A woman’s quest for intimacy, the sequel

IN late 1999, Jane Juska, a retired, long-divorced schoolteacher living alone in a rented cottage in Berkeley, placed a personal ad in the New York Review of Books that has since become famous: “Before I turn 67 -- next March,” the ad ran, “I would like to have a lot of sex with a man I like. If you want to talk first, Trollope works for me.”

The California woman received more than 63 responses to her ad, and had affairs with men ranging in age from 32 to 72. She kept a diary of her bold exploits, which she milked for her first book, “A Round-Heeled Woman: My Late-Life Adventures in Sex and Romance.” The tale of her elder-quest for intimacy brought notoriety and success, even landing her on “Oprah.”

Three years later, Juska is attempting to extend her 15 minutes of fame with a follow-up volume explaining how her first book changed her life. “Unaccompanied Women” is a depressing read on several counts, not least of which is that she has barely enough material to merit a magazine article, never mind a sequel.

Although Juska’s plucky gambit opened up her life, at 73 she is still lovelorn and searching frustratingly for intimacy. She yearns for her 30-ish paramour, dubbed “The Young One” by her readers; but Graham, alas, has married a younger woman -- just a few years younger than he, but 40 years younger than Juska.

Also sobering are Juska’s descriptions of the lonely women who flock to her readings, seeking inspiration and tips on finding love with the proper stranger. She writes that when she “began these readings, in June of 2003, I would leave burdened with the responsibility of having opened a great big kettle of fish. Women whispered their longings, their sins, their failures, their hopes for a better future.”

Thrust into the uncomfortable position of sexpert, Juska feels at a loss. The trouble with giving someone the pulpit is that they think they must preach, whether or not they have something valuable to say.

Against her better judgment, she recommends online dating, something that she avoids as too risky. To underscore her point, she tells a creepy tale about online identity theft, then tries to balance it with the neighbor who “hit a home run. She just married a man she met online. He lives in Germany and she lives here, and he is coming here when the papers get done, and in the meantime she went there to get married to him. Isn’t that nice?”

On the bright side, Juska realizes that her story “seems to have given many people hope.” She describes some of the unaccompanied women she meets in her new role as spokeswoman for senior sex.

At a dinner with a wealthy Iranian divorcee and several divorced Muslim friends, she notes: “The yearning for a sweet man, a kind man, fills us and the air around us, and we grow quiet.” On the other hand, heavy-breathing men call her unlisted phone number or loiter at the end of book signings to offer themselves.

The teacher in her revels in leading group discussions about casual sex (no sex is casual for her, she says) or whether it is possible to love more than one man at a time (yes, definitely).

Juska’s voice, so bracingly fresh in her first book, veers close to whining when she pines over men and the dearth of affordable real estate in her increasingly pricey neighborhood.

Yet she remains sanguine about aging and offers a funny riff renaming its stages after periods in art history: 50 to 60, Baroque; 60 to 70, Surrealist; 70 and over, Masterpiece. She compares loving Graham to renting (“You know you don’t have many rights ... you could be ousted at any time”), and then comments wryly in the book’s best line, “Of course, life itself is a great big rental.”

“A Round-Heeled Woman” struck a chord with readers because Juska dared to write openly (even graphically) about her late-life pursuit of intimacy, becoming in the process a “septuagenarian sex symbol.”

In “Unaccompanied Women” she confesses that she is “as desirous of touch as when I wrote the infamous ad,” but is “sitting out a few innings” and living on memories while her broken heart mends. Bench-warming unfortunately makes for less scintillating reading than playing the field.

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Heller McAlpin is a critic whose reviews have appeared in Newsday, the San Francisco Chronicle and a variety of other publications.