13 Low self esteem makes you vulnerable to sex addiction!

For some strange reason I’m not really feeling up to dispensing words of wisdom this week! Feeling a bit emotionally fragile and I keep wondering about the element in my readership who will, as I was when a younger man, be mistrustful of those older and purportedly wiser. I’m starting to convince myself that no one actually listens to the twittering of granddad, least of all granddad’s son and grandson.

Yet here I am issuing forth with advice and hoping that someone will find it helpful or interesting. Hmm! Well here goes anyhoo!

The two themes this week are narcissistic defence and religious rejection. I’ve mentioned my friend Peter in the past few weeks. Been through a low patch after breaking up with a lover and moved from Brighton to London to get it out of his system. He’s now a lot happier and in the zone. Changed jobs and making lots of new friends. Having lots of superficial sex. I’ve been happy for him at one level but I’m also recognising a trait in him that was a major feature in myself when I was his age. It is the tendency to escape difficult emotions through the consecutive ego massages provided by serial sexual encounters. Finding people to be sexually drawn towards me and taking their words of appreciation about my body and looks as balm to the wounds of my low self esteem. And it’s all very addictive because it’s reinforced by the pleasure of orgasmic release at the end of the night. However as you approach the end of your sexual career you are still left with how you feel towards your inner self- the person who only you know you are- not who you’d like to be, or think you can become, or what people want you to become, or fantasize that you might be.

That’s when your sexual allure has faded and instead of seeing a red hot guy, people see a grey old man. And instead of feeling hot and horny you’re feeling cold and arthritic. It’s only then that you see how the temporary fix of lifting your spirits with sexual admiration melts into nothing. Like a mirage. Leaving nothing but memories, which may as well have been dreams.

I can’t berate Peter for what he’s doing. I did the same myself. But I hope he can find some way to stop himself before his sexual prowess and attractiveness diminish. I was lucky enough to meet my partner and found ways of tackling my sex addiction so that it didn’t destroy our relationship. Maybe Peter will find someone to love enough that he won’t need to keep jerking himself off- narcissistically speaking.

The other profound thought I was grappling with this week was to do with religious rejection and the damaging effect it has on the developing personality. I suppose the spiritual environment provided for a child by its parents is an important foundation for security and provides a starting point for understanding the mysteries of the universe and one’s place in it. I was in the unfortunate position of being brought up in a Roman Catholic family where sexual activity was closely identified with sin guilt and damnation. My straight classmates at school were all redeemable because they could simply go to confession; disclose their sexual exploits and all would be forgiven. As a homosexual, I was labelled, as ‘intrinsically disordered’ and my only hope would be to abstain and lead a life of celibacy. Fat chance of that! So I chose a route, which would mean I would be in a spiritual wilderness for years.

On that happy note I’ll leave you. More of this next week!

12 Find yourself and become who you are!

Peter came down to stay for a few nights this weekend. I mentioned him last week-the friend who has just made a break from Brighton to make his way in London so as to get some space between himself and a difficult relationship but also as a way of demonstrating to himself that he can be an independent adult and stand on his own two feet. When he moved away I sent him a copy of 'The Alchemist' by Paul Coelo. It had been recommended to me by a friend and I'd just finished reading it. It's one of those books that 'changes peoples' lives'. An allegorical tale of a Spanish shepherd who dreams of finding treasure by the Egyptian Pyramids. He gives up everything in search of his dream and the story follows him in his adventures and shows how, through his meetings with an Alchemist, he learns the secret of true happiness. Peter had just finished reading the book and had been energized by it. For a long time after his break-up he had lost interest in the idea of relationships. Or rather, I think, he had lost his hope in the potential of relationships. I think he had made the fundamental mistake that most of us make when we first fall in love- believing that if we love someone unconditionally enough then all will be well and we will be loved in a way which is reciprocal and which dovetails perfectly with our own emotional needs. In the storybook this happens and everyone lives happily ever after. When real life kicks in, and love isn't returned, it's a devastating blow because you have given your heart away but it comes back to you-'return to sender', battered, bruised and neglected. That's where Peter was when he went to London- or rather round about 12 months into healing those wounds. But something happened this week. Maybe it was the combination of making a success of his move to London and just enjoying the freedom of having lots of sex with lots of guys and also reading this book which suddenly enabled him to feel a passion towards another guy. A passion he thought  he had lost forever. He told me that there was something in the book that had given him permission to open up and be himself that previously, would have made him feel vulnerable but now he felt he had a greater internal strength because of his newfound confidence. He said that he felt the key to all this was getting an understanding of himself and that this had only come about after a long hard struggle facing up to who he was and getting to see the links between the upsets in his past and the walls he had built around himself, closing him off from a meaningful emotional life. He felt that all his life he had been aiming at becoming an emotionally and financially independent young man. And now , for the first time in his life he was feeling that he had arrived, "It seems as though the way to happiness is finding yourself and becoming who you are" he said.

