Robert* has known a number of women, but was undoubtedly not the best lover. At least not at the beginning, he believes, due to lack of education. Reflections of a mature man on his first weapons, his many pitfalls and his late awakening.
To this day, he still asks himself the question: what if he had been educated, would it have changed the face of his (sexual) life?
“It’s as if we were being told: you can take the car, you will learn while driving. Yes, but how many people are we going to hit? How many people do we hurt? “, deplores the 70-year-old man, seated in a café in the city center to tell his story, but above all to reflect on the famous cult of the “holy penis” as he says, which guided his first years in the wonderful world of sexuality .
His thinking goes back a long way. Allow a digression. As a teenager in the 1960s, Robert was part of a group of young religious people aged 15 to 25 who met for different activities. He does not yet have any fantasies or even sexual thoughts (“I’m rather immature”), but remembers at the time being “mothered” by a 25-year-old young woman. “I was often with her,” he remembers. She was a kind of big sister. » No, nothing happens, but he will come back to it often during our interview. End of parenthesis.
The fact remains that our man had his “first serious experiences” around his 20s, and “a bit like everyone else”, it’s not famous, he knows. What if he was clumsy? “Oh, but it’s clear,” he replies quickly. In the 1970s, everyone talked about free love, but it’s really not that in my environment. I was taught nothing. And I didn’t know anything! »
Nothing ? “The only ones who are able to talk about it are friends who don’t know any more than me! “, he remembers, citing the famous preconceived ideas heard at the time and repeatedly: “if she says no, it’s yes” and others “if it’s not you, it will be someone else”, deplores our interlocutor. To continue with his car metaphor, Robert summarizes: “Between 20 and 30 years old, I learned on the job and I hurt, that’s clear! »
In hindsight, it all amounts to what he again calls “worship of the holy penis.”
He will learn it with use.
Concretely ? As a young adult, Robert lures a secretary to bed here (“I don’t know very well what to do, she knows even less”), spends a few years with another there. “I have an impressive libido,” he remembers, “but I don’t understand how she might not want it! » Again, because of the “holy penis! », he repeats.
A third only talks about being a mother (“and I feared that like the devil”) while yet another doesn’t talk at all. “She was as closed as an oyster! »
And then after 10 years of practice, “burning” partners, he believes, for lack of knowing what to do, and especially how to do it well, he finally met one who was more eloquent than the others. Or, let’s say, more verbal. She tells him something that will change his life. “Stop, keep going, take your time,” he sums up.
This is where Robert understands. “Let’s be honest, for a man, it looks pretty similar,” he says. But in a sexual relationship between a man and a woman, you’re the one on the receiving end! And you have to say what you want, you have to give the direction! » Better: “I can suggest it! », he realizes as a bonus.
Which he hasn’t exactly done so far, and he knows it: “I didn’t allow much of this to the women I knew! »
And this is where his famous “big sister” from the beginning comes back to him, daring a thought that he knows is “delicate” and undoubtedly risky, but which he accepts. “A woman older than me,” he wonders, “could have taught me things. ” What for example ? “That a woman is not an inflatable doll, that she has feelings, that today she may not have the taste, or want me to take my time,” lists Robert.
“Maybe I would have needed to be taught something,” he believes. Because I feel like I’ve burned my wings. I would have given everything, but I didn’t know how! »
Following this revelation, in the years that followed, his affairs improved, and he finally experienced what he said was a “magnificent” sexuality. He will even have an affair with the sister of a friend, at her request, and to distract her. A bit like he would have liked to have been himself at the same age. “At 30, with a friend’s sister, I think I did the right thing,” he says, repeating to her what he achieved. “You decide,” he said. I’ll do what you ask. »
The years pass and at the end of his thirties, Robert finally meets his current partner, the mother of his children. This is not the purpose of his testimony, so he does not elaborate on the subject. But we understand that she is less inclined towards the thing than him, she even suggested that he look elsewhere (which he did, only once) and above all that after a long illness, his libido is today at zero. “It’s completely, completely, completely over. » What if he misses it? “No,” concludes Robert, smiling, “I’m still 70 years old! […] My memories nourish me! » Just like his thoughts…
