Golden Paradise

By Richard Boettger

We’ve grown old in Key West.  My wife Cynthia and I met in advanced middle age, ha-ha, our 60’s, and now in our 70’s we have honestly become just plain OLD.

I had no idea what a pain in the neck getting old would be until it happened, and I would have appreciated a warning.  So I am going to share with the world, most importantly with those in their 60’s who can still do something about it, what you need to do to prepare for your Golden Years in Paradise. For those young enough not to have to worry about it yet, read this as a peek at what life is really like for those darling gray-haired couples you see holding hands in our best restaurants.

By far what’s most important is to take advantage of your youthful good health while you’ve got it.  Why this is print-worthy news is that a normal person in their 60’s thinks they are already a wreck, and they have no idea how much worse it is going to get.  Below are just a few examples of what you need to do while you still can.

Numero Uno is sex.  Yes, the thrills are of course dimmer at 60 than they were in your 30’s, but dammit, the fact is it still exists.  A shameful secret that only some brave soul like myself, a noted over-sharer, can dare to divulge is that the sex doesn’t just get worse in your 70’s, it goes away completely.  Of course, the 10% who use their Viagra to enjoy the even more rare frisky wife (no Lady Viagra invented yet) are the only ones talking about it, but the great majority of us enjoy sex only as a sweet memory.  

To be sure, one can enjoy, as we do, a fortune in kisses and snuggles, getting really better at both.  Also, giving it up completely is actually better than struggling through the last gasps of failing passion.  But the advice is simple: Fuck more while you still can.  At least once a week.  On all special occasions.  Make a hot ceremony of it.  Visualize its being gone-gone-gone, and thank your lucky stars I told you about it in time. (Damn, it was fun!)

Next is being normally physical.  For me it was tennis, for Cynthia it was walking. I had been an excellent player for 40 years, six days/week of singles, and always good enough to play with the best players wherever I lived.  

Then in my late 60’s I pooped out.  Guys I used to beat 6-1 were beating me.  Worse, the top doubles players who always welcomed me no longer cared to have me join their foursome.  So I QUIT.  I had too much physical ego to enjoy my driving forehand getting loopy, no longer being able to crush my overhead over the fence onto Truman Avenue.  I had always said I looked forward to “graduating” from the tough-guy afternoon matches to the geezer-friendly morning group, but instead I went straight from afternoon to—I was going to say “nothing”–but to two hours/day of singing.  Singing had the allure that I kept getting better at it, having not sung until then, an ego-boost in sharp contrast to suffering my daily decline on the courts.

This was so dumb.  Guys my age have a lot of fun not only in the morning group, but in the lively Pickle Ball sport newly invented and brought to Higgs Beach just in time for the rising gerontocracy to add ten years to their time on the asphalt.  Also, think of my poor Cynthia.  She married an athlete, continuing the vision of normal maleness since her jock Dad and brothers, but got stuck with a mere vocalist, and she prefers string quartets to boot.

Speaking of Cynthia, she had been a storm-trooper walker since she marched through the canyons of Manhattan’s financial district in her 20’s.  In her 60’s she had the opportunity to walk daily with one of her coolest Key West lady friends, but got so into pure retirement that she chose instead to advance straight to all-day sessions of the New York Times and the classical music station on her beloved white couch.  Then she needed back surgery.  It successfully stopped her pain, but her legs have weakened to the point that she now needs a walker, with a wheelchair looming in the foreseeable future. Let us add to the darling image of the old hand-holding couple entering the restaurant the adjective “doddering.”  Not a good addendum, but there it is.

Speaking of her pain, Cynthia had her crushed lower vertebrae successfully fused, but not until after a year of agony and incontinence.  I have the excuse of getting nearly killed crossing the Boulevard, and only stay alive because they have not yet illegalized the Fentanyl and hydrocodone that lets me think straight.  Short of these disasters are the plethora of aches and pains all over that never go away.  While you still can, enjoy just being able to stand up out of your recliner chair easily, without feeling anything at all.

All of the above make 70’s conversations a soul-crushing compendium of dismal health reports.  NEVER ask “How y’ doing’?” to a geezer.   Even if you try to follow the usual rule of limiting health to 5 minutes, the fact is too many will break it, and before you know it an hour has passed and you’re still debating supplements.  And here we are not even getting into the increasing number of couples where one has some form of dementia.  (What Cynthia and I are appreciating now is that neither of our familial Parkinson’s has yet struck us.)

Life-affirming good news is that—spoiler alert—there are a few happy surprises of Old Age.  The best is having all the time in the world to spend with the love of your life.  Of all the many loves I have enjoyed since birth, luxuriating in the undivided attention Cynthia and I can give each other is my life’s best.  You really cannot have too many smooches or “I love you”s in a day, and eight hours/day sitting together in our living room eating, drinking, watching the tube, and debating again the great and small issues of the day with the best and smartest companion I have ever had—this is what makes it worth getting up every morning despite the vicissitudes listed above.  Those doddering couples at the restaurant?  Yes, they really are as much in love as they look.  It is not an act, it is fully real.

Sports and walking aside, other normal daily life in part is much the same.  I need to go to my office a few hours/day, and can still do tax and financial advising as well or better than I ever have since I made it my retirement part-time job when I moved here in 1996.  And I get to write again for KONK Life. Cynthia enjoys her couch time with the NYT and WQXR as much as ever, even better as she adds more Googling to her afternoons.  I even have a mildly diverting lawsuit with my Condo Association, something to keep me from going cold turkey in a life where I have been fighting injustice pretty much nonstop for the last fifty years, in some form or another. But now I have no more pressure to succeed at anything, having gotten more done than I ever imagined, and not being expected to do a damn thing anymore.

At the very least, go on your luxury cruises and adventure tours while you can still walk easily.  We quit even these out of mild irritation with internet connections, European death-bathrooms, and airports.  Honestly, do everything out of the house that you can while you may.  Your homey Keys Paradise looms forever after, no matter how Golden those years may be as you fade into eternity.

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