I couldn't agree more!

11 Accept it. Change it. Move away from it!

Met up yesterday with a young friend of mine who moved up to London a few months ago. I was in London for a conference and we met up for a coffee at Victoria as I was on my way back to Brighton. Peter is getting over a difficult relationship break-up with the first guy he's ever fallen in love with. He had had a lot of issues about his self esteem from the past and ongoing difficulties in his relationship with his father meaning that generally he finds it difficult to feel safe with and trust others. Consequently these issues were played out in his relationship with Marco. He found himself behaving in the way his dad behaves towards him in his own dealings with Marco. Consequently he became controlling and manipulative in his attempts to extract the emotional contact he so desired. Marco, having his own baggage from the past , was disinclined to get into emotional displays and would get frustrated at Peter's emotional demands on him. Peter would blame Marco for for being just like his father, lacking emotional warmth and invalidating him whenever he tried to articulate his feelings. The relationship officially ended a few months after it began but continued subliminally for what seemed like years afterward because they rented a house together.

Peter would say that he loved Marco 'like a brother' but continued making the same emotional demands on him. Marco valued some aspects of his relationship with Peter but continued to be frustrated and angered by his emotional demands and jealousies. They seemed to continually make each other unhappy but finally, after a few months of therapy Peter summoned up the courage to crystalise a plan to make things better. He had to get out of Brighton and start afresh in London. His initial plan was to take his business up with him, which worked for a while, but he's finally settled for taxi driving which gives him a nice steady income and helps him pay off some of his debts.

It was lovely seeing him for the first time since he's moved. His skin was radiant and his eyes were full of life. He was energetic and felt empowered by having made a success of his brave decision to to move. He must have feared at times that he was jumping out of the frying pan into a fire.

Generally we're discouraged from making big changes in our lives. The idea is that if you've run into problems, it's better to work on them where you are rather than keep running away because you'll always find that your baggage follows you around like a bad smell!

But there are times when, for whatever reason, you're continually locking horns with someone and can't seem to shake them off. Something complementary in your psychopathologies makes things worse or at least as bad as ever they were as time goes by. If that happens for you then do what Peter did-get some independent advice. Get a handle on whether it's to do with you or the situation. And if it's the situation then make your mind up. Can you continue to accept being crippled by it? Is there something you can change about yourself to move it on? Or, if not, then move away either emotionally or, if you have to, geographically!

Until yesterday I had felt sad that Peter had moved away because I missed him. Having seen how happy he is, I'm now really happy for him.

Peter's story illustrates well that great advice for if you're ever in a pickle. Work out if you can accept what's going on. If you can't accept it see if you can change it. If you can't change it then move away from it!

10 Don't let the fear of illness and death be your tyrant.......

Illness, ailments and treatments seem to be on my mind recently. I remember when I was young, being fascinated by illness and symptoms. Being a very healthy child, I never had cause to need doctors or hospitals but I was acutely aware of the attention afforded to those who were unwell and needed treatment. So my earliest memory of ‘help seeking behaviour’ was as a six or seven year old asking for Andrews’ Liver Salts because I didn’t feel very well. In actual fact I felt fine but I loved the effect the Salts had on the water, changing it, as if by magic, from its still, clear, flavourless form into a fizzy cloudy, metallic flavoured pop. Next memory, a few years later, is of all the care and attention given to my sister because she’s got hair lice and she needs mum to soak her hair in vinegar and then carefully scour her scalp literally with a fine tooth comb to peel off the lice egg nits at the root of each hair. She’d be there for what seemed like hours and I so wanted to have lice and nits so that I could be meticulously groomed too! I asked what a nit looked like and I was told that it was a tiny white thing not much bigger than a grain of sugar. I asked my mum to check my hair for lice because I was feeling itchy. No joy. Head was completely clear. So I go to the kitchen, take a teaspoon of sugar and rub it into my hair. Thought that would do the trick but sadly for me -and probably to the exasperation of my mum –it didn’t quite look like the real thing and I would never get to experience the prolonged extended intimacy of a fine tooth comb grooming!

