Full-time II

Though I sometimes call myself lazy, I am really a recovering workaholic. There are people who can work in moderation, as there are people who can drink in moderation; I am not one of them. I can do nothing in moderation. It is impossible to avoid work entirely, so the recovering workaholic has no equivalent to the recovering alcoholic's refusal to take that first drink. All I can do is to try never to work more than is strictly necessary; for once I start working beyond the minimum, I am at risk of falling into the deep pit of workaholism again. I might end up working full-time.

Working at the minimum, I have a lot of time left over. Much of this leftover time is devoted to sex. I devote a lot of time to sex mainly because sex is more fun than anything else. But it is also true that there are very few other ways of wasting time that are any fun at all.

Museums? Plays? Music? New York provides innumerable things to do besides work, but whenever I do these things in order to waste some time, I find myself surrounded by people doing the same things, but not to waste time. They are gallery-hopping or opera-going or bird-watching, and so filling the hours not taken up by work or sleep or any of the other things that just have to be done. But they do not do these things in order to waste time in pointless pleasure, and so it is hard to do just the same things alongside them, glorying in the pointlessness. Nor do the museums or galleries or opera-houses or theatres or nature preserves make pointless, pleasurable time-wasting at all easy; they thrust their earnestness and sense of purpose, their self-importance, down my throat, and that makes me gag. Sex is not like that. I play with you, you play with me, our play has no point or purpose, and the world is just the same when we are done playing as it was before we began. No growth has taken place, nothing is learned, no project is advanced, no goal brought any nearer to fulfillment. We have just had a jolly good time. Nothing worthwhile, of course - but then nothing is worthwhile.

On the subway, people fill dead time in different ways: reading, Sodoku, Blackberry solitaire, sleeping. It would be absurd to think that some of these ways of filling time are better than others (except, perhaps, because some fill more time, or do so more effectively). Time spent on the subway is time that has to be filled somehow, and it does not matter how. Life as a whole is like dead time on the subway; it is absurd to think that some ways of filling the time between birth and death are better than others (except, perhaps, that some fill it more easily or efficiently).

In order to waste a lot of time having sex, you have to have a lot of sex, and have it for a long time. Five-minute fucks are almost useless - twenty-four such fucks wastes only as much time as a two-hour movie. Couples who fuck four times a week are, according to sex-surveys, far more active than most, and yet if each fuck lasts fifteen minutes - and a fifteen minute fuck is a decently long fuck, by most standards - they waste only an hour.

What counts as a lot of time spent on sex? According to the Department of Labor’s 2006 daily leisure time survey, "Americans age 15 and over, regardless of gender, spend an average 2.6 hours per day watching television, as opposed to 17 minutes spent on sports, exercise or physical recreation. The second most popular leisure activity, at 45 minutes per day, was socializing, including visits with friends or participating in or hosting social events." I do not spend an average of 2.6 hours a day fucking, but even if I did, who could plausibly argue that this was excessive? I hardly ever watch television; lots of people never, or hardly ever, have sex. We are free to waste time as we choose (so I choose sex in the city over Sex in the City).

Some days, I spend more than 2.6 hours fucking. A recent Thursday, for example: in the morning I went to visit B, arriving a little before 10.00 am and leaving a little after 1.00 pm. How much of this time was spent in sexual activity? I don't really know, but undressing and dressing, showering, having a little snack, and any non-sexual talking cannot have occupied more than forty minutes in total. The rest of the time we were fucking, or I was eating her out, or she was sucking my cock, or I was fingering her and sucking on her magnificent breasts, or licking her armpit, or tonguing her asshole. Whenever I was hard enough to fuck, we fucked, and whenever I wasn't, we did something else. She came again and again and again; I came once or maybe twice. Say I was with her for 3.3 hours, but not sexually engaged for 0.7 hours: that means 2.6 hours of sex, or as much time as Americans 15 and over spend, on average, watching television each day. From this session with B, I went to visit F, arriving a little before 2.00 pm and staying until around 4.20 pm - call it 2.4 hours. I was weary but not exhausted, and with the help of a few crumbs of Viagra, and facing F's indefatigable enthusiasm for sex, I kept my end up for most of that time, so besides all the acts that don't require a hard cock, we also did some serious cunt- and ass-fucking. Say another 2.1 hours of sex. Total for that Thursday: 4.7 hours.

Friday: I fucked C quickly from behind in the kitchen in the morning. I was already dressed and she was still in her nightgown, so she bent over and braced herself against the edge of the counter, and I lifted up her nightgown and worked my cock into her cunt. It took a while to achieve full penetration, and in this position C rarely comes; by the time I was in right up to my balls, I was close to coming myself, with no reason to delay. Time spent fucking: 0.1 hours (I'll treat this - six minutes - as the smallest possible duration for sex). A little later, I was with D, in the back of her car, for an intense but necessarily brief session: say, 0.5 hours. And in the afternoon, a more leisurely time with D, from 3.00 pm to 5.30 pm; we did some talking, but roughly 2.0 hours were spent in sexual activity. Total for Friday: 2.6 hours.

Thursday and Friday: 7.3 hours. A lot of time wasted. But Saturday and Sunday added nothing to the total, and Monday added only another 1.0 or so (C - 0.2; D - 0.8). Tuesday: 2.1 (B - 1.1; D - 1.0). Wednesday: 1.8 with F. Grand total for these seven days: 12.2

Though presumably quite exceptional by most people's standards, the average number of hours per day spent by me in sexual activity over these seven days is below two (1.75, near enough). I spend less time fucking than most adults in America spend watching television. They like television a lot more than sex, I assume. I like sex a lot more than I like watching television.

I don't think anyone who watched television for 1.75 hours per day would be accused of addiction. Why, then, is it thought pathological to spend that much time pleasing and being pleased, pointlessly? I agree it is immoderate - but I can do nothing in moderation. But 1.75 hours of television is immoderate too. Turn the damn thing off and fuck!