"At 83 years old, I'm having the best orgasms of my life"

PalmRosalba coquettishly sets aside the cane she uses to steady her wiry frame. She doesn't want it in the photos accompanying the story of an 83-year-old woman who speaks candidly about her sex life. She settles onto a bench in Llucmajor's Plaza de España and, without being asked, reviews more than eight decades of her life. "I have no balance. I've broken my femur twice. I have a pacemaker and I've had breast cancer," she reveals, placing her hand on her right breast. "I'm bionic!" she declares in Italian, which she hasn't lost despite living in Mallorca for over four decades.

She adjusts her leopard-print glasses on prominent cheekbones, framed by her red hair. As a young woman, she modeled for wholesalers in Milan and enjoyed a comfortable childhood thanks to her father's job as an accountant. "I was always rebellious," she confesses. A rebel and single mother in Catholic Italy of the late 1960s. "I'm a believer, but I don't go to church," she summarizes. The concept of sin never conditioned her life, especially since, at 13, she went to confession and discovered that the priest was masturbating while asking her if she slept naked or had a boyfriend. "I haven't gone back. I slept in pajamas and hadn't been with any man. But I was only 13! I've been lucky that very few things have impacted me in my life, and of course, nothing related to sex has been one of them."

She has had three long-term relationships. She only married—and lived with—the last of those men, whom she later widowed. "Since 1989 I haven't had sex, but now, at 83, I'm having the best sex and the best orgasms of my life. My gynecologist congratulates me. He told me it's..."bravissimo'Feeling alive. I have my vibrator and I use it on my clitoris. I've never climaxed with a penis. Before, I masturbated two or three times a week; now, less frequently, but I don't think it's anything to be ashamed of. I have very intense orgasms; I feel a very strong vibration that makes my head spin. It's a beautiful thing. I didn't experience that intensity in my 30s, 40s, or 50s. I talk about these things with my daughter. I've never hidden anything in my life,' she continues.

"Logical and natural"

Rosalba's testimony is, according to psychologist and sexologist Adrián Sánchez, "logical and natural, although difficult to find," because "collectively it's easier to think that older people lack sexuality or sexual desire, when it's something inherent to human beings from birth to death." The absence of role models and "narratives about aging understood as a sad process" have contributed to looking the other way, hiding, or censoring sex in the later stages of life. "It's not talked about, just as the sex of people with disabilities, mental health problems, or between women isn't discussed. In older women, all these forms of invisibility intertwine. We internalize that at that age 'this is no longer for me,' that it will be frowned upon and generate controversy," explains the expert, who, during a study on women's sex lives in nursing homes, found that 80% barely knew what masturbation was. "We romanticize a couple who's been together for 50 years and walks hand in hand, but if we see them getting intimate, we think they've lost their minds," Sánchez adds.

"Without being natural, I wouldn't have had this life, the life I liked," says Rosalba before correcting any categorization of her as elderly. "I'm not old. The neurologist told me I have a fabulous brain. My sister is 88 and thinks touching is a sin. There are many people who, because of their personality, are ashamed of what others might think. That's never happened to me. I see the world as it is, and there's nothing wrong with experimenting."

The way society perceives the sex of older people differs depending on whether they are men or women, according to psychologist and sexologist Susana Ivorra. "In the collective imagination, there are the 'dirty old man,' the 'girl-gazer,' and the..."daddies'Retirement-aged men actively express their desire. However, the image of a woman past menopause is one of the death of desire. As if all her sexuality were tied to reproduction, and once fertility leaves, desire leaves too. Nothing could be further from the truth.'

According to Ivorra, desire has many ways of making its way, and he uses a simile to explain it. 'If you barely eat, at first you'll be hungry, but little by little the alarm that reminds us we want to eat fades away until it's turned off, and we no longer feel hunger.' "The same is true of desire: if you don't nurture it, it fades," she explains. The expert has seen women in her practice who believed they were asexual until they discovered masturbation, found a devoted lover, or had a relationship with another woman. Rosalba longs for kisses and physical contact with a man. She likes the feel of her breasts when she's aroused. "I had cancer, but I still have them. My breasts were beautiful; they could fit in a champagne glass," she confesses, amused, adding that she didn't see a problem with her lovers not being able to maintain an erection. "There are many ways to experience pleasure," she points out regarding practices or forms of intimacy that become more important at this stage of life. For Ivorra, "all those that move away from coitocentrism." "Calling kissing, caressing, and masturbation 'foreplay' implies that real sex begins with penetration. Therefore, without it, there are no relationships. This is the prejudice." "In these stages, when men may experience erection or ejaculation problems—not psychological, but linked to medical issues—and when women may experience thinning, dryness, or inflammation of the vaginal walls, which can cause pain during intercourse, it becomes especially important to understand intimacy as something more than just penetration," the expert adds.

Few studies

Studies on sex in old age are very scarce, outdated, or cover a very broad period beginning at age 65. According to the latest National Survey of Sexual Health (2009), 24% of people aged 65 and over had had sex at least once a week. Similarly, 62.3% of men and 37.4% of women in that age group reported being sexually active. Rosalba insists that she was never worried about whether being a single mother or what she did with her partners would provoke judgment from others, but women of her generation "not only did not receive sex education, but grew up with ideas highly distorted by false beliefs and religion," according to Ivorra. Workshops and consultations on sexuality are full of women over 70 who recount how they didn't have their first orgasm until they masturbated after becoming widowed. "They've spent their whole lives believing they didn't like sex, that it was something done for maintenance, because it was expected, to please, and then they understood that it was these coitocentric sexual practices, without prior stimulation or arousal, that had killed their desire. It's an awakening for which it's never too late," Ivorra points out.

In later years, when care is needed, there's a tendency to infantilize the elderly, who are censored or treated like children. However, according to the sexologist, it wasn't always like this. "When the family and social structure was different—more shared, more communal, less isolated and individualistic—older people were just another part, a necessary part, that participated. I think that as we've distanced ourselves from older people, we see them as strangers, different; we see their flaws, many of them created by this distance, by loneliness. I'm a big advocate for intergenerational friendships because I believe that getting to know people of different ages helps us better understand their reality and free ourselves from prejudices born of ignorance."

At the end of the conversation, Rosalba stands up without help and maintains her elegant bearing. There's time for one more confidence. And for some advice: "If I see a porn video where they're kissing, I feel more. I can't know what pleasure is like for others, but I can encourage them to masturbate, to do it, to touch themselves. They have nothing to lose. We're alive."