The Inner Caveman

I'm fifty-eight.

That is not yet elderly, but it's no longer young. It may not even count as middle age. I don't like it. A voice in my head says, 'You wait until you're seventy!' Okay, true ... but first things first.

I'm bothered about my sex drive.

Part of my problem is: I still have one. Not as strong as it used to be, but still very much there and just as picky as it ever was. It likes young women with pretty faces and firm bodies. Firm buttocks, firm breasts, nice legs, nice figures ... the usual sexy nymph cliché. Getting to have sex with that kind of woman was difficult enough when I was younger, but now? Forget it. Even paying for it is a trial. There is nothing sexy about having a pretty young woman grimace at you. I stopped doing even that.

My sex drive feels like a grumpy Caveman that I've had to drag around with me my whole life. He wants Raquel Welch from One Million Years BC and is pissed off at my inability to deliver her. He is unhappy with most of the women I've been intimate with, sulking in a corner while I'm busy with a woman who is interested in me. Every now and then, he'll ungraciously grumble, 'She's not very sexy!'

'But she's a good person,' I argue back. 'Besides, who are we to be so picky?'

My philosophy was that if you want a sexy woman, it helps to be a sexy man and that wasn't me. I was tall, honest, clean-cut and certainly not ugly ... but 'sexy'? No, unfortunately not. I did harbour fantasies of making tons of money so that I could attract sexy women, but it turns out that making tons of money is really hard. Another thing my Caveman has not forgiven me for.

I remember a relationship in my twenties with a woman in her thirties who was most definitely 'a good person'. My Caveman didn't hate her, but while I was with her, he was always on the lookout for other girls. The woman could sense that and would call me out on it. I would respond by promising never to lie if I shagged another woman.

'How about promising not to shag another woman in the first place?' she said.

'Does that mean if I meet a Raquel Welch who by some miracle wants to shag me, you want me to promise to say no?'

'For God's sake! Why do you have to say it like that?'

'How would you like me to say it?'

'Look, Freddie, I just want to feel that you want to be in this relationship! Right now, it feels like you're only in it because having sex with me is better than nothing!'

She had, of course, hit the nail on the head. And my Caveman was right next to her, nodding furiously in agreement. His philosophy was that if we were not going to shag Raquel Welch, we should at least be honest about it. But my then-girlfriend found that brand of honesty hard to deal with. She knew I wasn't in love with her, and she wasn't really in love with me ... but she didn't like to say it.

Things changed when I met the woman who would become my wife and the mother of my child. I was thirty, she was twenty-five, and she was the one woman my Caveman wanted that I actually got. She was more Gillian Anderson from The X-Files than Raquel Welch—and no complaints there! It was a dream come true, and even though that dream had equal parts nightmare, I cannot bring myself to regret it.

To have sex with a woman I wanted, as opposed to saying yes to a woman who wanted me, was the difference between night and day. Instead of making hesitant love to a nice woman and mentally telling myself to be grateful, I was fucking a woman I really wanted to fuck. And instead of sulking in a corner, the Caveman was with me. In fact, he was me, running the show, acting on instinct, throwing this woman around on the bed, swallowing her juices, and sending her to heaven and back with the way he was fucking her. It was a glorious, fabulous time—the best time of my life. I loved every moment. And when things went south and she wanted a divorce, it crushed me. I was devastated.

In the years that followed, my late thirties and forties, I had other relationships, but it was back to the same pattern as before. The women I wanted were out of my league, so I would be intimate with the women who wanted me. And they were nice women too; I can't think of a single one I didn't like. Even so, while I made love, the Caveman would sit in the corner and stare out the window with no desire to join in. As I got older, the women got older too, and the Caveman lost interest in sex altogether.

Then I broke up with a girlfriend after three years together and realised that I never wanted to be in a relationship again. Being a woman's friend or business colleague was great; hell, I even learned to enjoy talking with my ex-wife about our son. But being a woman's romantic partner now felt like a career I had left and never wanted to go back to. I didn't have the appetite for more.

I was fifty at the time. My Caveman was not entirely happy with the prospect of a lifetime of abstinence, and he eventually nagged me to go to a 'gentleman's club'. I'd had a couple of somewhat dismal experiences with sex workers in the past, but maybe my Caveman needed a reminder.

Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on your outlook, the first woman I paid for was a blond, leggy Polish girl with a great sense of humour. She showed off her peachy cunt with the pride of a gallery owner showing off their best painting, and she was the dictionary definition of a great fuck. I'm getting a hard-on just thinking about her. But it was sobering to realise that the second best sex of my life was with a sex worker.

I was also to learn that meeting this Polish girl was a case of beginner's luck. Truly sexy women are pretty rare, even in sex clubs, and women who enjoy this kind of work are rarer still. They were always professional and would tell me off if I expressed guilt over 'using' them. Most found it patronising. 'I wouldn't be doing this kind of work if I couldn't handle it,' was what one girl said. But even so ... great sex was rare.

And now I'm fifty-eight and even that window is closing. But the Caveman still dreams of sexy girls and young, firm bodies. Of big smiles and nice tits. Of girls who like taking their clothes off and parading around naked. And, to be honest, I don't know what to do with that guy.

Should I tell him to stop dreaming and grow up? Or is he the one I should be listening to?