In Errol Flynn's day guys who had their way
with lots of
women were called "swordsmen." I've been a swordsman
in my time, although I was called something else.
"Raging Hormone" was the handle I sported at the
height of my jousting career.
That summer not long ago, I enjoyed (and was enjoyed by) a different woman almost every weekend. One weekend at the end of this prolific roll I attempted a hat-trick, three scores in a row. Friday night, Meg -- Bingo. Saturday night, Juliet -- Bingo. Sunday night I arrived at Mimi's, and chatting over tea at her kitchen table, I suddenly felt no desire at all. I was spent. It didn't last long. Soon I met Veronica. Veronica was actually friskier than I, and on one of our first dates ripped my shirt open with such vigor that the buttons exploded at the neighboring tables like shrapnel. We couldn't get enough of each other. Our couplings were epic, marathon sessions that extenuated the ecstasy for up to 3 hours at a go. I bore temporary tattoos of her ardor all over my body: hickeys, teeth marks vivid enough for forensic identification, and bruises at tightskinned points of impact.
What stayed with me though, long after we were through, was a nasty case of prostatitis. I experienced soreness in the saddle. Bloody piss. An involuntary wince every time I thought of sex, which meant I looked in pain a great deal of the time. The urologist suggested I might've gotten it from too much sex. Got that right, Doc.
I've been lucky. Medical treatment only once in fifteen years of doing the wild thing. No herpes, negative on my AIDS test. But that's all beside the point now. I don't have sex anymore, haven't in almost 2 years. It's been so long I've almost forgotten what it's like. Sex, isn't that the Latin word for 6? I've become a Born Again Virgin.
This isn't something I planned, or even intended to do like a New Year's Resolution. It's bigger than me, I don't understand it any more than I understood being highly sexed for so many years. I mean, sex is a mystery. I spent childhood without it and then I was flooded with it and turned -- to my amazement -- into a Testosterhinoceros. Then it was gone like a tide, and I was left high and dry.
