An elegy for my libido |
I’m not sure when my libido first began to decline. It was probably during the pandemic, so it went unnoticed – like much else. Given that I was stuck indoors, newly divorced, in a one-bed flat, with no garden, and only allowed out to walk for one hour a day in the driving sleet, I didn’t really clock that I wasn’t getting a lot of action. My main concern was not committing suicide through love-grief and loneliness. Also, I cooked several new turbot recipes.
Then the tides of plague retreated and that is when I realised. Something in me had changed: and it was the ‘dogs of lust’, as John Betjeman called them in ‘Senex’, his fine poem about age and desire. The dogs no longer barked, loudly, 24/7, driving me to distraction. Sometimes they went entirely quiet.
Perhaps I should have expected this. I was by this point nearly 60. Plenty of my friends had already announced that they were no longer as hot to trot as in days of yore. Yet for me it came as a surprise, and a peculiar surprise: a weird mix of sadness, calmness, lucidity, resignation, cheerful country walks, forlorn and yearning memories at 6 a.m., and a new appetite for work. Certainly, more spare time for work.
To understand my experiences you need to understand my history. I have – I had – a seriously powerful libido. Despite entire years spent whacked on heroin (killing all desire) and other years confounded by impotence (performance anxiety), I’ve enjoyed a great deal of sex........