I was sitting in a room with my daughter and her friends when a Cialis commercial came on showing an older couple clearly thinking about sex. "OK, I don't need to look at that," said one of the 20-somethings. I laughed uproariously, until I realized that those people in the commercial were my age.
Granted, the scene of the woman trying to look cool while dancing at a faux concert is painful, but my guess is her lack of rhythm has nothing to do with her age. The man beside her did nauseate me with his leering look and nodding that said, "Yea, baby, shake it. I'm gonna get lucky tonight because my pill is working right now!"
These are good looking couples with no body fat and athletic ability. I mean, they can cannon ball off of piers into the water and ride off on bikes together. So why do they make me uncomfortable? Is it because they are in their 50s and 60s?
I thought about the wonders of age, and why sex seems to be only for the young. I mean, many people looked at Kim Kardashian's sex tape. But how many would watch a sex tape between Cloris Leachman and her latest love?
There has to be a way around this and maybe, just maybe, I have found my new purpose. Heck, we were the generation that had open sex at Woodstock. We had those mythical baby oil parties that everybody talked about but never really did, right? We can do this.
Just as I start believing in our revolution, an angel sits on my left shoulder accompanied by the inevitable devil on my right, and the battle begins.
Angel: "Hey, you're right. Be gray and be proud."
Devil: "You realize you're the same age as Edith Bunker, right?"
Angel: "Older women are beautiful and sexy. Look at Helen Hayes."
Devil: "Helen Hayes is dead."
Angel: "You are as beautiful as you feel. Most people don't notice age nearly as much as you think they do. Our souls are what matter."
Devil: "If that were true then the Kardashians would not have a reality television hit."
And the battle continues until I finally come to the realization that anybody watching anybody else even getting close to sex is a little uncomfortable. Sex should be a very intimate moment between two people. Who could make money off of pretty people having sex?
Oh yeah, I guess the porn industry figured that one out.
So what do we do with the fact that most people do not want to think about people 50 and older having sex? Do we become more bold about it?
Perhaps we should show them old people porn until they become desensitized. Repeated exposure to violence has worked to desensitize the young, so why couldn't we use the same approach?
Perhaps AARP can start showing half-naked older people on their cover rather than the current pictures of people in retirement looking at their grandkids in that I'm-retired-and-bored-out-of-my-mind-but-I-love-looking-at-my-grandkids way.
Even Cialis could use a little courage in their advertising. Their most famous scene is of a man and woman in separate bathtubs watching the sunset. What kind of sexual set up is that? Not much is going to happen in separate tubs unless they just talk dirty to each other.
So, come on Baby Boomers. Let's take some refresher classes on expressing ourselves physically in public. Let's go to the movies and sit in the back row with other teenagers and make-out. Let's pull up to any local make-out spot and freak the kids out when they look over and see our wrinkled, smiling faces.
Or maybe we could grab each other's asses in public or be really loud at night when the kids are home. They won't know we're actually screaming because we just threw out our back.
There's an endless list of how we could expose the young to our sexuality.
Let's have our own Baby Boomer sexual revolution. Eventually, our kids' gagging reflex will be deactivated and there will be a mature rating on Cialis commercials because Baby Boomers are just too sexy. That's power, my gray-haired friends.