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Alive, Well and on the Prowl, It's the Geriatric Mating Game
By Peter T. Kilborn, the
Scottsdale
Journal
March 7, 2004
Nornee Smith, 67, and Lee Swanson, 79,
relax in Ms. Smith's home in Mesa, Ariz., after an afternoon of dancing
and pool.
COTTSDALE, Ariz. - More
than 100 merry widows in glittering dresses and golden, high-heeled shoes
and men in string ties and saddle shoes step out from their Buicks and
Fords at the senior center in downtown Scottsdale. In the auditorium, the
lights go down low and the band hits fast-stepping strains of Gershwin and
Porter.
A man's tremors from
Parkinson's disease stop cold when he clutches a woman in black leather
pants for a Viennese waltz. Betty Seely, a widow who is 75, jitterbugs in
snappy synchrony with Dennis Murray, 64, her regular partner. He spins her
out and reels her in, making her wide purple skirt swirl as high as her
waist.
A whistle blows. It's
Ladies' Tag. Single women surge from the sidelines to cut in on the single
men. Beatrice Miller, a widow somewhere past 60, sits it out. "I'm
not looking to get married," she said. "I would have to get a
toy boy. Anyone older than me would be too old."
Love and loneliness and a
little lust, too, are in this air — old love, new love, the love of
dancing and touching. People in their 60's up to their 90's, more of them
single than married, come for the joy of the dance. And if a liaison
ensues, "well," said Betts Carter, 66, a divorcée at a dance in
Mesa
, "that's just a plus."
The elderly go dancing in
the
Phoenix
area every night. They are not alone — as many surveys have shown,
romance and lovemaking thrive among about half of Americans in their 60's
and beyond.
In proliferating Internet
chat rooms and forums, in medicine cabinets of sex-enhancing drugs and
wrinkle creams, in cruises just for them, in dating services and newspaper
personal advertisements under "Seniors Seeking Seniors," in
shacking up instead of remarrying, romance in old age has come in from the
cold.
"We can still
appreciate a nice bod," said Joan Shafer, the widowed, 75-year-old
mayor of Surprise, a fast-growing town northwest of
Phoenix
. "Just because we are the age we are, it doesn't mean we don't have
fantasies."
Mike Baumayr, an
advertising executive in
Phoenix
who specializes in the elderly, said, "You now have permission to be
sexual."
But if anything is putting
a damper on elderly romance, it is this: women's slim pickings. As Ms.
Miller of
Scottsdale
would put it, single men are scarce, and toy boys — healthy, ambulatory
men in their 60's — are scarcer still.
The 2000 Census found 20.6
million women 65 and older and 14.4 million men, or 10 women for 7 men. In
Sun City
, near
Phoenix
, the median age was 75, and there were three times more widowed and
divorced women than unattached men.
"There are places
where there are five women for one man," said Frank Kaiser, 68, a
retired advertising man in
Florida
who writes newspaper columns for the elderly and has written a book,
"Have Sex Like You Did 50 Years Ago." "So you got four
women who are left out there in that little equation, and they know
it," he said.
Removed from the equation,
whether by choice or by chance, many find they can readily do without men.
"I had lunch with about 40 senior women today," Mr. Kaiser said.
"I don't think any one of them would want to trade their cat for a
man. One thing they've told us is how randy these 70- and 80-year-old guys
are, and that's not what they're looking for."
Jean Horrock, 70, joined
the 450 elderly men and women in the ballroom of the Venture Out RV resort
in
Mesa
one Saturday night. "You just don't have time for a man full
time," she said.
"I've spent a lot of
years learning to be single," Ms. Horrock said. "You don't want
to learn all over again how to live with a man. People are looking for
friends, but they're not looking for commitment."
In
Maricopa
County
, around
Scottsdale
and
Phoenix
, with nearly 400,000 people 65 and older, most mobile and healthy, it is
the lure of the tango, more than dating services and personal ads, that
rouses the elderly out of their La-Z-Boys.
"See this room?"
said Richard Greene, 86, vice president of the committee that organizes
the twice-a-week senior center dances in
Scottsdale
. "The only reason you see this room is modern medicine."
"Every single man's
here to meet another woman," said Mr. Greene, whose partner and
cohabitant, Ruby Eldridge, is president of the dance committee. "But
hardly anybody gets married here."
"They develop
intimate relationships," he said. But remarriage, he said, is fraught
with complications, like eventual inheritances of children and risks to
pensions and alimony of widows and divorcées. Rather than mingle assets,
a newly coupled man and woman hold onto their old homes.
Nornee Smith, 67, and Lee
Swanson, 79, live minutes apart in
Mesa
and see one another most days. Ms. Smith, the widow of an F.B.I. agent, is
an
Arizona
state senior pool champion and has exuberant and wavy gray-white hair. She
wears the long shirts and billowy blouses of a
Texas
cowgirl on a Saturday night. Mr. Swanson is a twice-divorced, retired
aerospace engineer and preacher with a thin gray strip of a mustache. They
met at a dance.
"I asked her for a
dance," he said. "And then she gave it to somebody else."
"So he got mad,"
Ms. Smith said, "and that got my attention. We're a couple now."
They go dancing three or four times a week.
"He and I are
extremely close," Ms. Smith said. "We travel together."
Last summer, they drove 9,500 miles in 102 days in his motor home.
"The way it works, with children and family, it works better to stay
single," she said.
One inviolate rule of
conduct at dances is that single women do not cut in on men who are spoken
for or married. Another is that married men who come without their wives
few wives come without husbands — are fair game, at least for a
dance.
Still, there are tensions.
"See this lady?" said Donald Hector, 67, a retired junk dealer
who comes alone because his wife is largely confined at home with
arthritis. He nods toward tall and willowy 70-ish woman, the one in the
tight leather pants.
"She's a
seducer," said Mr. Hector, one of the most sought after, nimble-kneed
dancers here, whom the women call Santa Claus for his ample white beard.
"She'll get one guy, and she'll be watching around for the next guy
she's going to get."
The shortage of single men
is a recurring problem. Tim Miluk, human services manager at the
Scottsdale
center, said, "Guys that didn't have that many dates in high school
are very popular now." Some women, he said, want the center to adopt
the latest innovation of area ballrooms, an event that excludes women with
regular partners. It's called an Angel's Dance.
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Global Action on Aging
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