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Saturday, Jul 4, 2009
Why can my 50-year-old boyfriend only speak about sex like a 12-year-old?
Jul 11, 2001 | Mr. Blue had to deliver a eulogy this week for a dear old friend, one of those difficult jobs that somebody has to do and everyone dreads, especially the prospect of having your face turn to molten rubber and making a weepy spectacle of yourself. The trick, if you care to know, is to postpone the serious elegiac stuff for later and start out with the comedy. In this case, the Departed had been so good as to write, in his lifetime, thousands of wildly funny letters, and with judicious editing, I put together one that got waves of laughter from the mourners, the sort of cumulative build that comedians work for. The Departed, a musician, would have been terribly pleased. Too bad he had to miss the show. And miss it by only a few days.
The other thing you must do, in a eulogy, is give a simple account of the life and cite the virtues and hint at the shortcomings and absolutely do not talk about yourself or throw in too many long looping clichés. You let people employ their own memories and imaginations and don't get in their way and they will think you are a genius, when actually you're just a slow talker who uses small words.
My friend was 77 and had a good long run in this world, and the grief one feels is for one's self, at the loss of that old familiar conversation, the easy comedy routine of an old friendship. I have lost five old friends in the past 10 years and miss every one of them and there's no way to patch this up. With each one, there was a different conversation that we easily fell into every time we met and talk came so easily and now there is only this puny silence.
A reader offers this word to No Way Out (whose wife used to weigh 150 and now tops 220 and has been battling depression): This story sounds textbook hypothyroid to me. Hypothyroidism is chronically misdiagnosed and undertreated by doctors; so please ask NWO to direct his wife to this Web site, where she can get enough information to deal with her doctors as an informed patient."
A reader says that my answer to A Friend in Need (the single woman in L.A. whose married friends don't invite her over anymore) was off the mark. "While you may deign to socialize with single people, the vast majority of people who are married, especially if they have children, do not. Apparently odd numbers make people nervous. If you ask most single people around my age, they will tell the exact same story." Fine. That's your perspective. It isn't mine. I don't "deign" to socialize with single people, I like them for who they are. And I am slightly wary of couples, since their interest in coming to my house is not always equal. That's the real poison pill. So I'd always want it to be clear that a dead-weight spouse is free to send his or her regrets and the live-wire spouse to come alone.
Several readers point out that sex twice a year is semiannual sex, not biannual. Thanks for the comfort.
And many readers wrote in regard to the young wife distressed because her husband gave her a cooking pan for her birthday. They all agreed that Mr. Blue was much too indulgent with her. One said: "The correct response is, Get over it. What shallowness! Is this love? Can this man not have an off year?" Another reader says: "Unless my parents were wrong, it's horrible to complain about a gift -- any gift. He remembered your birthday and my (unsolicited) advice is: Keep your yapper shut. Oh, and I'm a woman." Yes, ma'am.
Dear Mr. Blue,
Why can my 50-year-old boyfriend only speak about sex like a 12-year-old? For example, "Show me your hooters" and "Bend over" and "Let me stick it in you" have become common in the two years we've lived together. It wasn't always like this, and the occasionally well-peppered conversation was initially quite funny. But as soon as I moved in with him all attempts at adult romance were dropped entirely. I am starved for the kind of thoughtful, lingering, pleasurable passion that any 35-year-old woman enjoys. I'm at the end of my rope. Help.
Feeling Bad
Dear Feeling,
Somewhere back up the line your boyfriend got the notion that you were excited by blunt talk, so he slipped into this comic-book porn dialogue, and now you need to set him straight. You don't like it. So don't show him your hooters and don't bend over. Face him and say, "You make me feel bad when you say that." Dare to make a scene and have a skirmish and raise your voice if necessary. He'll apologize and make it up to you, write sonnets, strum a lute, whatever your fancy craves.
