THE OPALS CLUB
The 'Older People Actively Loving Sex' Club
"What do you mean, 'I'd probably qualify.' You mean to have sex with some stranger in your 'secret club?'" The sarcasm in my tone of voice was palpable.
My friend Megan Cook had just shocked and aroused me, but then openly talking about sex usually does that to me, and I'd probably just shocked her. I feigned shock, but secretly hoped she'd continue. I glanced around at the other outdoor tables at Starbucks, but no one else was paying any attention to us.
Megan was on the plus side of sixty, and I was only a couple of years away from that birthday. We neither looked nor felt like we were aging. We had been blessed with the kind of genetics that made us look at least twenty years younger, and at a quick glance on good days we looked thirty years younger. When I was out with my twenty-seven year old daughter, we were sometimes referred to as sisters, remarks that did wonders for my ego and self-image.
While our natural hair color would have been a start on salt and pepper, we had become dishwater blonds, a hair color that gave us a natural look and added to our youth. Our skin remained soft and unwrinkled, well, except for around my eyes a little. We were thin, exercised regularly, had curves in mostly the right places and then some, ate right, and if I say so myself looked sexy. Megan was a divorcee, and I was a widow.
I guess as a pair, we'd found the fountain of youth. Megan talked about how we were resilient, resourceful, and had a young attitude all the time. I knew I didn't think anything like what I thought I would at fifty-seven when I'd been much younger. I felt youthful and vigorous. I also felt horny, a condition I thought women over forty ceased to experience.
Megan explained about her Club in a lowered voice, "Well, it's not a secret organization, but we do try to keep our name out of the news, in part because there would be so many people who would want to join that don't qualify."
I gestured with my hand for her to say more. I'd started to smile at the idea of this special dating club of hers where sex had some kind of primary role.
Megan laughed and whispered, "We call it the OPALS Club, but for a long time we went without a name and we just referred to our group as
The Club.
OPALS stands for
Older People Actively Loving Sex.
Basically, it's an over fifty-five club of nice men and women like you who still feel sexually active and vital, and who want to meet similarly inclined people for discrete but satisfying sex. Oh, lots of other stuff happens too: kayak trips, theater nights, concert trips, and one group even flew out to Las Vegas for a long weekend. There's stuff like that going on all the time too."
I said to Megan in a hushed tone, "So my remark a few minutes ago about feeling horny most of the time qualified me?" I thought most of the world was horny all the time, so why would that alone qualify me for some exclusive club. Could you be sleeping and horny at the same time? Based on some of my dreams, I guessed the answer was a solid 'yes.'
Megan said, "Oh, no. While sex is one of the main focal points of the Club, there are a lot of other qualifications, and from what I know about you I think you'd be a welcome member."
Megan and I had met on the board of a local charitable organization when we put on a fund-raising gala. We liked each other, and developed a separate friendship that was now two years old. We'd become each other's best friends, but now I was learning about this unspoken side of her life.
"What are the other qualifications?" I asked with some degree of uncertainty about whether I wanted to belong to a club that focused mainly on sex. I briefly had visions of some large room full of couples fucking madly away beneath a sign that said 'Clubhouse.'
Megan said, "There are a lot of qualifications actually. I'll see what I can remember. You have to be handsome or pretty, at least in the eyes of most club members, and I think you're stunning; even at your age you still get guys in their twenties turning around to look at you.
"Oh, I do not!"
"Oh, yes you do. Let's put that to the test. Go over the corner and act as though you're waiting for someone to pick you up. I bet you'll get checked out at least once within a couple of minutes."
The corner was only twenty feet from our outside table at the coffee shop, so I rose and went to the corner to humor my friend. A block away, the traffic light turned green and the next group of cars started to roll past my corner on the way into the center of town. I adopted my best 'Where's my ride?' posture, and looked at the oncoming traffic but didn't turn around to look at Megan.
After the dozen or so cars passed, I shrugged, and walked back to the table. "See, no one stopped or gawked at me."
Megan waved her cell phone at me, "Oh, babe. You got that wrong. At least four men turned. One guy almost caused an accident looking back at your cute little ass. Here, watch the video I took of you."
I stared down at Megan's cell phone, and she kept saying, "See. There. There's another one. Look at him turn around; the guy in the red car had to jam on the brakes to avoid hitting the car in front of him. See, there's yet another."
"OK. OK. Sometimes people look at me, but that doesn't always happen."