Never
Too Old For Romance And Safe Sex
By Susan
Swartz, N.Y. Times News Service
It's
a delicate topic but someone better be talking to Aunt Ethel about AIDS.
Now that
she's out dating again she could be having sex (and why not?) and she
needs to know that she is just as much at risk as anyone getting involved
with a new partner. So before she comes back from her cruise with a
T-shirt saying ``All I got in the Caribbean was HIV'' she needs to know
about the new facts of life.
It's one
thing to be a swinging senior but not if you end up with AIDS, a message
that health workers are trying to get across to a generation that may
not have had new lovers or even sex for some time. Older people, an
age category that can start as low as 50 or from 65 on up, depending
on who you're talking to, are not a huge risk group for AIDS but a definite
one.
In California
in 1998, people age 50 and older accounted for almost 12 percent of
the state's AIDS cases. Men in their 60s and older accounted for 2 percent
of AIDS cases. Women in the 65-and-older group accounted for 3 percent
of the AIDS cases. Had they been tested early enough they might have
mitigated the disease with medication before the HIV virus turned into
full-blown AIDS. But you know how it is with some people.
They were
raised differently. They're squeamish talking about sex of any kind,
let alone safe sex. And until now they've been pretty much ignored by
AIDS education and prevention efforts, which focused largely on young
people. For older people AIDS wasn't a factor when they were last out
looking for lovers.
Unless
it's affected a friend or relative, the most they know about AIDS is
what they read. Until they rejoined the dating circuit, exposure to
AIDS might not have been relative to their life. These are people who
may never have taken sex education. These are women whose biggest worry
around sex was an unwanted pregnancy but that concern eventually ended.
Yet, being post-menopausal is no protection against AIDS or Hepatitis
C or other sexually transmitted diseases that weren't as virulent or
even known in early birds-and-bees lectures.
These are
men who haven't carried a condom in their wallets since they rolled
their cigarettes in their T-shirt sleeve and who, even if they contracted
a disease in the past, didn't experience it as long-lasting. But now
there's AIDS and the times demand that older people have to deal with
some of the same cold facts that young lovers do. Like talking about
having sex before you have it. Like not giving into the passion of the
moment unless there's protection. ``You have to talk about the C-word
_ condoms,'' said Mary Flett, who's been an AIDS education worker since
the epidemic began. ``There's reluctance.''
One professional
woman in her mid-50s said she ended a relationship because the man took
offense when she insisted he use a condom. He was insulted, she said,
even though she explained the domino theory of AIDS. The HIV virus can
incubate for seven to 10 years.
It doesn't
matter how confident you are of the health status of your own sex partner,
you don't know about that partner's former partners. And so on. She
was married and having babies during the free- love period. By the time
she was divorced and back to meeting men, casual sex was risky business,
although she says not all men her age see it that way. ``I didn't like
his attitude,'' she said. ``I told him you should be just as worried
about me as I am about you.'' While AIDS isn't the death sentence it
once was, health worker Flett asked, ``Who wants to be dealing with
other issues of aging and get an HIV diagnosis on top?''
Viagra
has increased the need for new AIDS vigilance upon the part of born-again
romantics, said Flett, who's with the Center for HIV Prevention and
Care in Sonoma County. ``You have someone who hasn't been sexually active
and now has the opportunity. But they also need some awareness and sense
of responsibility.'' Her advice to anyone in a new relationship is the
same regardless of age. Use a condom and get an HIV test if you think
you've been exposed to the virus.
The test
isn't routine in a general blood test but you can ask your doctor for
one. If that's awkward there are anonymous testing sites where you can
test and also get good tips on healthy sex with no regrets. ``We're
dealing with a belief system that people over a certain age don't have
sex at all,'' said Flett. Happily,
there is assurance, from Bob Dole and others, that this isn't true.
Sex
doesn't necessarily have an age limit. Unfortunately, neither does AIDS.
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