Divorce is often a catalyst for sexual revivals.

They can also stem from jumping back on the apps after a seven-year hiatus, a gym crush moving beyond the weights room or an office flirtation finally taken to the next level.

After the dissolution of clinical sexologist Dr Charla Hathaway’s 20-year marriage, she too found herself seeking more in the bedroom.

“I took a body electric workshop [an erotic exploration class] and I discovered how we can learn to receive big, in our body, and not have to take care of somebody while at times we just receive. That workshop just fascinated my ability to think, sex is so much bigger than that little, wiggle, wiggle pop definition that we’ve got.”

Although some might find have found solace in a new vibrator or summer fling, after the workshop Hathaway decided to take things up a notch.

“Freshly divorced, in a new town Austin Texas, what am I going to do? Teach violin? Teach high school again? Neither one of them in my fifties were pulling me.”

Turns out a random sighting of an ad looking for escorts in the weekly paper was all it took for Hathaway to “jump off the deep end” and into the industry.

Where previously she had taught violin and written for her local newspaper, she soon began working as a sex worker, teaching others about sexuality, writing books and studying for her PhD in sexology.

Now, 20 years on, she’s taking her story to the masses through a one-woman play about finding sex work in her mid 50s, and how empowering it has been as a grandma.

Her play Naked at My Age is about destigmasing and normalising those who teach, work and learn about sex.

Sex worker Dr Charla Hathaway entered the industry in her 50s. Now a grandma in her 70s, she speaks to the Herald about her sexual journey and why she never wants to quit. Photo / Supplied

Telling her son was hard but he now knows, and believes in her “pioneering”, however he is yet to see her play about sex work.

On the other hand, her parents even went to one of her intimacy classes when they were 85, and sat in the front row of her first performance.

“My mum would come to a sexuality conference with me and we’d sit in the hot tub naked and we’d talking about orgasms, ‘Hey mom, 85, do you still have orgasms?”, so it was wonderful having parents like that even though navigating in such a discredited occupation through life has had its challenges.”

Sex work is often thought of as a profession with a best-before date but as time has gone on, Hathaway said she has come to enjoy her body more than ever.

“I have found as I age, I have become more willing to express and be responsible for what I want instead of expecting my partner to read my mind. And I find my partners are usually more interested with age to get into intimacy. So ageing can be this rich territory.

“I’m glad I didn’t discover sex work until my 50s because I probably wasn’t ready before then, but in the 50s, I thought ‘oh I’ve got to hurry up and do sex work in the next five years or I’ll be too old. I have found the older I get, the more valuable I become, the deeper my wisdom.”

In her decades in the industry, Charla said she’s learnt to trust herself and believes she could do this work “forever”.

“I love to teach this to men, women, couples, because we kind of lose it with sensuality and think we should like things really we don’t like and maybe never did like but maybe should like, and all those kinds of baggage and messages and sex is hardly ever talked about between couples. So I’ve learnt to be my own cheerleader, to value myself.

“Unless it’s working for me, it’s not working for anybody.”

 

There are five concerts across Aotearoa, more information is available here.