What we need now is a Viagra-like ad where the silver haired couple give each other the knowing grin, and then before they jump into the hot tub or wander down the beach, there’s a companion ad for Trojans. The message being, we don’t want to rain on your parade but don’t forget the raincoat. You know, the love glove. Best known to an older generation as rubbers.

Here’s a part of AIDS awareness that doesn’t get much focus when people advocate for safe sex. Protection is not just a necessity for the young and the restless. The old and the lusty are also vulnerable. In fact, one of the fastest growing HIV populations is seniors.

As a culture we’ve been slow to accept that seniors have sex. Probably many still prefer to think that older people only  get action at the bingo table. But consider the happy faces on Judi Dench and Bill Nighy in The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel. Helen Mirren and Christopher Plummer in the Last Station.  Meryl Streep and Tommy Lee Jones in Hope Springs.

There’s no age limit on sex, depending on interest and the mechanics. And that is good news. But, as with all things to do with romance, there can be troubling aspects.   As the number of single people aged 55 to 64 in the U.S. has increased, the rate of HIV infection in this group has also climbed.

People are living longer, having sex longer and more are getting sick from HIV.

Ginger Washburn is a Sonoma County AIDS activist who talks up safe sex to all ages, from high schools to retirement communities. Ginger drafted me and other friends to pass out condoms at our town square for an HIV campaign. For World AIDS Day Ginger organized a condom fashion show in which all the clothes were constructed from the familiar tube design.

Ginger said what puts seniors at risk is they think they’re immune. They don’t worry about getting pregnant anymore so why use birth control at their advanced age. Some are under the mistaken impression that if they don’t use drugs or aren’t gay they can’t be infected.

For a lot of people who have been away from the dating game for a long time, HIV is a new concern. Maybe they worried about herpes the last time they were out looking for love, but nothing that can make them as sick as HIV or kill them like AIDS.

Also, they come from a time when people didn’t talk a whole lot about sex before having it. But today, before they proceed with a new lover they need to be asking who’s been tested for HIV and thinking of using a condom, which can be a deflating prospect, with or without Viagra.

But it’s a necessary consideration says Ginger because an older man or woman can be infected with HIV and not know it. She’s known people whose depression, chronic fatigue, fevers, even dementia were misdiagnosed and then turned out to be HIV, which, if discovered in time, can be treated with medication.

The CDC says that of the more than 1.1 million people in the United States estimated to be living with HIV, approximately 20 percent are unaware they are infected.

That’s why the federal government body would like to see HIV testing become routine for all adolescents and adults which is sure to set off a howl by those who don’t want their elderly mother tested anymore than their teenager.

Grandma might think it a darned fine idea. When I was passing out condoms in downtown Sebastopol I gave one to an 80 year old neighbor who said, “Why, I haven’t seen one of those for years.” Then she smiled and slipped it in her pocket.

Katharine Hepburn said she never got over  stage fright. But she reasoned that her nerves gave her an edge, because  she never took a performance for granted.  Laurence Olivier once had such a bad bout of the shakes he had to be pushed on stage by his stage manager.

Carly Simon is said to combat the dread of performing by poking herself in the hands with safety pins. And Barbra Streisand gave up singing live for 30 years after the time she blanked on some lyrics during a Central Park concert.

Public speaking makes more people’s hands sweat than standing at the rim of the Grand Canyon. Meryl Streep says she can still become terrified at the thought of  walking out on stage in front of people.

With all those pros a mass of jitters, think how it must be to be five years old, dressed in yellow and black striped tights and a too-small leotard that is cutting into your shoulders when the music starts and your teacher says go. And it’s show time for bumblebees.

There you are out on a real stage and even though you know that your family, including three sets of grandparents, is in the audience, you can’t see anyone because they’re in the dark and the lights are on you. So, you dance.

The dozen bumblebees twirled and jumped and stayed in a pretty even line-up and no one ran off crying. They were a triumph, as were the ladybugs, the bluebirds, the rabbit and the butterfly and others in the ballet presentation of What Makes a Rainbow by Le Studio Danse in Santa Rosa.

