A distant memory

How do you say to someone who is sub-50 that he just doesn't understand the postmenopausal woman's body? Maybe I don't speak for every postmenopausal woman. I hope I don't. But for me, enjoyable and rewarding experiences between the sheets are a distant memory and probably not ever to return to my short-term memory cells.

There's this guy who's interested in me. I'm highly skeptical. He's a highly successful businessman, former VP of several banks and investment firms, entrepreneur, has several start-ups under his belt and is invited around the world to talk about security issues. For some reason, he's singled me out and has convinced himself we can have a long and wonderful [and highly sexual] life together. He's 48 years old. I'll be 57 in a month.

I was flattered at first, but now I'm wanting to somehow get through to him that once a woman loses her ovaries, she's never the same again. And when you remove hormone replacement therapy from the picture, the change in her body is even greater. I don't care what Oprah and all her medical and lifestyle guests say, the aging female body is different. I mean, I'm grateful that the hot flashes have diminished. It's no longer like shoving my head into a 350 degree oven. It's more like a wind that washes over me and I have to stop and wonder whether the building suddenly got warmer or I did. But the thought of being with a man whose thoughts every 19 seconds are of sex. Well, that's just not in my Weltanschauung.

Is that my only concern? No. He's got 15- and 13-year-old daughters. I've done the teenaged [step-]daughter thing more times than I care to remember, and never successfully. Stepdaughters are not Carnegie Hall — it's not a matter of practicing until you get it right. I'd prefer to quit while I'm ahead.

Oh, the other concern, as bigoted as it may sound? He's Indian. My Southern drawl ears have a very difficult time understanding his accent, and I feel like a fool every time I have to ask him to repeat something. He called me on his birthday and teased, "What didn't you vish me today?" (Maybe he actually said "Vhat didn't you vish me today?") I was tearing my brain apart trying to figure out what vish was. A food? A city? Some secret code word? Oh. Wish. Oh, it's your birthday and I didn't know.

I'm just a grandma seeking a simple life with some components of vocation and avocation, and some elements of helping my kids have the best possible life. Can I see this high-energy man as part of my life? No, not really.

So I will try again this evening to get through to him that he doesn't need to travel to Tucson to meet me face-to-face. Wherever he got his notions, whatever convinced him a lovely and erotic future was ahead, he's oh-so-wrong and he should just look elsewhere.