Sienna Jae Fein 2014-07-12T20:51:07-04:00 Sienna Jae Fein Copyright 2008,, Inc. HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for Sienna Jae Fein Good old fashioned elbow grease. The Rolling Stones -- They're 70 and Yes, They're Sexy,2013:/theblog//3.4509573 2013-12-30T16:43:18-05:00 2014-03-01T05:59:02-05:00 Sienna Jae Fein The Rolling Stones: Sweet Summer Sun, Hyde Park Live, are on YouTube).

The Stones' September performance was as high energy as it gets; fans were utterly stoked. Charlie Watts drummed, Ron Wood and Keith Richards strummed and Mick Jagger soared over mile after mile of ramp extensions, strutting his bad boy stuff. You could maybe forget you were watching a quartet of 70-year-olds (Ron Wood is 66), so confidently did they radiate youthfulness and sexual cool.

Ron Wood and Keith Richards have their rabid fans ("Keith = God" read one man's hand-scrawled sign), but Mick Jagger is the iconic front man and it's hard not to think that for these few hours he was the most powerful man on earth. He said "sing" and they sang. He said "clap" and they clapped. He said "wave" and they waved. If he had said, "have sex with me" he might have had 30,000 volunteers.

As a blogger who targets single women who are over 60 and looking for love, I am astonished at the number of women who reject men on dating sites -- without meeting or even corresponding with them -- solely on the basis of age. Over and over again, I hear women complain that they don't want someone who is "too old." These comments are typical:

• "I'm an active person and I'm not interested in living with someone who sits around all day watching TV."
• "Older men only want you so you'll cook and clean and wait on them."
• "I'd maybe get two or three years out of him and then I'd be a nurse maid."
• "I want sex and after 60 a man is too old for that."
• "I don't want sex and old men are always pawing at you because they need to prove they can still do it."
• "Viagra love is not for me."
• "I don't want someone who's going to die on me."
• "As soon as I see a man is 65 or older, I close him out."

Maybe Mick Jagger does not seem to you an ideal sex partner. But his trademark mix of sleaziness and susceptibility is wildly appealing to many. It seems few women think sex with him would be disappointing, although to know for sure we'd have to canvas the 40,00-plus women he claims to have seduced.

The point is that there is no age at which the spigot of sexual pleasure is automatically turned off. Some men are through at 50. Some are going strong at 80.

It seems to me the height of folly for a woman of 60 (what, she's Scarlett Johansson?) to reject a man because he is over 60. Or 70. Or 80. We are all more than the sum of our years. Whatever time you have left as a sentient being is a gift, I tell my readers. Isn't it a bit premature to pronounce a man near-comatose before you meet him, before you see what his years have taught him?

That's what I tell the women who ask my advice. But it occurred to me, as I watched the concert for the second time, that those full-of-life, slick and sexy Rolling Stones have something to say that exactly fits the senior dating situation.

"You can't always get what you want, but if you try some time you just might find you get what you need."

From now on, I'm going to refer my petulant female ageists to Mick.

Sienna Jae Fein blogs at]]>
Sinatra, Septuagenarians, And Sex,2013:/theblog//3.4053062 2013-10-13T07:00:43-04:00 2014-01-23T18:58:21-05:00 Sienna Jae Fein
The Sinatra allegation might be dismissed as just another savory meal for movie fans, except that hidden in reporters' language about infidelity among mega-stars was the insidious message that if Ol' Blue Eyes is actually Ronan's father, his engagement in the necessary sex act would be rare for a man of his age.

Here's how David K. Li puts it in the NY Post: "It also might be a slightly remarkable feat for Sinatra, who would have been around 78 when Ronan was conceived." You will notice the word "slightly." I am not appeased by this modifier, but its use interests me because it may be a window into the souls of many young writers who have peered uncertainly into their futures and wrongly imagined an arid sexual landscape.

Li -- along with other writers using the same source -- has the chronology wrong (Sinatra was born in 1915, just 71 years before Ronan was conceived), but that is less to the point than the way in which journalists, along with the makers of pharmaceuticals targeting erectile dysfunction, perpetuate the belief that baby making is a chore for older men.

Star-watcher lists of celebrity fathers are often accompanied by wry innuendo (and sometimes downright awe) that so-and-so has produced a son despite being over 50. Many of these lists are produced by women, and they sometimes reflect the prevalent female frustration with men who leave their aging wives for women with perkier breasts and riper wombs.

