A NEW PERVERSION by Toney Atkins

Re-posted by request from Toney Atkins' web site and a separate Atkins blog from the mid-2000s. (Time flies when you're having fun, and hopefully, this PG-rated piece will give you a smile.)

A NEW PERVERSION
By Toney Atkins

A new perversion has suddenly entered my life as I weave my way into my early 60s: I've lost interest in sex.

No, it's not that the hormones quit raging. Perhaps they just raged so long, they needed to rest and decided they liked retirement.

I tried one of those 36-hour male enhancement drugs. but ended up with nothing but blurred vision and a backache.

I'm probably one of the few men in the world who will turn his eyes away from a steamy sex scene in a movie, much as most would close their eyes as a screaming victim is hacked to death by an ax murderer. It even embarrasses me to watch animals copulating on nature shows.

I don't deny that age possibly has something to do with this, but this perversion seemed to hit me overnight not too long ago.

It's not that I'm falling apart. Some have told me that I look "hot" and that I appear to be a lot younger. Then I'm brought down to earth when the clerk at Kentucky Fried Chicken automatically gives me a senior discount without a second look. 

But the mirror still shows a certain distinction and not extinction. I woke this morning, so I'm still alive and on this side of the ground. The hormonal thrill is gone, but I don't miss it. If that's not perversion, what is?

Although I rarely analyze it or dwell on what I once believed was one of the most important things in my life, it sometimes occurs to me that I indeed must be an oddball.

I even went to an adult chat room on the Internet to see if stimulation lay in some unknown person who could live anywhere in the world. One of the room's inhabitants sent me an instant message, and the profile information displayed what had to be a human being with the most sexually attractive body in the world. That unseen being in cyberspace saw me as being an object of perfection. (I composed a rather inventive profile of myself.) However, my mental image of the writer was of a 500-pound creature whose major orgasms came from ingesting five Whoppers, fries and four Slurpees at one sitting. My sexual stirrings remained dormant. I decided then and there that chat rooms were not for me.

My eyes still find pleasure in looking at a beautiful person, but I'm finding that more people have a certain special beauty if I look at them long enough.

I believe in love, but where is the lust? Am I missing something? Am I any different than I was before when I believed that proving sexual prowess was one of the most essential things in life?

Now I'm out of the closet with this perversion, I hope you don't think less of me.It's certainly not that you are not sexy. It's simply that I'd rather just love you, and it's sad if that's considered to be perverted in this day and age.