MM and I enjoy an enthusiastic sex life. She is an incredible lover. I have found that my sex-life has gotten better as I have gotten older. I used to think, when I was a young man, that it could never get better. The idea of having incredible sex at 47 seemed beyond my callow youth’s ability to comprehend. I know that I am not physically the same as I was when I was 17. I used to make love four or five times with no real refractory period back in the day. Those days – daze? – are gone. I remember seeing a cartoon when I was a kid. It showed a couple of kids having intercourse. The caption read, “The only substitute for experience is being 16 years old.” I am no longer a teen. I am a more reserved middle-aged man. I have experience.
I’ve made reference to my sexual past. I went through a period of being something of an addict. I was not indiscriminate. I don’t know what began that short-lived period of debauchery, but I recall that when I began to see women as prizes rather than people that I knew that it was time to stop. It was the hunt that thrilled me. It would not be uncommon to have three or four partners a week. I have always had a strong sex-drive, but this was beyond that. SL and I enjoyed good sex, even for a period after we divorced. But when we divorced I went off the deep end. She was much more experienced than I was; I always felt threatened by her several partners, her vast experience (my period of debauchery notwithstanding), and her obvious enjoyment of sexual excess.
Following our divorce, I began to descend into addictive behavior again: I was working at a social services agency. I began to look for potential partners for what I blithely thought of as “an evening’s entertainment,” and helped myself to a young woman who was either 18 or 19. I had no real interest in her as a person; it was the game of getting her into bed and then having her do what I wanted that was the thrill. When I looked at that, I realized that I was slipping into a behavior that could be dangerous, spiritually, emotionally, and physically. I stopped completely until I met MM.
I had sublimated my sexuality into all other parts of my life. I was no longer experiencing the level of sexual tension that I felt daily before. But it also meant that I had sublimated much of the passion from my life, too. When MM and I began to be intimate I experienced some difficulty reconnecting with that part of me. I think that it died and had to be raised from the dead, reborn in an act of loving rather than just fucking. Things are better now, but that came with the development of trust and time together. What has marked our sexual life together is a sense of loving and care that is greater than mere sexual passion. This is what I mean when I say that I have become more experienced. I do not mean a given number of partners. I mean a sense of life that helps to see all parts of life as expressions of why we are here and who we are as individuals and parts of a greater common union of humanity.
Yes, MM has the sexual technique of a goddess. She is incredible in bed. But much – if not all – of that is born out of our loving each other. I love the feeling of knowing that our bodies have physical limits, but not knowing where she ends and where I begin. For that moment, if only as a metaphor in action, we are as one flesh, one coupling that intimates a greater unity. It is the act of loving that makes it incredible. To be with her I am happily monogamous.
The truth is that most of us fuck pretty much in the same way: boy gets hard, girl gets wet. The difference is not in the technique so much as it is in the emotional attachment. True, some of us are more skilled in some areas. Some of us have greater attraction to some partners than others. I recall meeting a woman years ago. It was a casual meeting, but the physical attraction was overwhelming. The sex was powerful and passionate, though empty. When it was over, there was silence that comes of having no common experience. It was empty: a sad parody of true human passion. Wham, bam, thank you ma’am; then go home and shower.
No, I have come to a point that I have had done with junk-food sex.
It is truly a holy thing, this coming together and suspension of time and space that occurs in the most intimate spaces in our selves and stands apart from the ordinary time of life. As a holy thing, it must be revered and practiced with reverence. Only then does fucking become love-making. Like a sacrament, the ordinary elements of bread and wine become the body given for you… this is my body, given for you, dear one.
For you alone…
