Poor old Anne Hathaway is having a bad week. The perky-as-fuck star of trainwreck movies like the Devil Wears Prada and Get Smart (her agent is demonstrably not getting smart) has had two embarassing incidents this week; it appeared she had won at the Golden Globes only to have that revealed as a mistake, and more crushingly perhaps, she was embarassed by her parents, who have told a gossip columnist in a recent interview that the secret to their 28 year marriage was the “great sex”.

I am not without sympathy in this case. I mean it is bad enough when your parents get all amorous on the sofa after a few too many Christmas sherries, but to have them expose the fact to the world that not only are they still having sex, but that it is ‘great sex’, a term innocuous on the face of it, but suggestive of some pretty creative fuckmongering I think, well, it is all enough to make you want to stick your head in the oven. I am sure it is considered enlightened in this day and age to be able to discuss old people shagging, a sign of maturity and an acceptance of the reality that sex is not just about nubile young bodies colliding in Hollywood style clusterfucks of orgasmic joy, but also about old people sharing the same wild, passionate intimacy. We need to grow out of these anachronistic views of sex and be able to discuss is openly with no sniggering or recoiling; we should be able to grasp the sexual freedoms that, on paper, have been bequeathed to us since the post-war kids started getting high and sexing it up.

No, no, no! I am going to have to be a reactionary stick in the mud here. Old people having sex with other old people is just wrong and it should be stigmatised in polite conversation. It is ethically wrong for such people to pollute our minds with images of their crusty old bodies slowly creaking, like two undulating pieces of sandpaper, rasping against each other. It sets my teeth on edge. There are very good reasons why we have developed both evolutionary and cultural mechanisms to protect us from the thought of wrinkly old bones being prodded between the well thumbed flaps of grannie fanny; it is because it makes us face our own ephemeral youth, something that is not possible when one cannot maintain the fiction of old people as a seperate sexless species.

So does this make me a hypocrite for fucking older guys? I mean some of them have hardly been the most Adonis like physical specimens, so how can I put out for them and hold to the position I outlined above. Old people fucking one another? Ugh – no thanks. But older guys getting into my knickers? Oh yes! Hawwwt. I suppose this dichotomy comes from the fact that thinking about other people having sex and thinking about yourself having sex with someone are two different things. Simply thinking about other people having sex is completely free from context and any expression of sexual power or identity. Sleeping with older men, as a young woman, is full of its own subtexts and assertions of sexual identity; the man say, is proving that he is still youthful and able, and for me, well there is that thrill of never knowing if his pacemaker will go during a vigorous sexual encounter.

As for the Hathaway Snr’s claim about great sex being the reason for their long marriage, well I would think that was a rare reason for most lengthy marriages. I am pretty sure my parents stopped having sex after Michael was born, and even his surprising arrival, which cannot have been spurred by how much of a ray of sunshine their first born turned out to be, can only really be down to either alchohol or my Mum thinking Dad was someone else. No, from observation, most marriages last out of boredom, habit or in some cases a post-fuckfest companionship. Marriage is a peculiarly ill-formed institution when places against out biological drivers and out psychological make up; add into this modern cultures obsessive promotion of sex at every turn and the only surprise is that the divorce rate stays so low. If it were not for the raising and nuturing of ankle-biters then one would question why we need marriage at all.

Secret to a long marriage? Neglecting your partners flaws and not caring enough to find out their secrets. If that fails, try great sex…..with someone else.

X- Lon -X