Carnal appetite: below the belt - Measuring Up - 15th Annual Men's Issue: A Man's World - Column

As a college freshman who had only recently reached the age of sexual exploration, I encountered, with alarmed curiosity, T.S. Eliot's lament on the autumn of a man's life in his "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock": "I grow old... I grow old... I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled."

At the time I wore uncuffed jeans fitted tight at the crotch and was taking no prisoners. The mere notion that aging would diminish my newly awakened sexual exhilaration propelled me into a hedonistic pursuit of carnal adventures. During those robust years of my ravenous youth, when women still considered flirtation an art and not a form of harassment, confident young tenderloins would easily engage my bark in intimate encounters, free of any fear that my bite could be life-threatening. Ignoring my elders, who admonished me to never bite off more than I could chew. I had the insatiable palate of a Junkyard Dog. Indiscriminately I'd hunt down and consume the source of any female scent within range of my flaring nostrils.

When I was coming of ages, there was no such thing as bad sex. There was only sex and more sex, which was better sex. Yet more of the same became less than good when I reached midlife. Elevating my random sampling of female flesh to epicurean heights, I became hopelessly unresponsive to the kind of raunchy bread and circuses that would have provoked a savage feeding frenzy in my youth. No longer aroused by the scintillating pleasure of wallowing naked and exhausted in a sweaty embrace like a pig in a blanket, I discovered in the measured pace of middle age something even better than more sex. Thus I abandoned a desire for excess in favor of quality conjugals. Trading a delicate balance between desire and temperance, I now prized women with taste and style, the subtleties of their seductive power proving to be more bountiful than those earlier bone-crushing sexual episodes that used to pulverize my senses.

I no longer felt compelled to jump through hoops. I also abandoned the conceit of self-control as my mind surrendered to a corona of light that lifted my spirit to the cosmo. I sought to revitalize my overly indulged body, thus assuring me opportunities for future conjugal renewal. And so, during those morning reentries from the cosmos - in the past there were only rude departures - we would now meditate on how much the universe had changed since we last touched it. Prufrock continiues: "Would it have been worth while,/To have bitten off the matter with a smile,/To have squeezed the universe into a ball/To roll it towards some overwhelming question,/ To say: `I am Lazarus, come from the dead...'"

As my twilight years approach, my libido has been subdued - if not ravaged - by years of relentless sexual feasting and healing. I now roll the bottoms of my trousers and recline on a wicker chaise, my head angled toward women 30 years my junior sunbathing on the beach. They inspire a certain testicular animation that summons memories that reawaken in me the spirit of Prufrock's rhapsodic solicitation: "Let us go then, you and I,/When the evening is spread out against the sky/Like a patient etherised upon a table." The sea breeze suppresses a brief flush of embarrassment as a nubile sista emerges from the surf with an attitude of sexual confidence that assures the world of her potential to provide revitalization and spiritual renewal. Though my bark is now louder than my bite. I cannot help but feel a sense of gratification in knowing with utmost certainty that in the old days I would have swallowed her whole. But I'm also certain that she would have little patience for a man who nibbles with brittle teeth and that the most intimacy I'd be allowed bow is to rest my head in her lap. Alas: "I shall wear white flanned trousers, and walk upon the beach./I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each./I do not think that they will sing to me."

Who would have thought that the domestication of marriage and the passage of time would have transformed me, the man once known as The Big Bow-wow, into such a gentle lapdog? And yet, while the ravenous appetite of my sexually gluttonous youth may very well have left me, I still get hungry.

COPYRIGHT 1996 Essence Communications, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2004 Gale Group