he accused me of portraying sex as a fun thing that people happily went into when the urge took them without a care for that dreaded sexual dampener- e rectal failure. Was he a victim?  I asked, expecting a profuse denial.  “Yes, I am, and it’s no thanks to an ex-girlfriend who laughed derisively when I tried to make love to her and failed”. Would he like to talk about it?  You bet”, he said.  I’ll do better than that. I’ll let you have my grouse about you women and your heartless ways, in black and white!”. He was true to his words too as he personally brought his write-up to my office. Here is an excerpt from his heart-wrenching experience:

She had me at 19 when she got pregnant for a fairly well-to-do businessman who ended up marrying someone else. When she re-married, I was about six years old, and even at that age, I realized I was no better than a maid as far as my mother was concerned. I did all the household chores and when my half-siblings started arriving, I was forced to wash all their dirty nappies as well as do the household chores whether I liked it or not. Anytime I fell short of expectation, I was thoroughly beaten. As I grew older, my mother’s grudges against me increased, and I constantly wet the bed – not a surprise really, considering the stress I was under. My mother’s solution to my bed-wetting problem was to wake me up in the night and wallop me with a shoe. She then made me pee on coal embers and promised I wouldn’t wet the bed that night. If I did, I would get beaten again in the morning. My step-father was no better.