46

No, it's not the number of men I've slept with (don't ask, because I truthfully don't know...and haven't bothered to count).

Neither is it the number of times I can orgasm in a night (even with The Rabbit, I think 28 is the maximum before my clitoris gives up).

Nor is it the number of men I've been in a gang bang with (I wouldn't dare hold a candle to Annabel).

Actually, 46 is the age cap for men that I'm willing to sleep with. (Tom Cruise is 43 - I checked - so Katie Holmes is just about kosher.)

I met Ben in the Bangkok airport. He 'conveniently' helped me with an errant exit tax machine before immigration. I later found out that he had deliberately positioned himself at the machine next to mine to get a better look at me, when I fortuitously started having problems. He gallantly introduced himself, we shared a moment of mutual frustration with the machine, ...and the rest, as they say, is history. Ah, the wonders of technology.

Besides being one of the most interesting people I've met in a while and a wicked correspondent, Ben was also - you know what's coming - 46. Not old enough to be my Dad, but definitely old enough to be called "Uncle", and not just in bed. Now I've always enjoyed the company of older men and I'm not discriminating against them in any way. (God knows, the combined age of all the men I've shagged would come up to at least 500.) But a girl's got to draw a line somewhere, right? And 46 is my line.

This was brought home to me the first and only time we shagged. We had sex exactly the way I imagined my parents would have had sex, which is not the greatest mental image one would like to carry around at ANY time. I certainly wasn't quite prepared for it. To start with, I found Ben's physical appearance very 'old'. He was not fat per se, but oddly pear-shaped - he seemed to have very wide 'hips' - and it was as if his entire body was shrouded in a layer of saggy and papery Caucasian skin. He was breathless quite a lot and I had to ride him v-e-r-y-s-l-o-o-w-l-y in order get him off. It wasn't really fulfilling for me sexually, but I enjoyed the touching, the talking, the connecting. It was sex as punctuation. We would have a bit of sex, lose interest, start a conversation about something random, like the Calvinist Reform movement or the Akha tribes in Northern Thailand and then go back to the sex.

Now I'm sure that there are those of you who are still shagging spry geriatrics with a penchant for doing doggy-style from their wheelchairs, but I think that sex just takes on a completely different significance as one gets older (or grows old, as in this case). And I can see it's merits. But I'm too much of a thrill-seeking, hedonistic, experimental party-animal to appreciate it right now.

If I want intimate conversation, I'd just rather have it over a nice dinner (I pick the place), thank you.