My only other memories of illness were, a few odd cuts requiring stitches, a broken arm requiring a plaster cast and a spell of Glandular Fever in my early 20s which then set me up for a 20-odd year period of kind-of feeling under the weather –fatigued and congested but determined not to let it get the better of me, determined to fight it and keep the struggle to myself. It’s only in recent years, however, that I’ve been getting ‘old persons things’ going wrong with me. Like, for instance, a grumbling, aching back that flares up every 6 months or so, like a painful elbow sustained playing tennis which, developed into a repetitive strain injury, like a painful knee and thigh, courtesy of collapsing foot arches. From being episodic things that you get treatment for and recover from, the pains merge and ultimately become constant traveling companions. Each day there is a different constellation of pains to be managed and fretted over. And with each new twist there is always the concern maybe this is the beginning of the end, the warning sign of the onset of some dreadful terminal illness!

I’ve noticed that a preoccupation with aches, pains and illness can quite easily occupy a substantial part of my conscious thought and this can quite effectively block a clear perception of the world on a moment-by-moment basis.

So my advice for this week would be, firstly, start to do the work on coming to terms with your mortality as soon as you can. There’s a lot of work involved. Don’t leave it ‘til you’re old! Too many grown-ups are caught up, preoccupied throughout their lives with a fear of death. Secondly try to spot the transition from youthful health to aged degenerative discomfort but don’t let your worries about aches and pains spoil your appreciation of life which is just too short to squander.

9 Shut up and Shut down!

I've been thinking a lot this week about the value of meditation for my physical, psychological, emotional and spiritual health. For some reason I've started myself on a five-a-day regimen not of vegetables, but of brief episodes of prayer, reflection, meditation. Call it what you like but first thing in the morning and last thing at night with three times squeezed in between [usually around mid-day, 4pm and 8pm], I'm taking some mental time out to reflect for a few minutes over what's happening. I'm taking the emotional temperature of the situation and I'm taking a break from the perpetual mental chatter that is an unfortunate feature of my daily life. I'm endeavoring to find a few seconds or minutes in which the plans, ambitions, reflections, regrets, loves and hates of the moment I'm in can be turned down and switched off, so all I'm doing is breathing and being aware of my breathing.

I'm finding with practice [and of course, what's happening at the time], it's getting easier and easier to just switch off! Once I'm on down time I can move my awareness to myself and spend a few seconds appreciating myself as a valid and lovable somebody. Then I can shift my attention to a friend and spend a few seconds loving my friend. Then as calmly and as empty of thoughts and feelings I turn my awareness to an image of the face of the person who is annoying or threatening me most and this is often when the thoughts and plans and emotions get all activated again. Takes a bit of time to shut down again but then, focusing on that person's eyes, their soul; it's possible to appreciate them also as a valid and lovable somebody. And finally the attention moves to someone I hardly know at all- someone I've seen in a shop or someone I had a second's worth of eye contact with, and I spend some time appreciating them as I appreciate myself, my friend and my enemy. Just having those few minutes trying to even out the tone of feeling towards myself, my friend, my enemy and a practical stranger is beautifully releasing! By this stage I'm ready to zone out and to focus on just breathing in and then breathing out. See if I can spend just 2 or 3 inhalation-exhalation cycles without wandering off mentally and thinking about something. Once I've done that I'm ready to get started again. Sometimes it's so peaceful that I want to just stay there just breathing and being! But then the outside world beckons and I need to get back to doing whatever I was doing before but I'm now calmer and more centered and less driven by the insecurities of my ego or the petty rivalries between myself and others. And I can see more clearly what my priorities need to be to ensure that I get a balance in my life.

So I suppose my advice for the day would be to take some time to learn the skill of of shutting yourself down whilst remaining fully aware.

There's a bit of a knack to it but with time, patience and practice it'll probably be the most valuable thing you ever learn to do!

8 For a proportion of the world MY 'pastures new' is THEIR 'elephant's graveyard'

This is the point when I start to wonder if this GaySocrates thing is going to be worthwhile or not! I'm kinda pulled in two directions. One is the direction of carrying on writing- expecting there to be an audience out there for what an older, maybe wiser, man makes of the world right now. Bearing in mind that I'm missing contact with older men myself and I'm trying to find ways to rustle up a bit of contact one way or another. I'm convinced that an older gay person, out there somewhere,would be really helpful to me! On the other hand, I'm undermined  maybe by my internalized homophobia, low self esteem and internalized ageism, by thoughts that I won't have anything useful to say to a younger generation. Things have changed so rapidly in recent years that any experience I might have to offer has lost it's relevance. I'm just an old dinosaur waiting for it's extinction! So to keep going on about what it's like for an older gay man is just embarrassing, irrelevant and unnecessary!!

