I’m in Berlin on Saturday May 18th doing a German launch for my novel ‘Midlands’! Tickets (free) here.
As I age, I value frivolity. It is tricky not to get worn by life and its vicissitudes, and in maturity it seems a genuine achievement to me to keep a certain instinctive playfulness. The light-hearted way that my wife, if she sees that I’m down, schedules a trip to a gaming arcade – there is something to cultivate in that. Yet there is one aspect of frivolity that I do not want to countenance in midlife it’s the evident desire of so many middle-aged men to sleep with younger women. Why?
Now, of course, I’m not pretending that I don’t know why; we all know why. Young people are hot. Remember all those 20th-century male novelists who took as their plot ‘I am a happily married man, with a dutiful wife, and a settled career, and I am absolutely prepared to blow all this for five weeks with a 25-year old’. Personally I never had sex with many 25-year olds even when I was one – in those years I preferred German grammar and snowy walks in the Black Forest – but I certainly remember when I did it being an enjoyable experience. I remember feeling that my own 25-year old body would be for someone else an enjoyable experience.
Yet as I get older, and this has certainly been increased by actually interacting with the younger generation, the desire for younger partners has entirely receded. Though I still get it on a physical level, the idea that any but the most exceptional young individual could have the cure for what ails me seems ever more plainly ridiculous.
Now, I should immediately caveat that by saying I am married to a younger woman, who, when I first met her was... awkward pause... 26. And I was 34. She was, however, ruthlessly level-headed, from a very tough country, and more saliently for my argument there was also absolutely no comparison in terms of sophistication with the person she has become now. Of course, she’s still beautiful, always will be, but what’s important is the ongoing enrichment of her character. She takes no shit, her English is by now perfect and she’s made serious career strides. Everything about her that has got better comes from her having grown up.
The idea that I would leave this version of her for a younger woman – myself being now older and crumblier and arguably verging on having too much life experience – is baffling to me. Why would I want to start that whole process of helping someone develop again? There are things you know at 41 that you can’t possibly know, indeed, barely grasp at 25, and that gathering of wisdom cannot be measured against someone being in a newer physical form.
Surely a man at midlife can cast his own mind back to being in their mid-20s. What did you know about anything back then? For my part I was in Freiburg, struggling with anxiety and experimenting with new twists on a hand-to-mouth existence. I was a somewhat primitive version of who I am now. And even today, as I minutely monitor each twinge of physical decline, I am still doing my utmost to improve.
In that spirit, 25-year old me would have found it ridiculous to be seen as anyone’s answer in life. Granted, I wouldn’t have been and – for full disclosure – wasn’t averse to having the odd sexual experience with older people. Loved it, to be honest. But the idea that I would be in a position to offer some kind of moral salvation to a 50-year old just because my buttocks were firm! It reminds me of what Lucy Warner, one of Philip Roth’s younger girlfriends, said to him; ‘I can’t save you, Phillip. I’m only 22.’