Women writers have their bugaboos, foremost among them wrinkles and sags, causing young women reporters to impose upon us phrases like, "She's 45 but she still looks fabulous," a condescension unmatched for its deflating power over middle-aged woman readers, not to mention the celebrities who are objects of brutal day-to-day assessments of their faces and figures.


Information glut is upon us and no one argues that if a news source expects to come out ahead -- or indeed to survive -- it must feed the public what it craves. That has come to mean something broader than traditional journalism, in which actual facts were imperative, as we trend more and more toward insinuation, titillation, and gruesome detail.

At the University of Wisconsin's School of Journalism, the Center for Journalism Ethics acknowledges the "difficult practical task of applying norms and standards to ever new and changing circumstance," but also exhorts journalists to "minimize unnecessary harm to vulnerable subjects of news stories."

Sinatra loved many women openly and suggesting that he was a rounder is not disingenuous, but implying that he'd have had trouble getting it up is (in a follow-up to the Li story, another NYPost writer referred to Sinatra as "geriatric," a term that readily resounds as "impotent").

Disparagement of men as time-lapse lovers is not merely ageism; it's an offense to maleness. Researchers are churning out senior sex studies at an increasingly rapid rate, virtually all of them confirming that physically healthy men can be eager, proficient, even vibrant sex partners well into their 80s.

Theoretically, good journalism follows the rules of empathy and objectivity. Never having experienced the state of being old, and never, one hopes, having been observers in the bedroom of 50-plus lovers, young writers should be cutting their elders -- and themselves -- a break. I and others (the over-50 crowd) have been to the future, and it is not at all the Viagra and Botox cocktail one trembles at 35 to imagine.

Sienna Jae Fein blogs at

Earlier on Huff/Post50:

Why Sex Is No Big Deal,2013:/theblog//3.2963762 2013-04-03T06:23:36-04:00 2013-06-03T05:12:01-04:00 Sienna Jae Fein CatalystCon East sported a classic, casual style.

Dee Dennis, creator and founder of the CatalystCon conferences, called for "a melting pot of sexuality" and she got it. The lively, non-judgmental, wildly diverse mix of attendees ("Hey, look at Dragon Tattoo over there with Betty Draper!") was a microcosm of the world Dennis wants to create. Her goal is to change how our culture talks about "normal" sexuality, as well as how we talk about and treat people who practice sex in ways perceived to be outside the norm.

Sex is a core human experience, but much public discussion remains mired in prejudice, anger, and disgust. The sexologists, social workers, activists, and mental health professionals who contributed to the CatalystCon discussion clearly yearn for a day when dialogue can be tolerant and composed. "Imagine living in a society free of repressive attitudes and policies, where we celebrate our similarities and our differences and are truly kind to each other," mused senior sex educator Joan Price.

In spite of its sex-positive agenda, the conference was more nuanced than naughty. Speakers explored ways in which activists could influence educators, legislators, social service administrators, religious leaders, and others to move toward greater understanding and acceptance.

Sex is certainly a worthy subject of inquiry, being arguably the most powerful socio-economic force in America. It drives the $600 billion fashion apparel business and the $50-billion cosmetic industry, as well as the huge, multifaceted entertainment industry, in which a single Hollywood film grossing less than $100 million is hardly worth making.

Sex makes millions for psychologists, lawyers, artists, pharmaceutical companies, and sex toy manufacturers. It provides a bully pulpit to politicians and pastors, to abortion rights activists, to LGBT advocates, and mental health workers. It sells toothpaste and tires, detergents and bathtubs, coffeepots, cars, and computers. Sex empowers lovers, grants couples pleasure and progeny, and is the most-often-cited cause of divorce. It teases and taunts, comforts and terrifies, and it holds our society in thrall.

It shouldn't be this way, anthropologist Ava Mir-Ausziehen told the CatalysCon audience. "Sex isn't some strange, ethereal construct. It's as normal and necessary as eating and sleeping." Mir-Ausziehen believes that "when we regard sex as something apart from the mundane, we're causing anxiety, fear, and dysfunction."

The sex-is-special mindset can be found all along the social spectrum, generating not only conservatives' fear of same-sex marriage, but suburban wives' obsessive reading of the Fifty Shades trilogy.