I'm reminded of the extent to which I've been seen as old and irrelevant in the past, how surprising it was at first, and how it subsequently angered me. I then needed to come to terms with how my aging appearance dictated who would or would not find me relevant and/ or attractive. And so there followed lots of bargaining and negotiating with myself over where it could be legitimate to hang out and how long for. Like for instance: not a great idea to hang around saunas packed with young muscled guys- they are just going to ignore you and make you feel shit! But then it's figuring out what to do and where to go so it doesn't look like you've just 'thrown in the towel' socially. The past few years have been a bit difficult for that kind of negotiation because my two best friends were younger than me- one guy in his late thirties and the other in his late twenties- so the kind of places they've been wanting to hang around in [although I've been up for it because I had an overprotected adolescence and young adulthood] didn't serve me particularly well. Hanging around clubs and pubs getting drunk into the early hours of the morning hasn't, on reflection, been the best way to spend my time in the years leading up to my half century!

But that's all changed now because my young friends have moved on. One up to London and the other to the other side of the world in Argentina. So, I've been 'best friendless'  for a good few months now and I'm able to reflect on what's best for me and, more importantly, do I want to stick with what's not been best for me? Am I ready to move onto 'pastures new'? Am I prepared to accept that

for a proportion of the world my 'pastures new' is their 'elephant's graveyard'

Trouble is I'm still not exactly sure where these 'pastures new' actually are! There's a group in Brighton known as GEMS [Gay Elderly Men's Society] but that's run by Age Concern and I think it's mainly for the over 60's. I think I'd be out of place there- maybe even considered geriatric jail bait!! Maybe it's all gone virtual when I wasn't looking so it might be more about getting a Gaydar profile which is more about talking and friendship. That might be worth a spin!

So, What's the message in all of this?

To the elders my message is: Try to find ways of growing old with grace and remember the wise words of the great psychologist Carl Jung 'We cannot live the evening of life according to the programme of the morning'! Don't try and be a silk purse if people are looking on you as a sow's ear. But also recognize that mutton can be as tasty to some as a lamb's chop.

To the young my message is: Please don't let your disgust towards the creepy old letch in the sauna spill over in your attitude towards older gay men in general. There may be elements in the old dogs' life to be learned from!

7 Gay and Lesbian Wisdom-Be Brave!

Flicking through an old copy of a local Gay Rag, I came across an article on 'The Older Gay in Our Community', this week. I was a bit disappointed with it because it launched into the 'interviews' without anything by way of an introduction. Nothing about the context of the feature and nothing about the author-though it stated a male name. The format of each interview followed a set sequence of questions asked of all 6 interviewees. I was left with the impression that they hadn't actually been interviewed at all but instead had been sent a questionnaire to which they had provided written responses. Three gay men and three lesbian women were asked questions like 'What was your first LGBT experience?', What are your hopes for the LGBT community?', What are your views on  LGBT Age Politics?', 'What would your advice be to a 17 year old identifying as LGBT?'

All the interviewees were well old [60-odd plus!] and although in the article the interviews were alternated boy-girl-boy-girl, I preferred to read what the men had to say first. Of course I

was reading as a younger man hearing the wisdom of the older generation- much as I imagine this column to be read and, as I suspected, I was struck by the damage that was speaking out at me from the page. 

The first guy had had a family grown up and then was divorced before he allowed himself to come out and even then, by the sound of it, via a few dalliances with bisexual blokes and being forced to be their 'bit-on-the-side'. The second guy had been court-martialed for having sex in the navy. He was released from prison with the news that his lover had shot himself! Then there was the guy who had been maimed 'in action' whilst in the forces. He had lost his mother in Auschwitz concentration camp and his father at Dunkirk. 'And how had he noticed his sex drive had changed with age?' His answer was: 'It's not changed at all since I've always paid for sex finding that professional sex workers are able to ignore my disability and treat me with dignity and respect! And then there was the guy who had been sexually abused as a child regretting that he had never spoken out.

