A NEW PERVERSION (by Toney Atkins)

FROM SOMEWHERE IN THE BRAIN OF TONEY ATKINS: The following piece of "prose" was written and published on www.toneyatkins.com/ several years ago. Some people who, for some reason, remembered it but said they could not find it on the web site, asked for a repeat. For those readers, one of whom said it was one of her favorites (poor, deranged soul), I re-publish it here.  WARNING: RATED PG-13. A NEW PERVERSION by Toney Atkins A new perversion has suddenly entered my life as I weave my way into my early 60s: I've lost interest in sex. No, it's not that the hormones quit raging. Perhaps they just raged so long, they needed to rest and decided they liked retirement. I tried one of those 36-hour male enhancement drugs. but ended up with nothing but a backache. I'm probably one of the few men in the world who will turn his eyes away from a steamy sex scene in a movie, much as most would close their eyes as a screaming victim is hacked to death by an ax murderer. It even embarrasses me to watch animals copulating on nature shows. I don't deny that age possibly has something to do with this, but this perversion seemed to hit me overnight not too long ago. It's not that I'm falling apart. Some have told me that I look "hot" and that I apprear to be a lot younger. Then I'm brought down to earth when the clerk at Kentucky Fried Chicken automatically gives me a senior discount without a second look. But the mirror still shows a certain distinction and not extinction. I woke this morning, so I'm still alive. The thrill is gone, but I don't miss it. If that's not perversion, what is? Although I rarely analyze it or dwell on what I once believed was one of the most important things in my life, it sometimes occurs to me that I indeed must be an oddball. I even went to an adult chat room on the Internet to see if stimulation lay in some unknown person who could live anywhere in the world. One of the room's inhabitants sent me an instant message, and the profile information displayed what had to be a human being with the most sexually attractive body in the world, if not the Universe. That unseen being that I believed to be a she saw me as being an object of perfection. However, my mental image of the writer was of a 500-pound creature whose major orgasms came from ingesting five Whoppers and four Slurpees at one sitting. My sexual stirrings remained dormant. My eyes still find pleasure in looking at a beautiful person, but I'm finding that many more people have a certain special outer and inner beauty if I look at them long enough, and that is wonderful. I believe in love, but where is the lust? Am I missing something? Am I any different than I was before, when I believed that proving sexual prowess was one of the most essential things in life? Is low-T devastating my future? Now I'm out of the closet with this perversion, I hope you don't think less of me. It's certainly not that you are not sexy. It's simply that I'd rather just love you, and it's sad if that's considered to be perverted in this day and age.