By Elizabeth Green
I’m watching the Grammys and I’m loving the country music gals singing so beautifully and remembering it wasn’t always cool to love country music. But then, in my family it wasn’t cool for me to even have a voice. I was the forgotten sister of Britain’s most controversial billionaire and my place was to stay in the shadows and keep quiet. I truly thought I wasn’t even allowed to have an opinion. I just found out I can – and I’m free.
Now I can do anything I like. I’ve been so busy not being 72, I almost missed what’s possible. I have limited time left and I can do anything I like from now on. I always could, just didn’t know it and nearly missed the moment.
I can wear what I like, get a tattoo – I already got a nose piercing in India, where I sat at the feet of the guru. I can sleep with who I like, I always did, and now I don’t have to feel bad about it anymore. It’s a double standard: I’m a slut if I sleep around, but men, whoah do your thing!
I can be vegan and not care what anyone thinks, shift weights, and speak my truth which I have just done with my new memoir `Not in the Script’. I feel loved, wanted, trusted.
I just closed my restaurant and now I can start another business, learning how to really do it right. What you ask, why aren’t I just spending my time knitting?
Even my sister-in-law, the rich one, laughed when I once mentioned knitting. The same sister who agreed I wasn’t stupid, even though I wasn’t good enough to join most of their family celebrations.
So I’m a petite, white, privileged, Englishwoman in New York and now I’m old. I’ve just been outed. I talked up a storm with a lovely man in England and yesterday he found out my age. I wasn’t hiding it, it just never came up and he was shocked.
The funny thing is I never talk about my age because in my heart I’m 21. “Well, I’m 72 and still the same me”, I told him. Same woman as last week, still warm and wonderful and beautiful and funny. Just me.
I’m the face of Sex and the City at 70. Not just the outside, but the inside too. Of course, I won’t be around then, so I’m going to give you a quick glimpse now.
Who said only men like sex? Who said only men think about sex? Men said that, to make themselves feel important and special.
Sex makes me feel alive, and wanted and relaxed, it’s my heroin, my vodka and much less addictive.
Do you know men on some of the dating sites I frequent put their age up, not down? Why? It seems as if they want to be with older women because someone told them how fabulous we are, and no birth control needed!
I met a ‘47’ year old in the summer who turned out to be 32 and knew I wouldn’t give his profile the time of day.
And now I discovered that ‘no’ is the new ‘yes.’ I mean, ‘No. I’m not interested in meeting you,’ said over the internet, Zoom or Facetime. No is still no for unwanted sexual advances.
So when I told him I’m not interested, he bombarded me, until I ended up with dick pics. No, I’m not affronted, just amused, slightly titillated and … flattered too.
After all, of course I want to be wanted.
Was I really a housewife in leafy suburban London some years ago? No, it’s not a myth, the streets are lined with trees, and I was responsible for the tree outside my house.
I keep explaining to people after my sojourn to India there was just as much sex behind the curtains in north London, as in India at the ashram among the sannyasins, as I meditated with Bhagwan Rajneesh. He was known as the ‘sex guru.’
True, I took being married seriously, sadly but seriously, for 23 years. I loved my kids and stayed there until they were grown. But afterwards, it was my time to finally have fun. My young, long time Sri Lankan friend came over and celebrated his crush on me and we made love. He was sweet and soft skinned and thrilled and happy. Me too! And we are still friends.
In India I had a wonderful love affair, but he was married and I was girlfriend number two, so I retreated to a commune in Devon. The encounter group was run by a charismatic Black American man. On the last night, as the group ended, I took a lovely young man to my bed. He was 18, I was 33, I was his first sexual encounter. We had a great time, delicious, deep in the countryside, we awoke to birdsong outside the window.
There was no shame or embarrassment here as this was an open place, a place for self-expression. The next morning his father greeted me and thanked me. I felt a little discomforted as his Trinidadian father was a church minister.
“Thank you so much for teaching him and taking him under your wing, I just want to thank you,” he said.
I was in awe of his generosity. His kindness and acceptance.
So let’s not talk about age. Because in my heart I’m still young. Most of my new New York friends are younger than me.
This is not my country of birth. I arrived knowing no one, wishing for a fabulous new start, and with no history here. I never really liked Englishmen and now I had Americans.
August 2017, I met a young African American guy at his job, they called him upstairs to come and quell the upset I was having and stop the scene I was creating.
My left brain was intent on causing havoc, my right brain, if that’s the right way round, was noticing how attractive he was. He noticed me too.
Three years later we are still friends, and yes, he stayed many nights. He was my visitor during lockdown last year from March to July. My ‘booty’ call, as they called it on ‘Sex and the City’.
I like – I need – to be hugged and kissed and made love to. Sometimes ‘just sex’ is not enough at any age, not when you’re looking for love. Its how Carrie Bradshaw described: “real love, ridiculous, inconvenient, consuming can’t-live-without-each-other-love.”
British-born author and entrepreneur Elizabeth Green is the sister of well known and controversial billionaire Sir Philip Green. In November 2020, she published her memoir, Not In The Script: The Black Sheep in the Billionaire’s Family. Elizabeth moved to New York and became a restaurant owner in the West Village, creating a plant-based bistro called Planted. She now also focuses on her writing career.
