Ripe Fruit

by Marcy Sheiner

Introduction

Wise. Seductive. Savvy. Willing. Horny. Mrs. Robinson. Dried up. Wrinkly. Pathetic. Predatory. Grateful. Mrs. Robinson. These are the stereotypes used to describe older women's sexuality. While the stories in Ripe Fruit prove that there's a grain of truth in each one of them, the women in these pages are so wildly divergent that as stereotypes they almost cancel each other out. Remember Rod Stewart's "Maggie," who keeps him out of school with her insatiable libido? She'll rock your world, but she'll devour you whole. Then again, as any long-married man will tell you, she's lost interest in sex altogether. On the other hand, she wants it so bad she's grateful to get it--according to numerous young repairmen. As in every area of female sexuality, the truth is hidden beneath so many layers of social conditioning and media imagery that it's difficult to discern myth from reality. We haven't been seriously exploring women's sexuality from our own viewpoint long enough to know the truth, and I suspect that fifty years from now stories about older women's sexuality will be a lot different than the ones in this collection, simply because we will have evolved further.

In putting together this anthology, the most important thing to me was that the stories be honest, to show how we ourselves see and experience sex in the twentieth century. I'm sick to death of baby boomers claiming that we're so different from our ancestors as to comprise an entirely new species--one that won't age, gracefully or otherwise. You know what I'm talking about--all those books that tell us we're still smart, sexy, strong and gorgeous; that if we eat right, exercise, and do our kegels we'll still be jogging and fucking beyond a hundred; that we need never show, much less feel, God forbid, the ravages of time. While it's true that advances in medicine, technology, and the care and feeding of the human body have made it possible to stay healthier longer, we are still made of flesh and sinew, blood and bone: a body is still a body--and a kiss is still a kiss. Some of the stories in Ripe Fruit express loss, sorrow, or even, as in "This Pussy Retired," complete secession from the sexual arena. This is intentional: I did not want this anthology to be an exercise in cheerleading, vapid celebration or politically correct "empowerment." Women, young and old, deserve to know the whole truth--and the truth is a lot more complex than facile celebrations would reveal. Yet, even with a scrupulous editor purposely seeking out the negative side of aging, the overall tone of this collection ended up being more celebratory than not: older women do love and enjoy sex, often more than they did in their youth. One of the reasons for this is that we're no longer shy about telling our partners what we like in bed. The women in "Trooper" and "Lady Luck" have no trouble showing and telling their partners--who are much younger than they, and pick-ups to boot-- exactly how to give them satisfaction. In "Looking is Listening--and Shaving," the narrator confesses to a lover, on their very first night together, her fetish. Yes, she's a little bit embarrassed--but she doesn't give the embarrassment much attention or power. The audacious Madelon of "Exorbitant Pleasures" has no compunctions about creating intrigue to spice up her sex life. In "Riding the Face Train" an old broad not only sits on a younger woman's face at a sex party, but brazenly returns for seconds. No apologies. No coy hints or awkward giggles. By the time she's put in five decades, the lady not only knows what turns her on, but she feels fully entitled to get it.

Another thing about we crones: we're not so hung up on "sexual identity." I remember the youthful confusion and obsession with labels: lesbian, heterosexual, or, scariest of all, bisexual. Well, if this book is any indication, by the time we turn fifty we've gotten past this red herring and see it for what it is-- just another barrier to pleasure. "A Wardrobe of Souls" examines this issue head on. The women in "Wild Roses" and "Buzzed" put it aside altogether to fuck whoever they damn well please. Again, no apologies. Short shrift is made of the partner's gender, or any political ramifications of the shape of their genitals.

Not so, alas, with body image, which continues to plague us. If we had problems liking our bodies when they were young and firm, what are we to do about sagging breasts, stretch marks, unwanted hair and moles? The aging process is so cruel: just when we're beginning to learn self-acceptance our bodies challenge us to extend the concept beyond what is reasonable. Still, we don't let these feelings interfere with our pleasure. One woman hung up about her aging body discovers "The Truth" by jumping past her fears with two men who find her luscious, droopy tits and all.

Another painful aspect of the aging process: we realize that we took our youth for granted. ("Youth is wasted on the young.") The narrator in "Addressing the Intern Situation" puts it most elegantly: "Every time I flipped my braids over my shoulders, every time a drop of sweat came off me, men wanted to flock to drink it up. I had no idea. I thought I was just given this power and that it would last forever."

All the so-called wisdom we acquire from living past fifty inevitably causes some regrets. In "Send in the Clowns" one woman faces a lifetime of mistaken choices. In "The Art of Losing," another sees the losses of time. And many stories, far too many to publish, deal with the ultimate loss: death. Only a couple of the stories in this collection--"Play mysty for me," and "Wild Roses"--deal directly with death; but I received ten times that many submissions starring the Grim Reaper. When pages wet with tears began arriving, , I, who'd worried about being superficial, was rudely thrust into a morass of grief. But of course, I suddenly realized --what did I expect to find in this territory? As a character in the movie "Funny Girl" says, "That's life for you--someone's always dying."

The greatest bonus that emerged from this theme, and the biggest surprise, was the depth of the characters who inhabit the stories. In all the erotic anthologies that I've edited, never have I come across such a vividly drawn group of fascinating and memorable women. When called upon to develop older female characters, writers created intensely interesting people. Because they live their lives and take their pleasure without apology or compromise, these women are characters with a capital C.

There's Nola, the cowgirl in "Every Baby Finds Her Legs," who turns down champagne for beer and travels in a male world with graceful self-possession. There's Ordella in "Cotton Gloves," a proper grandmother by day, a red hot momma by night. There's the "fecund" Annie of "Daffodils," the take-charge big sister in "A Dowager's Hump," the friends till-death-do-us-part of "Tell Me Everything." I've lived with these characters for months now, and I'm not likely to forget them any time soon, if ever.

So allow me to introduce you to a group of extremely juicy women. May they give readers, young and old alike, hope for a fecund and self-possessed sex life well into a ripe old age.