The graphic, funny, tender and shocking stories in New York psychiatrist Arlene Heyman’s debut collection are aptly titled. They are scary, because they deal with genocide, the events of 9/11, ageing, terminal sickness, caretaking, and death; “old” because most of the characters are between the ages of 65 and 99; sex-centered, because several stories feature aging spouses in bed together, taking their medications, using their lubricants, employing various aphrodisiacs, and wives thinking longingly about their former husbands. Old sex is both scary and farcical. “No one over 40 should be allowed to make love in the daytime,” one wife reflects; naked old men sprout “papules, papillomas, skin tags, moles”, and look like Lucian Freud paintings. But unaesthetic nudity is the least of the obstacles to love-making among the married elderly, which is “like running a war: plans had to be drawn up, equipment in tiptop condition”. The lovers suffer from many ailments, ranging from acid reflux, arthritis and sleep apnea to acute myelogenous leukemia. They need special equipment including Vagifem, Viagra, clomipramine and other antidepressants, Astroglide, K-Y jelly, lab gloves, and a CPAP mask. Pornographic fantasy plays a part in these scenarios as well.
While the older characters in Heyman’s stories are elaborately dosing up, suiting up and lubing up for their careful coitus, the younger ones are covering up for their elderly parents: a respectable father who has a fatal heart attack in bed with his receptionist, and a vain but incontinent mother who has to be cleaned up before her card game. “Nothing human is alien to me,” one narrator, a microbiologist, thinks, and she wants to believe that earthiness is a tie to creativity and life.
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