T M I

I used to have a couple of female friends who talked candidly, and at length, about their sex lives. It wasn't 'sex chat,' in any way, shape or form, although the details were usually rather explicit. Even so, I wasn't offended, and I didn't mind listening.

On the other hand, I had another female friend whose stories of sexual exploits, although far less salacious, always had me fumbling on my iPod for Tchaikovsky's 1812 Overture, so I could turn it up full blast.

(In my own family, discussion of sex and sexuality was strictly off-limits, as you might expect in any family in the late fifties and early sixties – although you might also think my folks would be a little more open about it than most, given that both of them were willing to fuck pretty much anything that walked on its hind legs.)

Anyway, you might want to put the 1812 Overture on before reading further.

For about the past ninety days, my libido has been functioning at roughly the same level it did when I was thirty, and I am at a loss to explain why. It's fairly frustrating, since I am in fact not thirty, but fifty-eight, built more like a Kay County farmer than a sophisticated, urbane metrosexual, and I am profoundly exhausted with the company of other human beings – even willowy, ethereal ones. I am, in other words, a lousy candidate for random sexual encounters.

The longest I was ever 'master of my domain', to use the Seinfeldian euphemism, was close to two years. I was depressed, heavily into meditation and Buddhist philosophy, and, as the coup de grace, affected by some sex drive-killing blood pressure medication. Everything still worked, biologically speaking, but I just didn't care. If Milla Jovovich had landed in my back yard wearing nothing but a parachute, I would have called her a cab. ("Milla - you're a cab!")

Even though I was still in love with my willowy Buddhist friend, I was mostly interested in sitting on a hillside with her, watching the clouds. I wanted a relationship, but I wanted it to be mostly intellectual – someone on my own level or close to it with whom I could have interesting and stimulating conversation, or just quiet evenings saying and doing nothing, while she walked around in gauzy, floaty clothes.

My perfect woman,
people tell me. 

Now, suddenly, it's like some sort of fog lifted. Unfortunately, there's not much I can do about it. As I've said many times in the past, one can realize that he's attracted to people who are not 'appropriate' for him, but that doesn't change the fact that he's attracted to them.

I am attracted to women who are, to put it bluntly, too good-looking for me. They're out of my league.

As I've written before, I am apparently 'supposed' to be with a burly, stocky, angry but gregarious woman – an "Aunt Bee" type – who will whip my fat stockman's ass into shape. But even with a thirty-year-old's libido, that still doesn't appeal to me in the least.