It is a big deal, at any age, to push yourself into the spotlight.  You’re vulnerable.  People are watching you. You’re it. We live in an edited world. Performing live, in real time,  no retouching, no chance for a do-over is an increasingly courageous feat.

We watched our dancer’s strong little body, also built for soccer and gymnastics, move across the stage with determination, focused on the cues coming from her teacher standing in the wings.

I think she might be hooked.

Later, when I asked her what part of the dance she liked best, thinking maybe an arabesque or pirouette, she clapped her hands and said “the applause.”

Unless they’ve blanked it out most people remember the first time they took a turn in front of an audience.  My first  was also ballet in a theater in New Haven, Conn. wearing a green tutu and pink top with gold glitter. I don’t remember what we were supposed to be but I remember worrying I’d throw up on stage.

When I took improvisational acting, one of the scariest challenges I gave myself as an adult, our instructor told us that the audience is always pulling for who ever is up there. They want you to do well. Nobody wants you to screw up, unless you’re the Broadway star’s understudy.

In improv class I watched my friend, a normally reserved poet,  never a hair out of place and dressed by Nordstrom’s, turn into a zany jester when given the spotlight. Same way, a shy kid I know turned into Mr. Cool when he soloed with his high school jazz band, becoming as fluid and smooth as his saxophone.

The bumblebee called her debut better than a birthday party. I didn’t need to tell her that if she thinks about the audience all being naked it’s easier.

Asked by a reporter how she felt about being in this stage of life at age 60 Meryl Streep said in Vanity Fair magazine that she was flipping “grateful to be alive.” Actually she used a word more adamant than “flipping” and more in the character of Jane, her randy character in “It’s Complicated” than her iron-faced nun in “Doubt.”

You could say that if you were the Marvelous Meryl you’d be grateful for what you have, too. Continued amazing career, nice family, no worries about the mortgage, great skin.

In the interview she goes on to explain, “I have so many friends who are sick or gone, and I’m here. Are you kidding? No complaints.”

I mentioned Meryl’s comments to a friend when we met for an end-of-year drink. For her 2009 was more memorably bad than good. She was beat up in a brutal sexual attack that occurred one morning when she was working alone in her office.

She said she fought and punched and bit her attacker because she knew how awful her grandson would feel if anything bad happened to her. She has a couple of scabs on her face but she still laughs like no one else and says that she’s determined to not let the assault get in the way of her freedom. She wears a whistle around her neck and has given them to some of her colleagues, but she continues to walk where she pleases, night and day. And on New Year’s Eve she would party like always, banging pots and pans in the street and drinking champagne.

Then we talked about our usual things, books and movies and mutual pals and I toasted her fierce spirit and convincing scream and we drank to being alive.

Over Christmas we got a unique holiday greeting from a designer friend whose teenage son had some scary surgery at the end of the year to correct scoliosis. The card shows two different X-ray images and is as startling as Frida Kahlo’s painting of her torso sliced in half. The first picture is the young man’s spine yanked to the left and pushed to the right. To further the image there’s a photo of a tangled spaghetti pile of Christmas tree lights. Also pictured is the good news X-ray of a spine notched with pins and staples, but straight. Next to it is a photo of a simple single string of holiday lights. The card’s message reads: “Gratitude, 2009.”

There are probably endless reasons to be flipping grateful even in our world of wars and lost jobs and foreclosed houses and uncertain health insurance and dread of the next guy getting on a plane who knows how to work his bomb. You could spend all your time thinking only about the bad stuff. But I believe in taking inspiration from wherever it comes and the other night on Masterpiece Theatre a dying woman told her young friend that worry is a waste of time.

For more reassurance I suggest a trip to a planetarium like the amazing exhibit at the California Academy of Sciences. Sit in the dark and fly through space and you might take comfort that the sky really isn’t falling, although it does seem to burn up a lot with all those dying stars and new ones coming along. By comparison human beings are very tiny and somewhat insignificant. But we’re still here and for that we can be grateful.

Susan Swartz is an author and journalist in Sebastopol, Ca. You can also read her at www.juicytomatoes.com and hear her Another Voice commentary on KRCB-FM radio on Fridays. Email is susan@juicytomatoes.com