On to the women most of whom had been emboldened through the women's movement and one of whom felt far more disadvantaged through her second class status as a woman than as a result of her lesbian sexuality. The bits I liked best of all were to do with 'what advice would you give?' mostly because all the bits of advice seemed a little naff really-except for one of the lesbians who said something like : 'If you can, let your family know, make lots of friends, and treat everyone with the respect you would expect of others for yourself. You've picked a long row to hoe. Be brave' Hmm! I liked that!

Makes me want to do a better job and I'm wondering now how best to go about it. Maybe I'd be better served doing a series of features on the older gay or the gay elder- but with more detail and more searching questions. Think I need to check out how best to meet some older gay people  and see if they'd be prepared to be interviewed! Hmm!

So my message for today can't improve on our sage lesbian- Recognize that you've picked a long row to hoe. And Be Brave!

6 To Gym or Not To Gym?

I keep thinking about the Gym Culture that's been getting a tighter and tighter grip on us all over the past 20 or 30 years. When I first joined a gym -about 25 years ago -it was a bit of a novelty thing to do, something fun to do every week and, I suppose, a bit of a lifestyle accessory. As the years have gone by it seems that to be seen as acceptable as a young man out on the gay scene, you need to have been working out for years on a regular basis. Pecs, biceps, and six-pack are all seen as necessary rather than as optional extras! The transition in terms of the rapidly increased pressure to conform to cultural bodily shape and size expectations was illustrated nicely in the number of trimmed and toned figures to be found on the gay beech at Sitges each year. My first visit there must have been over 20 years ago. I've been fortunate enough to have a fairly lean athletic build without having to worry too much about diet and excercize. On that first visit there was a wide range of shapes and sizes following a fairly normal distribution. At my last vist a few years ago, I was shocked and somewhat saddened to find that well over 80% of the bodies to be seen were honed to Gym Perfection. Rather than finding these sexy, lean bodies attractive, all I could register were the empty hours of gym time spent burning off fat and the corresponding inevitable consequential accompanying limitations in terms personality development and conversational possibilities. Not that I need have worried about a conversation actually occurring because natural selection being what it is, once you've spent your time and energy grooming yourself to perfection, you're then naturally and narcissistically drawn to others in your own image and repelled from those who haven't been so careful about what they eat and how they look! I've been struggling with whether or not my anti-gym attitude is just a matter of 'sour grapes'. As you get older your metabolism slows down and you don't need to eat as much as you used to do so the middle age spread kicks in and it's less easy to maintain a naturally athletic state without having to cut back significantly on foodie treats. But I think it's more than that. I fear that Gym Culture has crept in to replace what used to be around as a reasonably caring, giving, protective culture maybe based on some collective sense that in times of persecution we need to look after each other. So now we're not ostensibly persecuted any more what takes its place? Seems like gay men have fallen into the low self-esteem, back-biting, bitchy world that a lot of women have been drawn into. 'Be Slim and Bitch' being the best form of defense! So instead why not put the dumb bells down and move away from the Gym. How about some Yoga, Pilates, or even Tai Chi? Get a sense of who you are rather than what you look like!

5 The Beholders Eye!

Now where was I? Oh yes….last time I was going to talk about dealing with being beheld. Because we’ve all somewhat reluctantly accepted the idea that beauty may be in the eye of the beholder but we do still like to believe there is some absolute essence of beauty and we’ve all been given varying amounts resulting in an internationally accepted pecking order with Brads and Angelinas at the Top Table and the mingers hanging around outside. And then of course there’s the ‘Ravages of Time’ effect where stunners like David Essex and Adam Ant and David Cassidy become grey and baggy eyed. Bucking the trend of all this is the situation where we are perceived as more beautiful than we feel ourselves to be. If someone believes we are beautiful we’ve got a few options. We could accept their view as valid and enjoy basking in their appreciation of our beauty. We could attempt to change the situation by invalidating their view- persuading them through what we did or said that they are in fact wrong, that their view is inaccurate, a misapprehension, a misperception or that maybe they are just plain warped! Or we can choose to move away from the discomfort. Move towards people and situations that will reflect more accurately the view we hold of ourselves. So take your pick on that one. Though I guarantee it’s likely to feel nicer in the company of those who recognise your beauty than to be hanging around with people who are happy to reflect with you on your perceived shortcomings! And it’s certainly less effort than arguing the toss over whether you’re beautiful or not!!