Lawmakers, too, hold sex apart from daily life. Legislation lags far behind community practices, and interpretation of many laws can be entirely subjective. To pass through the maze of laws around obscenity, for example, a work must show "redeeming social value."

Most victimless crimes in the U.S. are sex-related, says the Magnus Hirschfeld Archive for Sexuality. In the view of Hirschfeld researchers, laws regulating behavior between two consenting adults are "absurd and dangerous." They write: "If the American sex laws were rigorously and equally enforced, the country would have so many sex offenders in prison that there would not be enough innocent citizens left to guard them."

Ava Mir-Ausziehen credits sociologists Stevi Jackson and Sue Scott, authors of Theorizing Sexuality, with calling attention to the idea that sexuality is better understood as a routine part of everyday life. Missing this perception, sex becomes a game of skill, which in turn feeds consumer frenzy for products that will aid performance - erectile dysfunction drugs, how-to books, porn videos, sex-power diets, exercise programs, and Tantra training.

"To be bad at cooking, bad at soccer, it's no problem; but to be bad at sex is inexcusable," says Mir-Ausziehen wryly. Sex, she implies, doesn't have to be ultra-ecstatic every time. If there is to be dialogue about repression of sex in our society, there is an emerging irony. Insistence on perfect sexual performance is a different kind of repression.

It's not clear how long it will be before dialogue about sex will be open in a wider community. Social mores change rapidly or slowly, depending on your point of view. In 1964, the Beatles made their first trip to the U.S. to a mix of acclaim for their music and fear that their "decadent" long-hair style would undermine the country's moral fiber. Fifty years later, same sex marriage has been made legal; birth control pills are the contraception standard; "Illegitimate" no longer describes a child born to a single parent; the use of Viagra and sex toys is openly discussed; and everyone knows what a clitoris is.

Is this fifty years of progress? Is this a sign of society loosening its repressive grip on sexual expression? Then: Beatle hair. Now: labia piercing. What will sexual expression be like in 2063, fifty years from now?

Sienna Jae Fein blogs at

Earlier on Huff/Post50:

50-Plus Beauty Tip: First, Do No Arm,2013:/theblog//3.2654326 2013-02-11T15:04:33-05:00 2013-04-13T05:12:01-04:00 Sienna Jae Fein
Unfortunately, I seem to belong to the same gene pool as the zaftic model for Rubens' Andromeda paintings. My best friend's genes are more upper arm-friendly. At her niece's recent wedding, she wrapped her slender 62-year-old body in a green strapless gown, displaying smooth, well-toned arms that would not shame a 30-year -ld. She's a regular at her gym, but still....

I'm better off than Granny was at my age, having spent years doing weights, push-ups and Pilates. Nevertheless, I detect an incipient jiggle, and I'm facing a crepey-limbs future with all the aplomb of a homesteader watching a shopping mall rise where her garden used to be.

Arm flab says decrepitude in a way no other body feature does. Droopy breasts -- there's an app for that (see: brassieres), and droopy cheeks and eyelids can be plumped with gel fillers. Arm flab won't be quick-fixed. With arm flab, it's going to be long sleeves forever -- or submitting to brachioplasty, a surgical procedure that modifies upper arm wiggle. Unfortunately, the operation can leave a nasty scar that might rival the bat wing itself.

Bat wings are a heartbreak, but it's hard to imagine they'd be a deal-breaker in the dating game, that a potential partner would say, "she's smart, fun, beautiful, and loving, she's a marvelous conversationalist, she's great in bed, but it just won't work -- she has arm flab."

Here's some bad news: you WILL have bat wing arms -- if not now, by the time you're 65. Here's more bad news: It doesn't matter if you're razor-thin or chubby, female or male; age-related arm flab is an equal opportunity affliction. The good news is that if you're willing to work hard you can minimize the problem. You might try the excellent exercise regime of the First Lady, whose toned arms are an inspiration to mid-life women everywhere, even those who disavow her husband's policies. NOTE: These exercises will not work miracles. If you already have a serious dangle of skin flab, no exercise will make it disappear completely.

As for limiting oneself to long sleeves only -- blouses, dresses, sweaters, t-shirts, coats, jackets, bathrobes, beach robes -- I'm a coward, but you don't have to be. Life is good. Get out there! Reach up, up, up and let the breeze gently rustle those skin folds! Bat-Wing Power!

