THE OTHER day, I followed the advice of a witty pop-astrology column in a newspaper that a friend of mine sent to me from America. It was simply this: write down brief descriptions of the five most pleasurable moments in your life.

It's actually well worth doing. I stopped at fifty-three. What I found bemusing, given my professional preoccupation with matters sexual, was that sex featured so little. Two kisses made it to the list - kisses that made my world spin. I hadn't the courage to tell the two men at the time (no, reader, not at the same time) how much they mattered to me, but I followed them both around for a minor eternity like a lap dog, hoping for more.

Sadly, there is nothing like gormless devotion to discourage requited affection. I plead youth, your honour. When I eventually did work up the courage to tell them how I felt, in each case far too long after the miraculous first kiss, the reaction was the same: a blanched face, a shocked smile, and a tortuously polite let-down.

I met one of those boyos, after a period of many years, a few months ago. He proudly introduced me to his wife, and I unblinkingly greeted her with a beaming smile. (I have been known to possess talents worthy of a Thespian in my time). This was the man who told me that being with me proved to him that he wanted to be with a woman.

In some small ways, I have never really recovered from that. We chatted for a short while, I made him laugh, and I could feel her eyes peeling my skin. I didn't hang around. But I still remember the stairs where we kissed, the phone-box in the hall. And the redness of his scarf.

There was one other man who contributed to the list, whose calming presence in bed I still miss a long time after we split up.

And one glorious fuck, which was undeniably the most sensuous experience of my life. It was with a gentle man who did not have sex of any variety until his late twenties, until he discovered S...M, which he took to like a duck to water. When I went back to his place, his room was full of leather gear and toys, and a sling hung suspended from the scaffolding around his bed.

little death

I had a feeling that he had put the cart before the horse, spending his life all dressed up and no-one to play with, devoting his fantasy life planning intricate sexual scenarios before meeting the man to enact them with. But I was happy to step in for him one afternoon, and he gets onto my list in delighted remembrance.

But that's it. Four out of 53. It surprises me, frankly, because of the amount of time I am horny, seeking sexual adventures, seems so disproportionate to the quality of the scores. When put in perspective.

Perspective is the one thing you lose when you find yourself driven by the urge to have sex. Reason is dispensed with, and the lure of the erotic act, object, or person overtakes practically all other considerations. Ultimately, the rewards are transient, fleeting moments of relief.

In the film of Cynthia Paine's life, Personal Services, Julie Walters offers this tender little morsel of advice to her women friends: despunk your men first, before asking for the new three-piece suite. It is advice I urge all to follow.

It's as if there are two different personalities in a man, the one who needs sex, and the one who has just had it.

Before despunking, sense rarely comes into it, and the pursuit of relief is uppermost in a man's mind. (I am writing about men here - this is not to say there are plenty of women who feel exactly the same. Not having had sex with a woman, it is really beyond my experience to comment.)

After despunking, there emerges a different beast. Then, the male of the species is at their most vulnerable, sensitive, and sometimes achingly lonely. But it is so rarely admitted. It is not hard to see why, really, but I am astonished at how something that is in my experience universal among men, is never freely and without self-mockery discussed by them.

And I am not excluding myself from this, I have watched myself countless times nimbly avoid the minefields of human contact with the best of them. Machismo, even among gay men (especially among gay men?) rules supreme. So most men, after the "little death" which humbles us all, do our utmost to act our most indifferent and distant. For to admit otherwise would be to open up a hornet's nest of messy feelings. Far simpler to keep them inside, and not think about it until we have over-come the next obstacle course that stands between us and getting our rocks off.

In the meantime, there are plenty of other pleasures to be had in this world. They're worth trying for. Sex, on the other hand, rarely needs a conscious effort to rear its pointy little head. It does that all on its own. Bless it.