Sex was one of the many things I did because then I must be living a real life

I re-read Rollo’s post You Need Sex a while back for complicated reasons that don’t matter. A lot of water has passed under my bridges since I first read it.

Rollo’s point is that, while, of course a man isn’t going to die if he never has sex

...sex is part of the main course [of life], not a dessert, not some treat at the end of the meal. Masculinity requires that a man have sex to be a Man, to fully embody masculinity. It’s not some unfortunate coincidence that the same testosterone which makes men capable of strength, confidence, determination, perseverance, violence and aggression is also the primary motivating hormone for sex. Men will build monuments to the sky and send fleets of ships to war for sex. It’s not some sweet-treat reward (as women would manipulate you to believe) at the end of the meal, sex is part of the meal of life.

Well, so for some people, is kimchi.

(Kimchi - fermented cabbage, radish and scallions)

While I think that sex is one of the many things a man should try in his life, it's not been my experience that it's a central part of being a man. Or at any rate, of being me.

All I can do is try to explain what I experienced.

I’m a drunk and an addict. I did not drink so I could get the courage to approach a girl and have sex. I was having sex, or going to parties to meet girls, so I could drink. The sex was an excuse for drinking, and when I quit drinking, I didn’t really need the excuse. (Why did I need an excuse to drink? Because I'm an alcoholic, not a degenerate.) I’ve had sober sex, and it’s okay, but it’s kinda like eating eggs without salt.

Sex was one of the many things I did because then I must be living a real life. Like having a garden shed means I’m a normal person. (An Englishman will understand that one.) But my life didn’t feel any more real when I was actually having sex. The best thing about it was all the stuff around it, the way it broke up my routines, and how it could provide a time-out from the rest of my life. Moments like waking up on Boxing Day morning in a girl's rented attic bedroom in north London and seeing the snow on the ground. Stuff like that. And did I mention the booze? (If you get so drunk you can't screw, you're an amateur drinker and should confine yourself to a glass of sherry at Christmas.) Sex was not something I did for me: it was something I did for an image of me.

I'm an addict so I don't do anything for the sake of the thing, I do it for the feeling it gives me. I do kicks. I do intensity. I can do something abstruse for hours on end because it’s fascinating - and sets off the same trance-like state that a number of other activities do. Or I do utter laziness. I can do something because I know I will look at it and think "there's a job well done", which is the essential buzz of any craftsman.

The ACoA bit of my make-up kicks in here as well. One side-effect of that is a streak of co-dependency, a behaviour that leads me into involvements with people who have problems and need rescuing. This is a recipe for drama, frustration, time-wasting, and sometimes short periods of hot sex with women who are just a little bit crazy. I had to get sober to recognise I had this, and it took me many years to accept that I was attracted to the wrong kind of women, and would be much better off not getting involved with them. It takes a few years, but once I got used to a drama-free and reasonably ordered life, it was a lot like sobriety: I wouldn't want to go back, because the few highs do not compensate for the many lows. Emotional sobriety is like physical sobriety: it’s only for people who need it, and normal people should stick to drinking and drama.

Having said all of which, my life would undoubtedly be more fun and various if I was having a series of brief sexual affairs with attractive women under 40 who keep themselves fit, are reasonable company, and who are using me for whatever stuff is going on in their heads, and will move on in a few months.

(Undoubtedly a few weeks with Raquel Juarez would add something to my life.)

At this point I will be told by men and women of all pill-popping colours that I’m not being spiritual enough and that if I was a real man, I would appreciate the depths of sexual pleasure and intimacy possible only with a woman who likes you and respects you and with whom you have a history and yawn yawn yawn. Anyway, in the real world, I’m not going to have a series of flings like that.

And I sure as heck do not want the other thing that’s on offer, because, well, there comes a time when a man has to accept he can’t wear blue jeans any more. (Some men can look good in them at seventy, some need to stop it at thirty.) Same thing goes for getting shit-faced every Saturday night. I’ve reached the stage where I don’t want what I could get and can’t get what I want. So I do without. (If the planets ever align, I will happily do with.) Do not try this if you’re under fifty, because your hormones will give you hell.

I don't know how "masculine men" experience sex. Whatever they experience, it must be pretty freaking amazing, because why else would they think it would be a good idea to get married so they could have it multiple times a week? If they are experiencing what I did, then they are so dumb they shouldn't be allowed to vote. I will never know, and there's no point guessing.

And no, men do not build monuments to the sky and send fleets of ships to war for sex: they build monuments to the sky so they can make a return from the rents, and they send ships to war to clear trade routes and capture towns for the tax revenues. Business is about business, war is about business, marriage was about business when the family was the central economic unit, and ask any hooker, or wife keeping her husband sweet with semi-willing sex, or woman who seduced her husband into marriage and then took him down in the divorce courts, and sex is about business as well.