Sienna Jae Fein blogs at]]>
What if We're Not Gorgeous When We're Old?,2013:/theblog//3.2425942 2013-01-08T14:24:53-05:00 2013-03-10T05:12:01-04:00 Sienna Jae Fein
The founding feminists were more into good jobs than good genes. Germaine Greer, Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan lit a torch and led millions of women out of inequity's darkness. Along the way, that trail-blazing generation took for granted that rock and roll, yoga, hot sex and Clairol would keep them eternally young.

Suddenly, Boomer women are in their 50's and 60's. Their mirrors are offering up jowls, age spots and frown lines. It's a shock they didn't expect, and these ladies are not going gentle into that chin-wattle night.

I'd like to say I'm exempt from the fear of aging or, more to the point, from the fear of looking old. Like most other women in my age group, I long for non-droopy eyelids. I can't afford a facelift, but if I had an extra $18,000, I'd be jumping on that plane to Costa Rica -- or not. Maybe I'd put the money in my grandson's college fund and stay with the fun-filled fantasy of a 10-years-younger self.

Many midlife women have this fantasy. They are the women who emerge from a hot shower, wipe steam from the mirror, place their fingers lightly on their cheekbones and exert a gentle upward pull. They are not all signing up for surgery, but they're not anti-surgery bloggers, either, though the world is not lacking for those. There is a run on blogs condemning facial surgery for creating a look variously described as phony, fake, artificial, frozen, desperate, distorted, fright-faced, synthetic and plain ugly.

A surgical attempt to fool Mother Nature is not an admission of character weakness. It is merely a choice, and according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, more and more people are making that choice. The Society reports that 13.8 million cosmetic procedures were performed in 2011. The figure is expected to rise year by year as the nearly 79 million Baby Boomers move inexorably into their 60's and 70's.

Boomers are the most resourceful and inventive generation in history. Aging is one wall we can't climb over. We accept it intellectually but resist it emotionally. The impulse to create a new way of being 50, or 60, or 70 includes wanting to retain something we all prize -- physical attractiveness. This midlife dilemma, says Nobel laureate Doris Lessing, is one in which "a whole dimension of life suddenly slides away, and you realize that what, in fact, you've been using to get attention, or command attention, has been what you look like."

Now that their physical attractiveness is in jeopardy, Boomers are doing what they've done historically, which is making a new game plan to fit any new situation. In this case, what has come about is a certain defensiveness about beauty and aging. Blog posts claim that Hillary Clinton looks "wonderful" when in fact she is overtired, overweight and now in fragile health after years of arduous shuttle diplomacy. Demi Moore looks "fabulous," though her expression retains grief and embarrassment. Goldie Hawn, caught off guard in a now-viral photo with mottled skin and sagging cheeks is "the new face of aging beauty." Diane Keaton is "stunning" -- and she actually is, at least in her relentlessly Photoshopped L'Oreal photos.

Celebrities are pursued for such statements as, "I'm way hotter now than I was at 40." A more palatable spin on aging in the public eye comes from Michelle Pfeiffer. "Everyone knows you're 50, so you don't have to worry about not trying to look 50," she says. I admire Michelle for adding, "There's a mourning that takes place. I mourn the young girl."

No one can be blamed for wanting to feel better about getting older, but why the protests that older women are just coming into their own, that wisdom is the new sexy, that the new knockout look is wrinkles au natural? We've come to this: claiming that the ravages of time impart a new gorgeousness. This campaign is OK with me, because I stand to benefit on the day that old is deemed beautiful, but it sometimes seems like preemptive attack brought on by the fear that we'll age badly and our peers will not.

Should we redefine beauty? Should we even try? Many 60-year-old women are beautiful, and many -- like many 30-year-olds -- are not beautiful at all. Maybe we should leave midlife and senior women alone and let them make their own road to beauty if they want to and however they want to.

In a 2001 survey by AARP, 86% of women said they would never have cosmetic surgery. The study showed that a significant number of Americans think those who fight time with surgery are rich, vain or desperately dissatisfied. These numbers may have changed in the last decade, given the influence of a youth-obsessed media on public attitudes, though the idea persists that only the vain and the miserable undergo these procedures.

