My Father and Myself (25 page)

I must not, however, give the impression that I went entirely without sex during my years with this animal. I no longer ran after it or even thought of it in England, but at least twice here it offered itself to me, unsought and unexpected, and whenever I went abroad I found myself pursuing it again. I did not go abroad much, I preferred to spend my holidays with my bitch, but on the few occasions that I left her, when she was getting old and inactive, and went to France, Italy, Greece and Japan, I looked for sexual adventure and found it. Into it were once more imported all the old anxieties and worries, heartbreaks even, that had attended it throughout my life—with the latest anxiety, to which I have alluded, added: impotence. This anxiety, to which perhaps all my other anxieties had been tending and was their last phase, now took charge. I never approached any bed without the worry: “Shall I be able to function?” I would try, sometimes in advance of a meeting, sometimes with closed eyes during the desirable but fearful act, to put myself into a prosperous frame of mind, telling myself that I was perfectly unworried, comfortable, welcome, free, safe and happy, that everything was exactly “right.” Sometimes I managed; often the very fear perhaps of the frustration and humiliation of failure caused me to fail.