I really enjoyed reading Kiss Tomorrow Hello: Notes from the Midlife Underground by 25 Women Over Forty. These essays reflect the thoughts, life events and relationships of 25 excellent women writers reflecting on age, health, love, sex, and change.

The writers range in age from 40 to much older, and I found their experiences and perspectives fascinating. For example, Joyce Maynard, at 51, discusses what she discovered from her foray into Internet dating ("maybe an amazing relationship is something you painstakingly build, not something that hits you like a lightning bolt... viewing the process as a search more like a road trip to parts unknown."). Karen Karbo discloses details about her relationship with a man 16 years younger ("OWs [Older Women] have learned that guys...like sex, and they like it when their women like it, and that's about it. [Younger women] worry far too much about cellulite. Basically if you're naked and smiling, men are pretty happy.")

The essay that gripped me the hardest was "Tearing Up the Sheets: A Meditation on Middle-Age Sex" by Ellen Sussman. As I read it, I kept running to my husband to read him parts. For example,

My husband and I prefer to make love in the afternoon. In the evening, we're, well, tired. And we like energetic, tear-up-the-sheets kind of sex. So we steal away from our work and spend some time imitating porn stars. Then we take a long middle-age nap.

Boys come quickly. Men do not. Hallelujah.

I fumble with my jeans, pushing them down and off. I scramble to pull his T-shirt over his head—wait, it's caught in his glasses—and the shirt and glasses fall to the floor... He grunts when he turns toward me—an old hip injury—and I cringe when I lean into the cushion—my damn back. And then we've got it right... When he enters me, he fills me. I pull him close, wanting all of him. I give him all of me.

If you're interested in this lively and provocative book, it's available from Amazon here.

– Joan Price is the author of Better Than I Ever Expected: Straight Talk about Sex after Sixty. Visit her website at joanprice.com and her sex and aging blog at betterthanieverexpected.blogspot.com.

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posted at 01:42:23 PM