Certainly, there are unhappy people who go under the knife because they think it will help them acquire friends, lovers, social acceptance, a job or a tranquil state of mind. But plastic surgery is increasingly the realm of the well-adjusted who already have those things. For some people, facial surgery is no more audacious, frivolous or desperate than putting blonde streaks in their hair. The smart ones choose outcomes that are subtle and the lucky ones choose doctors who have both skill and empathy.

Aging has got to be OK; we have no choice. We hope for the day when women and men are not devalued for not being young, when they don't feel impelled to "fix" their faces as a hedge against invisibility. The real task is learning to acknowledge how difficult it is to make the transition from who you look like in your mind's eye (a perky young professional?) to whom you have actually begun to look like (your mom?).

It's temporary, this dread of aging. When Boomers finally make peace with our Shar Pei faces, we'll be ready for that fear that puts all other fears to flight -- fear of mortality. That's next up. In a few years, wrinkles will seem like nothing.]]>
Are Your Love Standards Too High?,2012:/theblog//3.2051352 2012-11-06T08:36:00-05:00 2013-01-06T05:12:01-05:00 Sienna Jae Fein
Long-term character contouring is not for you. You crave a ready match and your compatibility list is firm (loves dogs, plays chess, financially independent). But how willing you are to modify or even disregard that list?

I'm not talking about the lists on which phrases such as "always puts down the toilet seat" or "admires my off-key singing" appear. Cuteness, some feel, is welcome diversion from the grueling search for love. Lists I oppose are those dead-serious inventories that regulate whose on-line profile will live and whose will die.

Dating gurus want you to make two lists: the things you insist on and the things you won't stand for. I'm not sure lists facilitate the love quest. They seem, in fact, to imperil it. Right now, all over America, love-seekers are huddled over their Starbucks lattes, wondering how to extricate themselves from time-wasting chats with new acquaintances who don't pass the test. "This woman looked totally hot on line," I imagine one man thinking, "but 10 pounds over my weight limit is 10 pounds too many." Women's brains, too, are sifting silently through lists. Metallica fan: Check. No kids at home: Check. Likes to ski: No. Ivy League: No...

How will anyone who is ruled by a list ever find a satisfactory partner? Recently a friend ended an intensely committed forever relationship -- his fourth this year. When I expressed my sympathies he actually responded, "I should have known not to get involved with her when I saw how far I'd strayed from my list."

The Washington Post Sunday Magazine runs a popular weekly feature called Date Lab. Applicants are matched by age and stated interests. More often than not, the match begins and ends on the debut evening.

When Date Lab daters express disappointment it is almost always because "we didn't have enough in common." The poverty of this itemized list approach is not lost on Date Lab readers. "I've been amazed at the pickiness and pettiness of some of the daters," commented one. "Having things in common is no guarantee at all... Chemistry is the only thing that matters."

Chemistry is that indefinable something that joins two people in giddiness without regard to whether or not they both like bowling. It works differently for the 50-plus crowd than it does for 20-somethings. For the young, chemistry has a fairy tale feeling -- the future is a warm, unhatched egg. For older couples, chemistry depends heavily on how myriad past experiences have shaped the expectations of the two people involved.

As a rule, 50-plus people are experienced in partnering. Their characters, habits, prejudices, skills and dreams are already formed. When that mosaic of attributes finds its complement, it matters not at all that he was born in Egypt and she in Oklahoma, that he is a geologist and she a CPA. Chemistry for mature couples is two histories carefully and contentedly combined.

Date Lab recently tried to match a 59-year-old woman and a 64-year-old man, professionals in complimentary fields. Minutes into the evening she excused herself to go to the ladies' room and never returned. She later told the magazine he was "completely and totally and 100 percent not anything I would be interested in."

If the guy was vulgar and disrespectful, the lady gets a pass, but the evidence is that she simply wouldn't waste a precious hour on someone who doesn't meet her standards. Kindness is important, and to regard every person who occupies the seat opposite as a candidate for life partner is to misunderstand the purpose of a first date. The purpose of a first date is to see if you'd like to have a second.

Relationship building, like other modern endeavors, moves quickly to the next big thing, and happily, list-making appears to be losing favor with some dating experts. Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider, authors of "Not Your Mother's Rules: The New Secrets For Dating," are writing mostly to denizens of the hookup culture (young women yearning to know proper texting etiquette), but the core of their message is patience, and that applies to mature daters as well. Simply enjoy the company of each person you meet, they say, without insisting that he or she matches your idea of a perfect long-term partner.

