12 years today, on the 24th of February, in the year 2005 I was walking home from nightclub/disco with my girlfriend. It was a very cold night but I was 17 and in love so I didn’t care too much about that sort of thing back then. We sat in the park, on the swings, as adults do when it’s late at night and there are no kids or parents about. She asked me if I had a condom. A question I’d never be asked before.

Those of you know know me personally may well have heard the horror story that starts there - not unlike a Detective Fashion episode - it’s a story I call “The Copper Pipe Incident”. A tale I tell with graphic and horrific detail, a near tragedy that, as all with all good rites of passage stories has a moral about rushing into things and the perils of youthful recklessness.

It is of course a tale I won’t be sharing on here, out of respect foe the girl in question (now a mother…but not to me!).

Fast forward 6 years to the year 2001. Now a slightly less naive young man - a man in his early 20s who liked to think of himself as a man of experience. I’d loved, lost and fucked my way what I thought was adult life. Nevermore than 6 months of being single at a time I thought myself by no means a sexual predator - or even a partially good boyfriend but a worthwhile person none the less. I’d been in love 6 times - but I wasn’t this time round.

Under frighteningly similar circumstances, walking home with a girl - who actually looked like the girl from the first time round, we nipped into a graveyard of all places for a bit of discreet outdoor action. For that’s the sort of thing that grown adults do…right?

She was in reality a pretty horrible young woman and a few days later I told her I didn’t want to see her again. Maybe I felt as if she’d instigated some sort of dark parody of the copper pipe incident. Nevermind pulling her knickers down in a graveyard - she’d trampled on the scared ground of my own past! Maybe I was just worried that I might fall in love with a slag again (see above).

So I said goodbye to her and all that. Having had a messy break-up with a ‘proper’ girlfriend some months before (Who thankfully wasn’t a slag at all - but ended up a junkie) I put it down to some sort of rebound thing. The sort sort mistake that is perfectly acceptable, and it wrote the whole thing off as ‘The Incident with the Masonic Nurse (In the Graveyard)’.

But who was to know that that would be the last time I’d have sex. Well the last time for a very long time - 6 years and counting.

Every year on this day I celebrate, with a quiet drink, what I affectionally call my sex birthday. A memorable date by simple virtue of the fact I remembered it. I had no intention of wrapping the celebration up as an anniversary of my celibacy/sexual exile. For now that it’s six years it means I been without for as long as I ever was with.

And I wonder about the mathematics of it all. If this sort of thing carries on much long - can my sexual frustration get any worse? If it get to 7 years and the maths go out of sync does it mean I’ll be with some for 7 years after and then nothing again. Just fucked up comedic horror stories.

A good friend of mime asked me why I care. It’s just sex - surely all I want is love. Of course he’s right but I don’t know any dates of when I was in love or out of love. Sexual encounters are like road signs, London: 100 miles - but obviously only ones that you see in the rear view mirror. And I suppose that’s all I want, A road sign that indicates where I’m going - or how long it’ll be until I get there. Objects in the rear view mirror are closer than they seem - right?

In my 6 years of just wondering why - what happened to me? - I’ve had twice as many disappointments. Twelve girls - twelve bitches who in their various ways have wronged me. Assumedly because I wasn’t fucking good enough. 12 girls who one after the other I dreamt about, wondered about, gone out of my way to be be myself around - and quite frankly and quite unashamedly 12 girls who made me cry. (Only a couple of which I even got to kiss)

The maths are perfect now - x equal this - right now - the answer of course being zero - it nearly always is zero when it comes to x! - There is no more pain and no more love. Just nothing - zero.

So hopefully this time next year the 6 years would have been annulled. Maybe this time next year I will be in love. Maybe I will wake up on the 24th in bed that isn’t my own but is familiar, and I’ll smell her perfume and look at all the girl things in her room and I’ll turn round give her a hug and fall back to sleep with her next to me wondering how I managed without this for 6 whole years.