Remove Your Dentures First

FEELING USED IN BELLEVILLE, ILL. is an 84 year-old woman who has been a widow for ten years. She wrote in to Dear Abby:

I am torn about accepting requests from a man I used to work for to "come and visit" him. This is not an invitation for a date -- dinner, a movie, a drive. It's nothing but "a visit."

This happened before when I was divorced and living alone. The "visit" consisted of hugging, kissing and sex. That's all.

Booty call.

It made me feel cheap.

1) Did you not enjoy it? If you were just showing up because he is your boss, that was either sexual harassment or you trying to get an advantage at the office.

2) What’s the price supposed to be? (The correct answer is... marriage. But if you put out for dinner, then don’t try to make it sound like anything other than what it is.)

Although I would love to be kissed and hugged by a man as handsome as George Clooney, I feel he is trying to use me.

I’m not sure what she means by this. Either he’s very good looking, or his treatment of her would be okay in her book if he was.

There is never any mention of a "date."

Of course there isn’t. He’s getting what he wants as it is. If you aren’t, then don’t go.

Dear Abby responded:

The next time "Prince Charming" calls and asks you to pay a house call, smile into the receiver (which will make your tone warmer and friendlier) and tell him you'd be "delighted" to see him -- when he picks you up, takes you to dinner or a movie or even for a drive.

Notice that Dear Abby didn't tell her not to fornicate. She just tells her how to negotiate to get the other things she wants. Well, if that’s how the game is played, then he's going to move on. At that age, the numbers are decidedly in his favor as women outnumber men. Let's see... today's women in their mid or early 80s were 40 or so in the late 60s/early70s, when the "sexual revolution" was in full swing. There are probably some rather easy ones out there. And the letter writer can sit at home watching "Matlock" and "Murder, She Wrote", still not going to dinner or a movie or a drive and not having sex.

My grandfather outlived my grandmother in senior living. The women were like vultures, waiting for my grandmother to pass away.

It's nice to know the octogenarians are still getting it on. I hope my wife and I make it that long. In senior living, my grandparents had their own bedrooms but that could have been for the actual sleeping.

Yeah, I believe sex outside of marriage is a lesser experience and devalues sex (and is morally wrong). But I think a lot of people toss around the words "cheap" and "used" inappropriately, trying to describe their feelings of wishing things were different or wanting something to be more than it is. Sex is supposed to be consensual, and when people keep engaging in casual sex and then saying they feel used or cheap, then I think it has more to do other things than the sex itself - like with this letter writer, who apparently wouldn't feel used as long as the guy drove her around before bedding her.