Kiss & Tell?

A couple of weeks ago, while waiting for my daughter Iman to finish her laps in the pool, I was reading my favourite monthly women's magazine and came across this article that caught my eye, entitled-"She's still gotta have it." It was an interview in the first person by a middle-aged lady called Jane Juska who used to be a high school English teacher but upon retirement found something lacking in her life and decided on a lark to take out this ad in the personals section of the New York Review of Books-"Before I turn 67 next March, I would like to have a lot of sex with a man I like. If you want to talk first, Trollope works for me." Hilarious & daring? She goes one step further in an effort she says to keep from losing her mind, not to mention her body by writing her thoughts, feelings and the events of her life into journals. Later these journals give birth to a book-A Round-Heeled Woman.

I admire the ingenuity of her actions; we after all come from a society with a generally 'kolot' mindset that sex/relationships for the single/widowed/divorced middle-aged woman is a no-no. Under similar circumstances, middle-aged men are not to be so depraved however bacause it's their right of gender, they need it, they can't control their urges etc... Boy, we cut men alot of slack don't we? Which brings me back to a hilarious conversation I had with my mom quite some time ago. I told her that probably we should go out and look for a boyfriend for her so she would have someone to keep her company, to talk to and fuss over and she won't feel so left out when we all went about our busy lives. Her response was typical- "huh, what do you think men my age want? Only one thing and it's not companionship." I then told her, be honest from the start then and tell them that you only want to be friends, no s-e-x please!" By then, I was only teasing and she really was a good sport about it. We had a good laugh about it actually! When I related this to a couple of friends later on, they nearly split their sides laughing and thought it out of this world that I could broach the subject with my mom at all. Well, you don't know me, my mom does, so.... Hmm, now this is food for thought; I should go out and buy my mom that book by Jane Juska, eventhough she's 71! Naughty I know but my mom even liked that romantic novel, Where Rainbows End, by Cecilia Ahern.


Here is an excerpt from an interview the infamous Jane Juska did with CBS' 48 HRS. Read without prejudice...

(CBS) After a lifetime of teaching high school English, Jane Juska took a while to adjust to retirement in Berkeley, Calif.

“In the beginning, you don't quite know what to do with yourself," says Juska, who now spends more time with her new granddaughter.

But four years ago, this divorced mother of a grown son realized there was something missing in her life. “Well, sex is as good a word as I can think of,” says Juska, who had not had sex for 30 years.

What made her change? She told Correspondent Erin Moriarty last January that she went through psychoanalysis.

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Jane's therapist encouraged her to take some creative steps to get back into the dating scene. "I would hang out in hardware stores, because men go there who know how to do things,” she says. “I met women, fascinating women.”

Nothing worked until Jane says she went to her local library one day and decided to write a very frank and revealing personal ad: “The ad said: ‘Before I turn 67 next March, I would like to have a lot of sex with a man I like. If you want to talk first, Trollope works for me."

She posted the ad in The New York Review of Books because she thought “it might filter out some of the lewdness.” But would her sexy solicitation attract men?

"I thought, ‘I'm gonna get an answer, and I bet you I get two,’" says Juska, who received 63 responses, from all over. “I was just screaming. I said, ‘Hey, this is great.’”

Some letters were sexy: “I think eroticism is the about the elation and evanescence of life."

And some were plain smutty: “There were also a couple of pictures of naked guys, one wearing only sunglasses, and he included a filthy, filthy poem."

But Jane wanted more than scarlet letters. The men she wanted had to be well-read and wonderful writers. And turning Jane on was what the author, Jonah, an enthusiastic 85-year-old, had in mind when he flew from Maryland to meet her.

“At the airport, he just put his hands on just the right place,” says Juska. “My ass. And that did it.”

Their destination: a suite at the Claremont Hotel, Berkeley's famous resort and spa. "I'd gotten these champagne flutes. I love champagne flutes, and I made this wonderful little picnic," says Juska. "We just, you know, went right at it. It was pretty good.”

But the much-anticipated ecstasy didn't last long. “He just said he didn’t want me anymore,” says Juska. “But before that very forthright statement of his, we enjoyed each other’s company.”

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Not to be discouraged, Jane was determined to enjoy the "company" of as many men as possible.

And then she did what some might say was an un-ladylike thing: she kissed and told in her recently published memoirs, "A Round-Heeled Woman, My Late Life Adventures in Sex and Romance."

And everywhere Jane goes, she's discovered her book speaks to women and men of all ages.

While Jane has no qualms talking about those men, when 48 Hours asked them to talk about her, they declined. One of them was Sydney, a 62-year-old book lover -- one of several men Jane met in New York.

Jane says she met Sydney at the Piedmont Morgan Library: “It’s an elegant behave-yourself-library where I met Sydney, and he said, ‘Put your breast on the table.’ He did, so I did."

But the most surprising suitor of this aging beauty was Graham, 32. “He came down the escalator and I thought I was going to faint,” says Juska. “He’s a very old 32.”

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Jane seems so proper, and yet her book is so sexually graphic. “I know that was hard, it’s hard to write about sex,” she says.

And in New York, Juska got exactly what she was looking for -- a lot of sex with men she liked. But she also got something else that she never expected. She fell in love.

His name was Robert, a retired professor of medicine. "The first time in my life, I lost 10 pounds, just because I was seething for this man,” she says. “We loved the same movies, we loved the opera. Really, he did everything he said he would do except love me the way I did him.”

Robert, who already had a girlfriend, just wanted sex. And he ended up breaking her heart. "When I wrote the part about Robert, I cried through most of it. It was very hard."

Jane learned you are never too old for heartbreak. Still, life after Robert has been full of sweet surprises. She says she’s had dozens of men contact her because of her book – and she has no intention of settling down.

“Not at the present time,” says Juska, laughing.

48 Hours aired this report in January. Since then, Jane Juska has fallen in love again and is seeing the man exclusively. As for the ad she placed -- applicants need no longer apply.