Dear Yael,

Wow! There is so much in this post in conjunction with your other post titled 'What It's Like to Have Sex in a Body You Don't Love' that I want to reply to.

First off, as I am sure you know by now the pursuit of a life of pleasure is a long established and acceptable philosophy. As the Greek Philosopher Epicurus said: "Pleasure is the first good. It is the beginning of every choice and every aversion. It is the absence of pain in the body and of troubles in the soul."

But the quote that strikes me as most aptly applying to your personal situation is the next one. It seems to me that if you can reach this state of mind that you will be able to fully enable yourself to enjoy all of the sexual pleasure your body is capable of and in doing so you might be surprised how responsive men are to a woman who thoroughly enjoys herself, but more of that later,

"The magnitude of pleasure reaches its limit in the removal of all pain. When such pleasure is present, so long as it is uninterrupted, there is no pain either of body or of mind or of both together."

One of the other things that I would like to share with you that is an absolute truth is that there is no correlation whatsoever between a woman's looks and what she is like in bed. I can't say that looks are irrelevant as both sexes are stimulated and aroused by looks but they in no way predict a good sexual experience.

For example, in 2019 I was having sexual relations with four women all of whom I enjoyed and whose looks and bodies varied considerably. I am amazed by the assumptions and attitudes that people have about this confluence of looks and sex which arose on one of these occasions, At some point after a three-way, and obviously out of earshot, one of the women H, who was 42 but at some point in her 20s had been a cheerleader for the Indianapolis Colts {She insisted that they were dancers, but whatever) and another woman, A was in her mid 50s, quite overweight and not very physically attractive but was much better in bed in all respects; H made some comment about A.

I can't remember the exact words, but H said something that implied that because A wasn't that good looking that she didn't deserve to get good sex (or even sex at all). I had to bring her up short as it was such an absurd concept. However, it seems as if you have internalized a similar idea. Regrettably, this kind of thinking is out there.

Now, my preference of course would always be to have H and A in bed together for obvious reasons but if someone said, "Tonight you can only have one." I would have to choose A. Why? Because the combination of enthusiasm, complaisance, orgasmic responsiveness, oral and copulatory skills made her a much much better lover.

And frankly, no decent man wants to have sex with a woman who seems to be looking in a fucking metaphysical mirror admiring herself while she is doing it!

I should probably post the rest of this up separately but I'm going to tell you an anecdote about something that happened to me when I was a callow youth of 21 that heavily influenced me in respect of making a judgment about women based on their looks and whether I wanted to have sex with them or not.

IN 1976 when I was 21 years old, I spent two fabulous months travelling through Europe and Egypt on the princely sum of $360. Below is an extract from my book, A Gentleman and a Player about the incident that informed my future choice of sexual partners.

"I decided to go to Egypt the next day which had been my goal all along, so bidding farewell to our communal beach on Paros I made my way to Athens.

When I was in the Athens airport waiting for my flight to Cairo, I spotted an absolutely gorgeous blonde with hair cascading down to her waist and thought to myself I would definitely like some of that. To my immense surprise she was seated on my plane when I boarded. It was open seating so I made a beeline for her and asked if I could sit next to her. She granted my request.

As it turned out she was a wealthy girl from New York and Daddy had given her a credit card to travel around Europe on. She had got to Greece and looked at a map and decided to go to Egypt. She was totally clueless and one of the most boring and cretinous people I have ever met in my entire life. But hey guys, we'll overlook all those flaws won't we, for the package that houses them? I suggested we travel through Egypt together and she accepted.

When we got to Cairo and tried to get a cab the fun really started. We were haggling with this taxi driver and the blonde was saying,” I want to go to the Hilton”. The cab driver who definitely had a high hair oil factor took me aside and said, “You want room together, yes?”. I said “Yes” and he said, “Don't worry, I fix”. He then railroaded her into agreeing to go to a hotel called the Hotel Cleopatra. She said okay, as long as it doesn't have any bugs, something she repeated more than once. So, we pitched up at the hotel which was somewhere between 3 and 4 stars although I think it was rated 4 stars. It was still somewhat beyond my budget, but I had other considerations on my mind.

So, we walked into the hotel and the desk clerk took one look at us and says, “You want room together, yes?”. She said, “As long as it doesn't have any bugs”. Then, some 14-year-old bellboy in an old-fashioned red uniform with one of those circular bellhop caps takes us up to our room in one of those old-fashioned cage elevators and archly inquires if we need anything. I swear to God the entire hotel staff made their vicarious interest in our putative copulation so obvious it was more than embarrassing.

It was late by this time and my interest in my companion’s personality had definitely gone walkabout but nonetheless my reward was in sight. So, we start getting settled down and ready for bed. I went to take a shower and when I came out, I was wearing only a towel and showing my great Greek tan and ripped abs. She was lying on the bed looking inviting. Then at that precise moment as I looked at my prize, a fucking cockroach scuttles out from behind the wardrobe and starts running across the wall. She saw it and let out an involuntary scream, and then yells, “Get me out of this hotel”. At this point I had had enough and was happy to oblige. What happened next was like something out of an old silent slapstick movie. She screamed again and I yanked the door to the room open and I swear this is the truth, the bellboy literally fell into the room as he had had his ear pressed to the door. I figured he thought we were engaged in some kind of decadent Western sexual practice.

We collected her bags and went to the front desk where she demanded to go to the Hilton. It was around midnight and the desk clerk pointed at the telephone and said, try to call. Now the phones in Cairo at that time did not work. She gets straight through on the first attempt. Then she called a taxi and once again gets straight through. The staff were dumbfounded.

In the meantime, I'm trying to explain in my limited classical Arabic what the problem is. This was complicated by the fact that I had no idea what the word for insect was in Arabic. I literally said little animals with six legs. Eventually they figured it out. The taxi arrived. She left. I stayed. They charged her daddy's credit card for the night though, bless 'em.

I daresay when she woke up in the morning and took one look at Cairo she fled in hysterics to the airport. Anyhow I swore on oath that night which I have stuck to faithfully that never again as long as I lived would I go for a woman based solely on her looks."