It Happened To Me: I Dated A Guy Who Used The Little Blue Pills Without Telling Me. FYI, Our Combined Age Was 152.

Plus: Photo Evidence of Jane Caught In The Unscrupulous Act

Ok, Monday!

So, overall, a fun and lovely Pride Weekend. The only two inappropriate things I did that come to mind were fairly innocuous:

I scaled the barricades after the march ended so that I could run across Seventh Avenue down by Christopher and then got manhandled by a cop (like a loose hug-style embrace from behind while he moved me off to the side of the street). But I made it across first and he hustled me onto the side of the avenue I wanted to be on, so triumph on that. I’m sorry to everyone who is offended or upset that I entitledly broke that rule, which I’m sure is in place for all of our benefit. I also have snuck to the front of the line at amusement parks. It’s a character defect. Should I work on that one? I can!

My second act of impropriety and obnoxiousness these past two days was carving my daughter’s initials into a newly poured sidewalk. This is the only time in my life that something I have carved into concrete has not gotten repaved over before it set, and it's so exciting to walk past it and see it still there!

See?

Recent Work

It's strange how comfortable I am in the role of "What is that crazy lady doing?” My friends the other weekend had a super fun brunch gathering and as I was leaving, I climbed up onto the wall next-door to look over it and see what this red plastic thing was that a sweet 4-year-old had pointed out from the window. We had been conversing and speculating about whether the object was a toy and I wanted to report back! The host sent me this picture later, taken by another guest, of me in my dress, hoisted up onto the ledge. As one does.

Me leaving brunch

Relate to me or berate me in the comments. It’s all great. And enjoy today’s highlighted offering from our one and only Judith. Thanks a lot for being here!

-Jane

By Judith Hannah Weiss

I lost my life nineteen years ago, but I didn’t notice for a few months. Then someone in scrubs said I’d been hit by a drunk with a truck. The good news was I kept breathing. The bad news was brain damage. Which brings us to sex. The brain was the real sex organ, at least for me, and mine was gone.

Three years post-truck, I met a man called John. I thought we met at a Christmas party, but John says there were only six people there, and it was not a party. Then I met him again at a wedding. I noticed a handsome man with broad shoulders, long legs, blond hair and beard, bright blue eyes and a butt designed for jeans. Tight jeans. Which he was wearing with a sport jacket and cowboy boots.

Twelve years of semi-dating ensued. If we had remained together, our combined age now would be 152. John was an expert at reduction, deduction, redaction, and at discerning what shouldn’t be asked -- with top clearance in stuff that never happened and/or can’t be discussed. In fact, he taught Escape and Evasion in the Navy and was really good at it. Post-Navy, John specialized in fine antiques, chopping timber, restoring wooden boats, resurrecting antique homes, “fixing” grits, flipping omelets, quoting Jung, and mowing hay.

Sometimes John said what he meant, but he seemed to prefer avoiding and escaping anyone with a question or two. That would be me. One of the things he never disclosed was that he was also semi-dating other ladies. Things fell into cracks where he wanted them to stay. If there was an elephant in the room, there wasn’t. It fell into a crack, too.

And then there was Martin. Martin was a feline who’d been dead for years when John and I met. Despite Martin’s demise, when John wished to eject or deflect, he would engineer a speedy exit by saying that Martin needed some cream. Cream, not milk, for a cat who had died. But I digress. Sometimes John pulled me toward him. A few moments near his chest or a short time on his lap, followed by a moment in bed. This was preceded, I learned years later, by John ingesting not one, but two or three little blue pills. My first “introduction” to Viagra consisted of no introduction at all.

This is John. We dated on and off from 2015-2023.

A few years back, you couldn’t “learn to meditate like a monk in two minutes” by clicking. You couldn’t click at all. John and I clicked, then didn’t click; clicked, then didn’t click again. Evidently, there were things I didn’t know and names I’d hadn’t heard. Like Freda, Lynn, Joanne, plus Cathy, his not-so ex-wife.

By the way, I was a nun for years before John and again after. Nora Ephron wrote that in her sex fantasy, no one ever loved her for her mind. I get it. But here’s something I hate to admit. I don’t know if any man ever loved me for my body or my mind. That’s what I really wanted, of course. To love and be loved.

Not long ago, I began hearing voices. Well, metaphorical voices. Here’s what they said:

1. This love thing is not my fault. Or, rather, not all my fault.

2. It is my responsibility.

Then I started getting old. And kept doing it, which way beats the alternative. Today I’m sitting at a screen and must choose between clicking the woman who discovered 14 years late that she wore the wrong wedding dress or the woman who told her mate, Just Kiss Me and Do the Laundry. In other news, there’s how to bring back wooly mammoths, how to bring down a drone, what to do if your boss is an app, and what humans could learn from bananas.

In my first life, I was a freelance writer. I knew what to put first, what to put last. How to fly to Alpha Centauri and look great in jeans while launching the best-ever start-up, basting the best-ever turkey, and hosting the best-ever birthday bash. Also the truth about “normal sex,” pesticides, BPA, bug spray and frozen yogurt, which might be -- don’t mix them, perhaps.

When I was young, women weren’t doctors or lawyers or Senators or candidates for president. If they ran for office, it was for the PTA. They weren’t supposed to get angry. That was unladylike. They weren’t supposed to ask much or demand anything. We also didn’t get pregnant. We were expecting. We didn’t get our periods. We didn’t get breast cancer. We couldn’t say words like “breast.” We got female problems, but also couldn’t say that.

