A snapshot of my sexuality

You see I’m crap on my own. Maybe everyone is. I sure as hell know I am. I’m kind of lonesome at the moment. I left home at 18, and since then have lived constantly with people (friends – girlfriend – wife) apart from the searing shock of 6 months in 2005 when my marriage broke up, and I found myself alone for the first time.

At that time I launched my body, soul and intellect into a recovery program – Which looked to my close friends more like a desparate search for intimacy with random women. Some of you readers will be familiar with this because you read my blog at the time – It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Picture a man who breaks his ankle but who screams, shouts and bounces around the room to effectively drown out the pain, and that’s a pretty close metaphor.

So anyway, back to the now. Here I am, living alone again, only this time I have no major personal disaster to frame my response. I’m just a 30 year old single man, sitting in his flat. And wow, I’m lonely. I wrote (in a pseudo-intellectual whine) last week about how I’m transferring my loneliness into shopping. But really it get’s much worse than that.

Male sexuality can be a very ugly thing. Mine too. Last night about 6 I started seriously looking for prostitutes to come to my apartment. I spent an hour or so looking at thumbnail images of women who sell sex for a living and arrived at a shortlist of 3, from 2 websites. I rang the first place, which despite having a London number rang with a foreign ring tone. The lady who answered called me “darling” and “babe” and the conversation was reminiscent of those I occasionally have with 16 year old saturday girls in shops – Where I suddenly realise I’m a grown up and seen as such.

She talked me through who was available tonight. My number one choice was an Italian lady called Rose. She could be there in 40 minutes. Within an hour I could be having sex with an attractive woman, who sells that commodity (but it’s me paying and sealing that commoditisation) and whom I have never met. The spanner in the works was that she cost £400 for 2 hours. UK ATMs only let you get out £250 per day, so that was out. I rang the second place and got a much more business-like woman on the phone. The woman I liked was available immediately, but it would need to be within the hour as she was their most popular woman and was booked until the early hours – Put another way, she’d be havings sex with several desparate men like me tonight. She would do a single hour – I could afford her services – But suddenly the reality of being one of many desparate men on a rainy night in London hit home. I told her I’d ring back, but never did. I’m looking for intimacy. Sex, which is intimacy’s brash older sibling, won’t help. Particularly if I’m paying the other party to be there.

I went back to the PC and pulled up some porn. Specifically this site. I’ve used the site several times. Women are “bitches” and ”sluts”. Being sexy is their crime, being fucked their punishment. It’s acutely depressing, and if you switch your brain off, rapidly arousing. I wanked myself off, lying on my back on the sofa. I let my sperm land on my belly and lay there watching my penis retract until the sperm got cold and a drip had snaked down towards the leather.

I filled the dishwasher, cooked some food (an extravagant steak for one), channel surfed, vacuumed and invented a new game I’ll call ‘kick a hacky sack over my armchair and into the fruit bowl’. The gentle, knawing unease, my persistant friend for the last couple of months, continued.

Later I tried a new tack. I joined a website for casual sexual encounters. I placed a classified ad in which I tried to balance a certain sexual knowingness, a light-heart and confidence. All three were evasions. The underlying message was “please come and have sex with me, then let’s hug in bed”. Now I think of it, I would probably have been better served by using that exact line. I posted an intimate picture and got two immediate responses mocking my penis. I posted another ad, this time a gay one (I’m basically straight, but did once have a gay thing, maybe I could have fun trying this again). Did any man want to come and corrupt a straight man? Many did. Six responses in an hour, and many more this morning. All written in a brisk and intimidating gay language with which I’m not familiar, and which turned me off – “7.5 uncut hairy”, etc. The pictures (there were many) were enough to underline that while I like hard penises, I really don’t find the rest of a man attractive.

Meanwhile the straight ad yielded it’s only serious response. A woman who ”can hold a conversation but we don’t need to talk too much”. She asked for my number, which I sent, but I don’t expect to hear back.

By this time I was checking and re-checking ads, checking emails, looking at pictures of prostitutes and so on, in a sort of depressing heavy rotation. In the background a documentary competed for my attention – About male Japanese ‘hosts’ who make lonely Japanese women fall in love and bankrupt themselves on champagne and false declarations of love.

At 1am, defeated and pathetic,  I shuffled off to bed.   

I went shopping today

I went shopping today, in Kingston Upon Thames, which is on the South West tip of London. I quite like Kingston, it has perfectly adequate shops, winking their neon in a drab suburban kind of way. I went in existential mood, feeling a little lonely. 

Before I go on I should say that I’m a deeply conflicted man – I know material acquisition won’t make me happy, because it never has, and I know that fashion, technology toys, magazines and so on, are all selling an unattainable myth – Some ersatz material nirvana. I know all this, yet I’m the most grasping material fucker I know. I’m legendary amongst my friends for my prodigious accumulation of expensive stuff. I earn quite a lot of money, and with no children, mortgage or fear for the future to reign me in, I piss it all away, month after month, year after year.  

But back to today, I walked through the main shopping centre doing some of my best people watching. Attractive couples walked arm in arm, gently crushing one another with colossal expectations, while the credit card companies smirk. However my eyes were drawn to the singles, the lone-shoppers, those crushed souls of my age or older, self-medicating with plastic money. They didn’t look well, and neither am I. What was I doing there? As I steadily checked out the pretty ladies, occasionally holding momentary eye contact, I realised that my shopping is nothing more than a sublimation of my sexuality. Not my sex life, but my sexuality. I’m feeling lonesome at the moment. I need a warm someone in my life and in my bed. I miss intimacy and I miss the ex who I myself dumped 2 months ago. I miss flirting, I miss exhibitionism, I miss morning sex, I miss knowing someone who knows me, I miss the smell of female skin. My sexuality is confined to a small masturbatory box and it’s breaking free in unusual ways. I was dragging thrills from the sexiest stuff, gleaming like Amsterdam’s finest, in well lit windows displays. 

I wandered into the Apple shop, a sexual retail experience which puts Ann Summers to shame. Brash teenagers shamelessly caressed the sleek toys. Through a crowded room my eyes fixed on a beautiful model – The Mac Mini. I held back, waiting to be approached. Apple do foreplay. You don’t pick up a box, take it to the counter, pay and leave. Instead a woman, looking not unlike my ex-wife with tired eyes but a certain appeal, appeared to show me the ropes. I made slow and tactile acquaintance with my new special friend. Vaguely aroused, I reached for my wallet and sealed the deal. I felt wonderful for ten minutes. A ‘pick-me-up’ smoothie took care of a further twenty.   

On my sofa this evening