My Middle-Aged Sex Drive Is Ruining My Life
Free me. I'm begging you. Free me from the chains.
IMAGE: S. Bielanko Dear 43-year-old, divorced horndog,
What the hell?
I was born with the sex drive of a pack of wild stallions, but so what?
It's time. I don't want to feel like a high school kid anymore. I want out.
I'm too old to be this horny, man. I can't do this anymore.
I've got kids. I've got a job. I've got TV shows to watch and this whole lust thing sticking around is cramping my sad, divorced guy lifestyle.
Listen to me, I'm begging you: take my lust, please. I don't want to become one of those late-30s, early-40s divorced people who chase sexual hedonism in an attempt to outrun their own inner blues.
To hell with that.
I don't buy into this whole new theory, the one people slap all over your Facebook feed, that says that their inalienable right to pure happiness is the only reason they're alive.
I don't care about being happy all the time.
Heck, I don't even like being happy all that much.
I prefer glum with the chance of laughter. That's so much more realistic.
And I don't need sex anymore either, so go ahead and fizzle me out now. I'm cool with it.
You can't ever have peace in this insane world if you're walking around horny all the time, trust me.
At this point — I turn 44 in a few weeks — I'll be glad to hand in my Lust Card.
Being divorced and having a high sex drive in your 40s — what kind of evolutionary human trickery is that? I'm done having kids.
I know my body is trying to convince me otherwise; my stupid primal instincts are always forcing me to get all creepy underneath my skin.
People always talk about nature like it's some PBS show, but let me tell you something: Nature isn't nice; she's evil.
Nature wants me to go around feeling horny (and therefore, insane) all the time, so I end up doing one of two things:
- Make more spawn (kids)
- Kill potential rivals (You know, like freaking jungle lions do.)
But I don't care anymore; I've had it.
I want to snip away the whole tangled overgrown sex vine inside of me and pull the awful thing out of my mouth like a nine-foot Amazon tapeworm.
I'm divorced. I'm exhausted. Leave me alone, nature.
Stop hooking the night sky up to my veins; stop shooting me up with heat lightning.
Stop ruining my life with the same old fantasy scenes you've been running across my head screen since I was nine. Let it all die away.
I still see a beautiful woman and I want to dress her up in leg warmers and daisy Dukes for God's sake. Why continue to torture a good and decent man with the same played-out images from Dynamite Magazine?
Why destroy a truth-seeking Zen Master by insisting he keep conjuring up the same wild-eyed freaky feelings he first felt way back in the bottom bunk of his crappy Kmart bunk bed?
Free me. I'm begging you. Free me from the chains.
Let me die down in the long post-coital peace I deserve.
Flip off my buttons and steal my balls. Do whatever it is you have to do, but cut me loose from the drag of the wandering eye, from the high of the boiling blood.
And worse, I don't know what to do. Having a raging libido and an appetite for the kind of women I'm attracted to isn't fair at my age.
It doesn't even make any natural sense. I shouldn't be circling back through the potato chip row simply so I can pass by a smokin' college girl again after I've already passed her twice.
It's pathetic.
I'm old. The whole thing is embarrassing.
I loved the chase once upon a time. I dug the dance, the hot ritual of it all.
But I'm confused now, set loose upon the Earth without any marital ties or girlfriend ties; tossed out into the wide open sex market with a fistful of horndog cash.
What the heck is going to become of me if I don't chop this thing down right here and now?
(Sigh.)
I'm asking a lot here, huh? I'm in this for the long haul, huh?
Oh, man. What a mad/beautiful/horny life.
Serge Bielanko is a writer and musician whose work has been published on Babble, Huffington Post, Mom.me, and Yahoo.