Instead I had indulged myself in plenty of food and drink totake my mind off it. But smoking was by no means the only thing on my mind. Asmy health returned, with it came my libido, which left me in a somewhatfrustrating situation.
To put it in a nutshell, I wanted sex. I needed sex. Andunlike most of the other things that I could have in my strange reverse world,sex was the one thing that was more, not less, difficult to come by.
For the average middle-aged divorcee it probably wasn’t thateasy to begin with, especially if you came equipped with balding grey hair anda pot belly.
Although I scrubbed up reasonably well now that my body hadreturned to reasonable health, I faced the problem that the only way I wasgoing to have any sex was if I could make it happen within the span of a singleday.
I couldn’t even remember the precise details of what sex waslike, though I hoped that if and when it did come along I would know what todo. I’d managed to drive the car without any problem, so hopefully sex would bejust as straightforward.
I’m sure I’d read somewhere that sex was just like riding abike – once you’d learnt, you never forgot. All I needed now was to find out ifit was true.
Purely in the interests of research, as they say, I spent agreat deal of time looking at internet porn. My hormones went through the roofas I fantasised day and night about women’s bodies and the things I would liketo do with them.
I was like a teenager, constantly on heat, desperate to losemy virginity. It had become an all-consuming obsession and, until I could getthis monkey off my back, I could barely think about anything else.
I wondered if I had any female “friends with benefits” fromthe past who might be able to help me out, but a search through my emails andphone messages proved fruitless. The messages on my phone only went back abouta year, and were pretty uninteresting, all told.
Other than a couple in the summer relating to some sort ofcharity golf event, the rest were mostly promotional texts from companies I hadpresumably bought things from in the past.
Most of my emails were the same. Had my life always beenthis boring, or had I just let myself go? It didn’t seem as if I had any sortof social life at all.
So if I was to “lose my virginity” as I saw it, it wasn’tlooking likely that it was going to be with anyone I knew. I wondered whether aone-night stand might be the way to go, so I headed out to explore Oxford’snightlife on a couple of occasions.
Both were dismal failures. The first time I headed out tosome of the traditional old pubs in the centre of the city favoured bystudents. It was late spring at the time and they were packed with Oxford’sfinest, pretty girls in short dresses and young, smart men in the full flush ofyouth.
No one seemed interested in talking an aging old has-beenstanding at the bar with a pint of bitter. I’d found myself ordering thetraditional ale automatically. Presumably it was what I’d always drunk; Icertainly enjoyed it, that was for sure.
I ended up sinking half a dozen pints before I headed off toa kebab van on George Street for some doner meat and chips and then home.
The second time I went more for the townie pubs in the hopeof meeting some more down-to-earth people, but it was hopeless. I even venturedinto a nightclub but I both felt, and probably looked, ridiculous. I was atleast a decade, possibly two, too old for this sort of thing.
I consoled myself that I still had it all to look forwardto, went home, put on some porn and had a wank. It was sad, desperate andlonely. But what else could I do? I’m sure in any normal life I wouldn’t havehad any difficulty finding a girlfriend, but it was a tall order to make ithappen in one day. Getting to know someone in the traditional way wasn’t anoption.
Out of the blue, Stacey brought up the subject of dating oneSunday when she came over for lunch.
“Dad, I worry that you’re lonely,” she said.
“I’m OK,” I replied, even though I wasn’t. “Don’t worryabout me.”
“I don’t mind if you want to get a new girlfriend, Dad. It’sbeen over six years since Mum died. You don’t have to be on your own.”
I knew she meant well, but how could I explain to her thatwhat she was proposing was impossible?
She continued by suggesting I check out some datingwebsites. Out of curiosity, I did just that.
They varied from the reasonably respectable to those thatwere blatantly just for hook-ups, if they were even genuine sites. Judging byall the pop-ups on the porn sites claiming that there were loads of hot womennearby just ready to jump into bed with me, there were plenty of people outthere ready to fleece inadequate men for their money.
I tried signing up to one of the more respectable ones firstthing one morning, but as I’d thought would happen, I just couldn’t get it alldone in a day. I tried messaging various women on the site, but the responserate was slow.
Even when I did get an answer the same day, my suggestion wemet that very same day was always rejected. Perhaps it came across asdesperate. It was very frustrating, as some of the women I did manage to get intouch with through the site seemed very genuine and friendly, but their offers tomeet up the following weekend were of course useless as far as I was concerned.
It seemed that there was only one option left to me. If Iwanted sex, I was going to have to go to a prostitute.
I resisted the idea at first. After all, what sort of men wentto prostitutes? Bored married men? Sad, inadequate men who couldn’t get sex anyother way? The idea repulsed me at first, but the more I thought about it, themore it made sense.
I was
