs. Claus, a MILF icon, is at the top of the charts at XXXmas time, with porn plots that depict her tired of being left behind while Santa is off sliding down other people’s chimneys. Described by a Toronto-based producer of adult entertainment as “one of the few representations of fat women in fictional media that is positive,” she can be nurturing and safe, but can also provide spankings upon request. Finding her independence through sex, she is an unlikely feminist figure.
At age sixty-seven, the adult actress Erica Lauren is old enough to collect social security. Still, she works. She doesn’t have to: she has an MBA. Beginning her career at forty-nine, she has mainly been cast in MILF/cougar roles. Always smiling, a page of screenshots shows her caressing herself, sucking cock, licking pussy, and in a threesome. Age and Beauty is a series focused on the enduring beauty and sexuality of elder adult cinema talent. Lauren is probably the oldest of the females in this series, which features performers ranging in age from 53 to 65 at the time of filming. Each episode has a storyline that involves a younger man being seduced by someone old enough to be his mother: a former teacher, a friend of his parents from childhood, or a client receiving services through a senior care program. The sex is as explicit as films with a younger cast, with a lot of sucking, some anal activity, and always the grand finale of a climax. Only one of the scenarios did anything for me. Instead, some of what took place made me squirm. Perhaps it is a mirror to my own vulnerability, to the changes which aren’t easy for me to accept. A number of the faces seemed to have had as much work done on them as the boobs, countering the example of self-acceptance.
Magdalene St. Michaels
Magdalene St. Michaels was also forty-nine years old when she entered the world of adult cinema, attending the AVN Expo—the largest pornography convention and trade show in the United States—just for fun with her husband. At the Girlfriends Films booth, the owner told her he was looking for a MILF. After completing an application, she “walked away from that booth reborn.”
Since then, St. Michaels has been busy nonstop, initially doing mostly girl/girl scenarios. At sixty, she starred in The Widow, a four-part production where she plays a professor who returns to teaching after her husband’s death and becomes involved with a student. The story line touches on real life issues more common to seniors: the feeling of becoming old overnight after becoming a widow, and the complications wrought by the age difference between her and the student. “I want to be with you, but you have to let me grow up,” the student says. St. Michaels is convincing. She’s erotic. Her lush body invites touch. She looks real.
After watching Magdalene St. Michaels I went into the bedroom, and did what any cougar would do. Lying across the bed, I took deep breaths, working to relax, focusing on the image of her lying back against the pillows, her thighs open, smiling at me as she fingered her clitoris.
Still from The Widow
It’s possible that becoming sexually empowered—at any age—causes us to inhabit the world differently because we inhabit ourselves differently. Beyond the bed, we move in the world with assurance, with a sense of belonging.
As it turns out, being reborn—particularly for older women—is en vogue. In Good Luck to You, Leo Grande, Emma Thompson plays a retired schoolteacher and widow who hires a sex worker because she’s never had an orgasm. At the end, she faces herself in a full-length mirror naked—a witness to her changes—and modeling self-acceptance. My own body also displays the impact of time. All the same, I still see traces of the young woman whose breasts were always important to her. I think about what this younger version of me did to know her own sexual liberation, including the topless dancing and the porno flick. I’ve finally let go of the shame that went with the societal scorn for sex workers, and the personal shame from dancing naked onstage at the North Beach San Francisco strip club.
Today’s seniors—like me—came of age during the sexual revolution—our revolution. We were intent on liberating ourselves as sexual beings. But we also bought into the premise that women didn’t experience pleasure. We weren’t schooled in how to achieve it and therefore we didn’t expect or demand it. How often did our partner’s pleasure come first? For decades, my sisters and I were at a loss.
Letting go of body-shame is critical to true feminism—and to seniors—who’ve been characteristically dismissed in any real public conversation about sex. Above a certain age we’re supposed to be done with getting off. Now Marlenes, Bonnies, and Annies—and, yes, Emma Thompsons—are accepting their senior bodies and rewriting the narrative, making space for women who aren’t Ericas, Ninas, or Magdalenes. Personal identity and one’s sense of self is under assault as we age. Losing a sense of ourselves as sexual beings makes it worse.
Are we about to see a senior sexual revolution as well as a second feminist revolution? As I embrace the message to stay in touch with touching, these women are role models for me. But not only for me.
Nancy Jainchill
Nancy Jainchill is a practicing psychologist living in upstate NY. Her writing focuses on issues of feminism, sex work, and gender parity. She is working on a book, Butt Naked: Feminist Ecstasy, Pornography and the Politics of Parity, inspired by her long ago, brief foray into stripping and pornography.