Why more geezers are getting it on

“This group came of age at a time when it was OK to enjoy sexuality, make movies about it, and sing songs about it,” says Melanie Davis, coordinator for SaferSex4Seniors.org and co-president of the sexuality and aging consortium at Widener University. “Boomers aren’t about to shut down their sexuality simply because society expects older adults to be sexless.”

That’s why Americans in their 60s, 70s, and 80s are having sex—and talking about it. “The people who were somewhat older and somewhat younger experienced ‘make love not war,’” says Pepper Schwartz, 67, AARP’s sex and relationships expert and the author of books such as Finding Your Perfect Match, The Lifetime Love and Sex Quiz Book, and Love Between Equals. “Those lessons of life, that cultural revolution, didn’t end with their youth.”…

The AARP’s most recent survey, conducted in 2009, found that 28 percent of respondents had sexual intercourse at least once a week and 40 percent at least once a month; 22 percent masturbated at least once a month. (Willard just chose to self-stimulate more publicly than most.) The AARP survey also found that three in 10 male respondents had some degree of erectile dysfunction—but medicine came to the rescue. “They’re the Viagra generation,” says Dr. Paul Turek, a urologist who is director and founder of the Turek Clinic, a men’s-health facility in San Francisco. Older men can be like an older Ferrari, he says. “It’s simple biology and simple mechanics. You fix it all up, and they run really hard.”