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Sex gets funnier with age

Sharone Maldaver isn’t worried about vaginal atrophy.The 66-year-old knows there’s more to life than “worshiping…
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Sharone Maldaver isn’t worried about vaginal atrophy.

The 66-year-old knows there’s more to life than “worshiping penetration,” and she’s telling the world.

The self-described Yukon senior citizen wrote a 15-minute comedy piece for Nakai’s 2006 homegrown festival — “jesting and raging about aging” — and now, she’s taking it to Winnipeg, Manitoba.

“Oh my goddess,” said an excited Maldaver, discussing the upcoming trip.

It’s her first professional comedy gig.

Performing at Femfest, “a theatre festival featuring plays by women for everyone,” Maldaver’s piece on menopause fits the bill.

It’s not just for and about women’s sexual transformation, she said.

Sex, Drugs and Aging also references the “male passage.”

Males go through a change too, said Maldaver.

“And it’s not just the red-sports-car syndrome.

“I mean, how many people have heard of Viagra?”

The main problem with male menopause, called andropause, is that men hardly acknowledge it, she said.

“They either get wild and crazy, or very introverted, because they don’t know what’s going on with them.”

Maldaver’s piece evolved from a book tour promoting Menopower: A Loving Guide to Your Menopause Years … and Beyond. She’d written the book after going through her own “very lengthy, long, harsh time with menopause,” she said.

She toured the inside passage with her tome giving presentations.

“And the more funny I made them, the more the serious message got across,” she said.

Take hot flashes — they get Maldaver all, well … hot.

“I had my first hot flash at 60,” she says in her show.

“And I think shedding my clothes in public is titillating.”

It’s all about attitude, she said.

Menopause is just another phase of human development, “and we all got through puberty, didn’t we — or most of us did anyway,” she said.

The biggest problem with menopause is the pusher man, in the form of big drug companies.

“The pharmaceuticals take these things — hot flashes, vaginal atrophy, erectile dysfunction — and make like they’re permanent, like they’re the end of the world,” said Maldaver.

“But I know they’re not permanent.

“Life is changing all the time, and if you spend all your time worrying about aging and death, you take yourself out of the present moment.”

Maldaver, when she’s not making a mockery of menopause, sells clothing and handicrafts created by a women’s collective in Mexico that’s part of the armed revolutionary Zapatista movement.

She lives in school bus in Marwell, a far cry from the downtown Toronto real estate agent she was in a past life.

“I was totally stressed out,” she said.

So at 40, Maldaver quit her job and moved to Mexico.

“I never went back to that way of life,” she said.

But even as a real estate agent, Maldaver was theatrical.

“I had purple hair,” she said.

“As a little girl my mom named me Sarah Heartburn, after Sarah Bernhardt.”

Performing is gratifying, she said.

“It’s rewarding to have people appreciate the way you think, the way you feel and the conclusions you’ve come to about life.”

Maldaver’s conclusions are simple — have fun, eat healthy food, stay fit, spend time with good friends and be there for people.

“And I love making people laugh,” she said.