On the Sexual Act

Reflections on my experiences and those of others

I have had until now very little motivation to penetrate the subject of sexual intercourse in writing. It is not that the topic is without its interest. Just as some dull rocks of the beach reveal some shimmering mineral when flipped upon their side, or else some studiable insect, so too does the apparently dull subject of sexual intercourse pique the sensible man’s curiosity when he observes it closely and philosophically. The sexual act itself, I have always found, is akin to the Boy Scout meetings which Mother and Father always dragged me to on Saturday afternoons: Unpleasant to think about, but quite enjoyable once you are there.

I was first acquainted with intercourse when I worked as a bellboy in a Chertsey village hotel, at the tender age of twenty-four, where I was ravished by a rather handsome though rather hirsute Greek woman some years my senior who was staying in the hotel as a guest. I have related this event at length in another outlet, and was even praised by an LGBT publication for the “refreshing sexual ambiguity” of my work. But I have only told my story tal cual, precisely as it occurred, and no secondary meaning was ever intended. I received the same sort of unwanted praise when I wrote elsewhere of the “suspiciously wide-hipped sailor boys” of the Portsmouth docks, by which I meant only to refer to the 18th century practice of smuggling hams in boys' pants to avoid customs tariffs.