Playfulness

Crozier depicts the emplaced embodiment of playfulness during sexual activity in “My New Old Man, He’s So Good” (1980) and “My Last Erotic Poem” (2011). Three decades separate the publication of the two poems; Crozier was thirty-two and sixty-three years old, respectively. Nonetheless, both poems discuss the implications of ageing for their love relationship and sexual activity from a positive stance. That is, the speakers in both poems accept the ageing process as an intrinsic part of the life-course and employ humour as a strategy to empower their ageing selves in a Western society that devalues older bodies. As sociologists of ageing Paul Higgs and Chris Gilleard argue, “many of the key corporeal processes of ageing are perceived as making the human body appear less attractive, lacking both health and desirability” (“Ideology” 1624). A process that is especially gendered, as sociologist of ageing and the body Laura Hurd-Clarke examines.

Hurd-Clarke claims that “the feminine beauty ideal and the importance given to female appearances disadvantage older women and augment their social exclusion in later life”

(“Women” 104).

In the erotic poem “My New Old Man, He’s So Good,” the persona describes the sexual prowess of her new partner, as suggested by the use of the colloquial term “old man” to refer to a lover or partner in the poem title. The speaker’s new boyfriend’s sexual prowess results from an implicit greater sexual experience than the persona’s: “in bed,

does tricks, can / come on his head or / swinging from the light / enter me, a cork, Pop!!

(ll. 1-4). Both the onomatopoeia at the end of the quote and the description of the scene is reminiscent of circus-like pirouettes, which contribute to creating a somewhat humorous tone. The persona’s partner uses the bedroom’s pieces of furniture as elements that contribute towards his perceived sexual prowess. The persona also describes her active and empowered role during sexual intercourse, in which she is on top of her partner and succeeds in making him reach the climax repeatedly: “I move over him / my slippery skin, snake / swallows mouse, he dies / inside me often” (ll. 7-10). However, the emphasis, as already suggested by the title of the poem, is on the persona’s partner and not herself.

As such, the persona does not describe her own sexual pleasure, unlike most of Crozier’s poems about sexuality, in which the persona describes her own feelings towards the sexual encounter. While the persona’s gender is not made explicit in the poem, the fact that the persona describes herself metaphorically as a snake and her partner’s penis as a mouse, suggests that the persona is a woman, as snakes were first associated to women as their enemies in the Bible. This notwithstanding, in Crozier’s poetry, both the woman and the snake are liberated from patriarchal constraints that disempower both of them, as can be observed in poems like “Fear of Snakes” (1988), “Mother Tongue” (1988) and

“Afterwords” (1988). The conclusive lines in the poem offer a stark contrast with the comic introduction, which presents sexual intercourse as something light and not necessarily related to a romantic relationship. Specifically, the poem ends in a sexual innuendo, which suggests oral sex, while at the same time the persona moves beyond the merely sexual to incorporate an element of genuine care for her lover’s feelings: “I breath / him into life, lick him / from darkness, his and mine / or just the night” (ll. 10-13).

Therefore, the final lines in the poem emphasise the importance of sexuality for the persona as a way of both showing love to her partner and of overcoming emotional issues,

as symbolised by the word “darkness.” Indeed, according to psychology, “the attainment of sexual pleasure with a specific partner, when accompanied by affectionate feelings, is likely to increase the desire for prolonged and frequent closeness and the likelihood of attachment formation” (Mizrahi et al. 468).

Moving into young old age, “My Last Erotic Poem” presents lovemaking as an important bonding activity in a couple. In order to avoid a misreading of the analysis, it must be clarified that Crozier’s view of sexuality in older adulthood – as that of middle age – is devoid of any connotations related to “sexually active seniors as part of successful ageing (or ‘non-ageing’)” (Sandberg, “Affirmative Old Age” 14), as suggested in the poem when the persona confesses that having sex is not a priority for this couple, as some nights they prefer doing other activities: “[…] Face it, / some nights we’d rather eat a Häagen-Dazs ice cream bar / or watch a movie starring Nick Nolte who looks worse than us. / Some nights we’d rather stroke the cats” (ll. 21-24). Moreover, Crozier seems to advocate for lightness and humour in this poem as regards the bodily changes the couple’s bodies in the poem have experienced with the passing of time: “our once-not-unattractive flesh / now loose as unbaked pizza dough / […] / our faithless bums crepey, collapsed?”

(ll. 8-9, 18). The same is true for the loss of perception in some of the senses: “We have to wear our glasses to see down there! / When you whisper what you want I can’t hear, / but do it anyway, and somehow get it right” (ll. 19-21). Crozier’s playful depiction of sexuality in young old age is reinforced by the use of onomatopoeic words describing the sounds that the old body makes during sexual intercourse: “Who wants to hear about two old lovers / slapping together like water hitting mud […]?” (ll. 11-12). In this sense, literary critic Wayne C. Booth acknowledges that tackling the problems of the aging experience by means of humour encourages readers to do the same (202, 205). In this sense, Crozier’s portrayal of sexuality in “My Last Erotic Poem” is in line with age

scholar Zoe Brennan’s statement that Lessing, Carter and Diski, among others, “challenge the construction of old age as a period devoid of sexual feeling […] thus mock[ing] the idea that sexual fantasy and expression in old age is abnormal, taboo or inappropriate”

(77). Crozier also questions the stereotypical social perception of older adults as drinking soft beverages and being pessimistic:

Who wants to hear about two old farts getting it on in the back seat of a Buick, in the garden among vermiculite,

in the kitchen where we should be drinking ovaltine and saying no? (ll. 1-6)

What is more, Crozier underscores the older persona and her partner’s creativity to engage in sexual activity in different places, such as in a car, the garden and the kitchen.

Therefore, their emplaced embodiment of sexuality in unusual places underscores their agency as older persons who deconstruct ageist stereotypes regarding old age. That is to stay that they empower themselves to continue engaging in sexual activity despite being older and thus not socio-culturally expected to do so. Finally, the last two lines of the poem defiantly conclude that “our old bodies [are] doing what you know / bodies do, worn and beautiful and shameless” (ll. 28-29). This ending constructs a final positive image of the external appearance of the ageing body, which, as gerontologist Mike Hepworth has stated, is a rare vision in Western culture (Stories of Ageing 50).