Drawing on literary fiction from North and Latin America, England and India, the paper analyzes the intersecting layers of possessive desire and soulful longing in the sexual imagination of the aged protagonists of the novels as they seek to navigate the still powerful current of Eros in the last stage of their lives. The sexual imagination of the elderly person is not only an artifact of individual life history and the stage of his life cycle but also of her cultural narratives that valorize one or the other intersections of desire and longing.

The paper also suggests that because of its iconic existence for centuries and a wealth of mythology around it, the Indian lingam, combining both male and female sexual energies, is perhaps better suited than the Lacanian phallus as a symbol that counteracts the loss of sexual vitality.