More commonly we are valued as less beautiful than we actually feel. Now, as a Gay Man Having Self Esteem Issues [and bring me the Gay Man who doesn’t], I’m a bit prone to accepting a more negative view of myself than is probably the case. But we can all tell when we are being underrated. Now I would hold that this underrating happens as a mass effect in our society right now towards ageing. It’s a bit complicated but I think it’s something to do with how people generally appreciate and categorise the world. So there’s the majority of people who dichotomise- who see the world as full of good and bad things, situations and people. And of course whatever it is that a society chooses to see as “bad” is  beheld that way by the majority. My Spanish teacher tells me that in Spain it is considered Bad Luck to meet a person with a squint. So if you’re born with a squint you spend your life having people crossing roads to avoid your gaze. And people move into or out of these zones of positive and negative behodenment [if that can be a word]. The ugly duckling grows to be a very fine swan indeed! But ageing is the opposite process. So for thousands and billions of people worldwide, as you become old, you enter this zone of being negatively beheld. More or less so depending on the relative store put by the individual person on the unattractiveness of the aged state [usually in direct relationship to the degree  of fear they themselves have of not being accepted for whatever reason but more often than not it’s to do with a fear of loosing their sense of how beautiful they’re perceived to be] I said it was a bit complicated!!

I’m just trying to step outside the process a bit to understand why people increasingly either look right through me as if I don’t exist or actually scowl at me as if I’ve brought a bad smell into the room!

4 A Steamy Sunday in Rainy Madrid

Ok-I'm tucked up in bed-It's 2.30 in the afternoon and I'm just recovering from a mammoth almighty sleep. Gone are the days when I might have squeezed the last dregs out of a holiday weekend by going out on a Sunday night. So instead I treated myself to a night in with Spanish TV with Spanish subtitles courtesy of teletext page 888!! A vain attempt at improving my Spanish but at least I got the chance to catch a few phrases and expressions. So it was 'Cat Woman' and '8MM' -en Espana until 1 am and then lights out and off to sleep for a solid 12 hours-Lovely! Well, I think I had over-exerted myself somewhat. After all the exertions of Saturday morning I awoke at 9 am after just 5 hours and decided that I was going to have a lazy Sunday. Spent the morning reading and writing. Then had the bright idea of taking myself off to a sauna. How easy is it for me to sly off to a sauna when I'm at home? So checked out the local guide to see which might be the biggest, brightest, cleanest-difficult because they sort of claim that they all are in their ads. Plumped for Sauna Center along Gran Via 'one of the biggest male saunas in Europe'. What it doesn't say is that it's old, moldy, and a bit dingy which I discovered 16 Euros later [£12-80 with the current poor exchange rate!]. Never mind , I was here at least ostensibly to have a thorough sauna and steam experience which, if you do it properly, can leave you feeling naturally high and exhilarated. So even though the showers were mainly cold-apart from one highly sought-after one-and one was broken: you get the picture, the steam room was extremely large and steamy and the sauna was extremely hot and dry. So I proceeded to get on with the business of getting myself so hot I could hardly bear it and then throwing myself under icy showers-accepting that this would do nothing for my sauna credibility as the process resulted in the shrinking of my already compromised assets! But hey-ho, I was there for a sauna -so there!

However, I was increasingly struck, as the afternoon wore on, that even though there was an ever changing number of faces and bodies in the shower room, no one seemed to be using the sauna or steam rooms. I nonchalantly wandered around a bit to find out where everyone was going but no-all I could find was room after room of changing room cubicles, a toilet area,shower area and bar. Ah well, I thought, I'm here for a sauna so off I went until I was dazed and spaced out with it all -flopped into a sofa in the bar really appreciating the laid back space, relaxed music and faded retro atmosphere and then I fell asleep for a bit. 

When I awoke I was still troubled because I couldn't figure out how just a few rooms could be described as 'one of the largest saunas in Europe'. Needed to do more of an assertive explore, I thought! Then, on this circuit, I realized I'd managed to overlook a massive stairway right by the entrance which led down to one of the most spacious sets of dark rooms, cubicles, porn cinemas and wet areas I've ever come across. Hmm! Well, I'd done my sauna-ing, now was the time for a little R and R. Trouble with very large places, they can feel a little forlorn even when there are quite a few people around. I decided that I couldn't be fussed with all the thrill of the chase and opted for a completely anonymous dark room orgasm. Lay down, started myself off, and in no time at all I was being slowly and surely helped to one of the most leisurely orgasms I've had in years-Lovely! That felt like a no-blame encounter if ever there was one. I'm sure there's a lesson in there somewhere?

Oh-I was going to talk about how you are beheld! Ok -maybe do that next time.