By Peter Ehrlich
I want to talk about my newest, ongoing, “driving me forward” sexual fantasy. This twisted new fantasy is the new fuel that has launched me to join yet another dating site and contact virtually every single woman between the ages of 42 and 52. I can go to any dating site now and know the bio of most Toronto women right down to their astrological sign. That’s how passionate I feel about doing whatever needs to be done to live out this perverted dream.
Are you curious to know what the fantasy is?
I thought so, so with no further ado, here it is: A good woman, lying beside me in bed, in flannel pajamas, toes touching, heads propped up - reading together in silence.
(Ah yes, to be comfortable in your silence together. There is no better barometer for your relationship. The wonderful, kind and insightful Michael Kaufman once told me that - www.michaelkaufman.com.)
Nothing these days is turning me on more than that image. I don’t “take care of myself” to the vision of the image, rather, I may let out a sigh, exhaled under the cool abyss of my blankets. After the sigh, I turn on my side to embrace the only thing I can embrace - my pillow.
Sick eh? I’m a young baby-boomer. My sexual formative years happened during the golden age, a time before HIV, when every girl and they were just girls back then, was on the pill. Evolutionarily speaking, that time came and went in the blink of an eye. But I was in smack in the middle of it, acting out my fantasies like I was a young Caligula, but with a good heart. Back then, my penis made almost all of my life-decisions for me. I’m still playing catch-up.
What happened? I got older. I did. Two of The Beatles have long since passed and there’s no need for another notch on my bed.
A long time ago, I watched lonely, divorced, isolated detective Al Pacino pull up beside a hooker and ask her to get in. She then asked him what he had in mind. “I just want you to sleep with me”, and he handed her one hundred dollars. She was dumbfounded of course, but CUT TO: the hooker awake, spooning Al, who was fast asleep in a fetal position.
I remember what did Commodus told Lucilla in Gladiator when he was watching her son sleep; “He sleeps well, because he knows he is loved”. I never forgot that moment. And so, Al Pacino could finally sleep well. It mattered not that it was a hooker, all women, and I mean all women have a serious nurturing side that begs to be appreciated.
I’m in the mood to sleep well too now. I didn’t care back then. I do now.
My son Noah, nineteen, not only left the nest, but he’s trekking around in Chile and Costa Rica with his girlfriend. The bedroom I built for him stares back to me in mocking silence. His only presence is manifested by the maps of Chile on the wall so I can follow his wanderings from 5,000 miles away.
I never understood why the elderly fed pigeons. I do now.
I never understood the notion that as you got older, “companionship” becomes more important. I do now. It’s the stuff that we who have trod so many miles deserve and require to be happy.
I can go no further with this column without puffing out my chest to remind you, and myself, that when the primal calls for it, this Satyr is still enthusiastic about answering the siren call, to gallop on to fulfill said equestrian duty. But my “performance menu” for an evening’s festivities and frolicking must now include “comfortable in silence” moments and that’s new.
There was a time in my single fatherhood where I could revel in my celibacy. That era is over with now.
Now it’s time to revel and live out my new bedtime fantasy - lying in bed with a “partner”, in flannel pajamas, toes touching, heads propped up, reading a good book, comfortable in our silence.
I feel so human today.
