Abstract
“As you get older, your body finds more and more ways of betraying you.” In the early 1980s, after a few drinks, a senior colleague said that to me at a Rutgers English Department party. I was approaching 40, and did not quite know what he meant yet. Now, at 71, I do. The most irreversible betrayal starts to happen in the groin after a man passes 50 or 60. By their late 70s, most men find that their penises have lapsed from “Just Do It” to “Just Say No.” As comedian George Burns remarked, “Sex at age 90 is like trying to shoot pool with a rope.”
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© 2014 Àngels Carabí and Josep M. Armengol
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Leverenz, D. (2014). Aging Beyond Masculinities, or, the Penis as Failed Synecdoche. In: Carabí, À., Armengol, J.M. (eds) Alternative Masculinities for a Changing World. Global Masculinities. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137462565_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137462565_5
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