I can’t help myself.
Considering that my novel, THE ROCKY ORCHARD, released just three weeks ago, of course I should be devoting all of my spare time — when I’m not working at my full-time therapy practice during immensely difficult times for everyone — to getting the word out about my new book. Marketing, in other words.
But the world is upside down, and all of us are impacted. For me, that has brought the urgent necessity to write something new. It brings me a much-needed sense of a future, a time after Covid-19, whenever that may be and whatever that may look like.
So, for the future, please have a look at this section from my next novel. Have a laugh. And do NOT send me notes of kind sympathy. This is F-I-C-T-I-O-N.
SENESCENT SEX
It works differently with old bodies. Aches and pains and injuries of all variety must be accommodated, those of the body and other kinds as well. Gino’s body, my body – they are the cases that contain our history and allow us to tote it along from place to place.
Locations that once were lithe and yielding and moist have dried up like old bones. Locations that once were solid and sturdy and persuasive have grown loose and lazy, laying about as if they have earned a life of leisure. Favorite stances of bygone days have demanded to be put away in mothballs. Poses that brought great gasping breathless afternoons have been trotted out and tried, but have proven impossible with the accumulated array of surgery scars, adhesions, prosthetic joints.
It works differently with old bodies. Perhaps the memories of seamless lovemaking where two bodies move agilely and organically in the creation of call-and-response melting melding will remain in the treasure box of time. Now, there are fits and starts. Continual adjustments for a flair of pain here, an ache or cramp there. Things slide out that are meant to remain inside.
In other words, I can no longer avoid a loud, prolonged, symphonic fart from escaping at the moment that, that, that I begin to have a really good time. I suppose if I were a more dignified person I would hold back and thus…hold back. Gino would be devastated, however, as he thinks my farts – at such a time – are purely hilarious. He considers this the most intimate thing any partner has ever shared with him. And, as this is a recent occurrence for me, it is a part of me that I have never shared with another before him.
On the rare occasions when the passage of voluminous gas does not accompany my…having a really good time, Gino is woefully disappointed. Discouraged and self-blaming. “Was it something I did?” Gino will ask. “Did you enjoy yourself?”
I think to myself: well, isn’t this an extremely odd turn of events? Women have been reassuring men since the beginning of time that everything is all right even when they don’t quite…get to the finish line. But, what about when they do get to the finish line, but don’t put the final exclamation point on the fact with the fart accompaniment? I would think the cacophony of other noises that I make would be reassurance enough, but Gino is inconsolable without the final coupe de grace that in any other context would be utterly graceless.
