I reached the peak (or the abyss) of my sexuality while living in Bangkok, Thailand for three years around my fortieth year.
I've already told you about my friend Dick whose passion was to have sex with every Thai woman in Bangkok. He almost succeeded. We met by chance and quickly became tennis partners, soul brothers -- and occasional sex partners although Dick liked Oriental women and I had a lesbian relationship with a Thai masseuse.
We played tennis together every Saturday morning. We had known each other about a month when Dick invited me to his house for an afternoon drink after tennis. It became a long afternoon of talking and I had more than a few drinks.
I was a secret drunk -- always a moderate drinker in public, careful not to allow alcohol to interfere with my career as a prim and proper accountant -- but on Friday or Saturday nights, I often stayed home by myself and drink until I was insensible. I was always up, however, the next morning to play tennis. Getting drunk was my private secret.
It became Dick's secret too because that afternoon I drank too much and woke up the next morning in his bed with only a foggy recollection of the night before. As Dick and I sat at his breakfast table drinking coffee -- me with a massive hangover -- Dick said, "I fucked you last night."
"I remember," I answered.
"Do you remember that I fucked you a second time?" he asked.
"No."
He was nervous. "Is it all right?"
I kissed him on the cheek. "It's all right. Anytime. But next time, please wear a rubber." I was in love with Dick.
"Okay," he answered. That was about as romantic a conversation as we ever had. As a sex partner, Dick wouldn't make my top one hundred. He was more interested in quantity than quality -- spilling his seed as fast and as often in as many woman as possible. As a friend to whom I granted sexual privileges, however, he was the best I ever had.
Our first night together established our pattern for my next two years. On Saturday Dick and I played tennis, ate lunch, and retired to his large and luxurious house. We talked and sunbathed and drank -- I did most of the drinking -- all afternoon and by early evening I was drunk.
Madame Lulu at the 69 Club always sent a couple of girls over to Dick's house on Saturday night. They would frolic with Dick while I methodically sat on the couch and drank gin and tonics until I couldn't walk without assistance. Dick would help me upstairs to a bedroom, take my clothes off, set me down on the toilet to pee, and tenderly put me to bed. Now and then he would join me, but I doubt that we had sex more than twenty times in two years -- or at least that's all I recall. His tastes ran toward Thai women. That was fine with me. My priority on Saturday nights was to get quietly and methodically drunk.
I knew enough Thai to understand that Dick's girls called me "that drunk American woman." I don't know what they thought about our outlandish sexual lives. Perhaps they thought that all round-eyes behaved the way we did.