“This was my first experience of being too old. I had not always gotten exactly what I had wanted—men had been unwilling to leave their wives for me or to do more than flirt—but even in these humbling cases I hadn’t questioned my right to feel desire. Now suddenly my lust was uncouth, inappropriate. I was powerful and interesting, perhaps funny and unique; I took him seriously in a way he wasn’t used to—but he was not jerking off to me. Just a few years earlier, at forty or forty-two, I would have been a contender, but now it was too late. And he was just the first one. From now on this would be the norm. And not just with men younger than me, but with all men. I would never get what I wanted anymore, man-wise.”
Book:All Fours