Technically speaking, none of us is list-less. A woman who had an unfaithful husband is hoping for a man who's inclined to fidelity. The man whose wife squandered the family fortune wants fiscal prudence next time. Widows and widowers often look for people who embody the best traits of their lost spouses. These are qualities not to be assigned to clipboards. The most realistic lists are unconscious, residing in the depths of memory, and what draws one person to another is ultimately unquantifiable, even mysterious.

Most of us would wish for a partner who is gorgeous, agile, and well-heeled. But we know how rarely life delivers up the ideal. How is it not stupendous to find someone who combines average good looks, modest financial assets and flawed physique with a penchant for loving you madly? Less-than-perfect can suffice for the openhearted.

Sienna Jae Fein blogs at

Earlier on Huff/Post50:

I Want to Live Longer, So I'm Having More Sex,2012:/theblog//3.1894539 2012-09-19T10:00:00-04:00 2012-11-19T05:12:02-05:00 Sienna Jae Fein












Take your marks, ladies and gentlemen, get ready, get set......]]>
Got Maturity? Fighting Is Tricky When You're Older,2012:/theblog//3.1833821 2012-08-30T08:03:00-04:00 2012-10-30T05:12:01-04:00 Sienna Jae Fein
"This might be it," my friend chuckled. "Last night she locked him out of the house and threw his suits, shirts, underwear, and shaving stuff out of their bedroom window." We guffawed. Old people acting like -- well, the rest of us. How gross is that?

Now I know that senior love affairs are every bit as physically intense and emotionally draining as those of the young.

Older couples' brawls, not unlike those of their younger counterparts, are usually triggered by minor annoyances. Something that would ordinarily be written off is magnified (she stayed too long at the office; he threw his dirty socks on the floor). Underneath lie the substantive reasons, the ones that are rarely acknowledged.

All couples battle, and sometimes someone packs up and heads for the door. Here's where it gets more complicated for post 50s than it is for younger pairs. Google "breakup" and you'll find a ton of advice for 20- and 30-somethings, all of which adds up to, "Get over him/her and get ready for your next love."

This is good advice for someone who's looking to live out another six or seven decades. But time will be less generous to 50-plus couples. What if a serious fight leads to a permanent break? If you're over 60 you could be alone for the rest of your life. This is especially true if you're a woman.

According to a Harvard Health Publications special report on sexuality and aging, "a woman's chances of finding a new mate in her age bracket dwindles yearly," and because there are only 7 men for every 10 women by the time we reach 65, women are in for a scramble if they want to find a partner. Numbers aren't the whole story, of course, and men face barriers too, including things like performance anxiety and guilt about starting a late-in-life relationship.

No, the answer isn't "Don't fight." Fights happen. The answer is more like, "Keep fights reasonable and get over them fast." Reasonable means:

  • no name calling

  • no cheap-shot accusations of sexual ineptitude

  • no invidious comparison to persons dated earlier, then discarded for cause

Some time ago, before we learned better, I had an unreasonable fight with my live-in partner, whom I like to call PASHA. "You're demanding -- exactly like ________ was!" he stormed. I was dumbfounded. "Get out!" I snarled, and during the hour it took him to angrily pack up his things, I mostly stayed with my "good riddance" feelings.

Because our relationship thrives on a silly humor which, if heard by outsiders would brand us as geezers even older than we actually are, his phoned plea for reconciliation ended with a quip. " won't take me -- they dropped their over-the-hill category," he said wryly, underscoring our shared understanding that "get over it and get ready for your next love" sounds ridiculous at our age.

If you're in a teen-type hormonal tizzy, a measured and careful way of fighting will seem lackluster in the extreme. Those who are young -- and those who imagine they are -- are known to instigate down-and-dirty mêlées purely for the pleasure of making up with equal vigor. "Don't go to bed mad; stay up and fight," Phyllis Diller famously said, and her comment certainly implies some physical intensity -- both in the fight's duration and in its much more fun and juicier denouement. I admit that this recreational style works well for some. It's a time-honored ploy.

PASHA and I are honoring time with our own ploy -- we stay away from pushing the hot buttons. It never leaves our minds, this miracle of finding new love after suffering the deaths of our beloved life partners. Knowing that for us time is compacted, we don't want to waste a minute playing "gotcha" in a game of trivial complaints.

Sienna Jae Fein blogs at]]>