Sometimes I meet a few friends for lunch. We may have had clout. We may have had bouts of doubt or gout or made a few poor choices in implants or lip shades or love. One friend likes to talk about how his wife left with the dog and he misses the dog. Another friend likes to talk about how her husband left with the dog and she misses her dog, too. Then they began dating and now share a dog.

Another friend talked about trees. The love of her life was lean and muscled from cutting wood at their cabin. She says he looked great in jeans, then winks and says he looked great without them, too. Here’s what I learned about dating. First, you need to spot somebody you’d like to flirt with. A man who may -- just may -- possess tenderness and strength. Then you need to ask yourself if you have spinach in your teeth.

A few years post-John, I met a potential beau. He bragged about his prowess in bed, which likely didn’t exist, and wanted to show off what blue pills could do for him. As soon as possible. But I may have said something like, “Why not try the one that’s ready when you are? I mean, when I am.” I knew that suggestion would cause him to find someone else. Perhaps he’d try Cialis with someone named Alice, as in “See Alice,” not me.

As women age, a man’s drug-assisted and more frequent hard-ons, combined with our reduced levels of estrogen, may cause sex to hurt. While men can perhaps act and feel like they’re twenty again, women can’t. Which is why I like the ads for Cialis. It refers to women being ready, too. What a concept. It also seems to imply that women should be aware and in favor when men choose to pop pills.

FYI, some women report feeling that ED drugs lead to decreased foreplay (rarely a good thing), increased focus on penetrative sex, and pressure to engage in unwanted sex when men took Viagra without first discussing with them. This likely had no impact on sales as Viagra had the fastest, biggest sales growth following its launch of any prescription product ever, reaching sales in 2008 of close to $2 billion. TIME magazine's cover story, "The Potency Pill" quoted Penthouse publisher Bob Guccione as saying he believed Viagra will "free the American male libido" from “the emasculating doings of feminists.” Feminists were not amused.

The Washington Post reported that the CIA was using Viagra to gain friends in Afghanistan. While the CIA had a long history of buying information with cash, the growing Taliban insurgency had prompted the use of a novel incentives they often preferred to cash which were —you guessed it— little blue pills. Within years of its introduction, Viagra wasn’t just for seniors, but was soaring still higher in sales to men aged 20 to 99. Stiff happens. I mean shift. A new product arrived. It was called Levitra, which could bring to mind the word levitate, as in get it up.

This is John once again. Mr. Scared D. Pants not pictured.

Essentially, ED drugs work like this: What gives a man an erection is blood flow to the penis. The vessels dilate, and blood flows in. There is an enzyme that counteracts the dilation. ED drugs inhibit that enzyme, allowing dilation to occur more easily and last longer. They can also diminish a man's refractory time, meaning that after orgasm he can more quickly get an erection again. While that may sound great to many men -- and can lead to 2+ hours of hardness or more -- women might prefer sex for 30 minutes, including foreplay, followed by a bath or a book.

Which brings me to Mr. Scared D. Pants. He was even less my type than other men I’d met. His pants were too big, his shirts were too short, and he had endured 45 years of enduring yet clinging to a woman with whom he had sex every Sunday at 2. Which he chose to tell me. Evidently, he hadn’t shared that with six successive shrinks. I’m not making this up. Not even the six shrinks part. In 2022, the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory sustained a nuclear fusion reaction for one-billionth of a second. Which is about as long as I can sustain a conversation with Mr. Scared D. Pants. We have never dated at all.

Did you ever hear that line, you’re not getting older, you’re getting smarter. What a crock. I’m too old to think certain things, do other things, NOT do still other things, wear certain things or NOT wear them. Too old to say certain things, too. What if my ears give out before I do? What if my eyes give out before my ears? What if my feet give out first? What if my bra becomes 32 Long? Why do we lose fat under our feet where we need it, but gain fat on our thighs where we don’t? That’s reverse engineering. Your feet hurt like hell, and your pants don’t fit.

My friends are also getting old. We’ve had adventures, romances, disasters, sometimes all at once. we’ve embarked on journeys we loved, and journeys we may have regretted. We’ve been too cool, not cool at all, not in control, too controlling. We have discerned little or nothing. We have concerned someone or no one. We have at times been catastrophes.

We don't get to keep this body forever, no matter how much we love it and no matter how strong we get and no matter how good it looks or feels. We don’t have the impermanence and infinite choice baked into online dating. Now if you can figure out how to swipe left or right, you can break up and move on before you even meet. I guess that saves time, though I haven’t tried it and doubt I will.

In my own personal life, I’ve never seen a sex toy and could write a sex book that would fill a paragraph. In fact, I’ve engaged in long stretches of abstinence. Either that, or my amnesia is kicking up. Fyi, now, when you die, you can be packed in your partner’s sex toy, if you have a partner and s/he has a sex toy, and you choose cremation, and keel over first.

Women tell stories of love the way men may describe skeet shooting or fly fishing. I imagine a more perfect world. People have the food they need, the money they need, plus the faith, love and strength they need. Plus clean water and a roof over their head. Nothing stalls, leaks, cracks, creaks, squeaks, or falls apart. Neither do humans like me. I return to the internet where I learn how to have sex and be funny, but not at the same time. I still do not have a partner, and likely, won’t have a partner, but am still in love with life.