Sylvie Hill

I remember those days when a young man’s cock would be so hard it nearly erected up to the ceiling, and surely, it made for a great towel hook. A wet, heavy wet towel, it hooked. He was 21. And, in thinking of that, sometimes I weep tears of joy in reflective moments, remembering how many beautiful men I’ve seen naked. Those fabulously stupid nights of too much drinking and smoking at Zaphod’s and Babylon and Dirty Oak and Aloha Room in Ottawa. Then in grad school, 26 years old and you’d get off three times a day or more, like — on your own. When you woke up, for a study break before lunch. After lunch before you started researching your essay. Then for another break. They’d practically replace your smokes. Then your boyfriend would come over. How did our bodies do that?! Why didn’t anyone tell us (or did they??) that this would not last forever?

We’re getting old, man. We’re slowing. Our hormones. Where are they going? Bodies changing. Do women just rot due to an anatomical disadvantage that if we were attractive at 60, we’d have one warped civilization of strange offspring? Do men get better? Oh, you silver fox, eh? Will us women be moot by definition of what a “woman” is in society? Will men understand our menopause or fall victim to sheepish societal behaviour and simply resent it or go chase the secretary?

No wonder a few of us are talking about communal living. Intergenerational interactions, please and thank you. Someone tell me about menopause or tell me about their new romance all unexperienced. We get so bloody siloed here, eating our shitty food imported from the USA and not writing letters anymore.

Did anyone tell you that your orgasms would change? And for the different and until we accept them we’ll say with our psychological immunity that “oh yes, dear, they are better.”

But why didn’t they tell us our bodies would get softer and our bones all the more brittler. “Just ask your doctor.” In the 15 minutes together. And the shrink is confined to a paradigm of Freudian old man lectures. By Christ, no one told us the status quo was for nutters. Now we get old with paced out erections and frail tail and pubic bones fragile for fast fucking. Oh, my how we know so little as we’re aging.

Sylvie Hill 2016