All his life long and right from the very first girlfriend, a small ageing man, now marked with the first liver-spots on the backs of his hands, has been in the habit of moving outside of the rutting couple of which he has been half, and contemplating the act from without. Now in this enormous city under this enormous sky, he floats alongside himself alone and helpless for, at this moment, time has decided to shrivel him up and switch off his sex drive. He is no longer pretty. He repulses himself for his body is objectively ugly, no matter how beautiful he is inside, and his body is seen as such nowadays by younger women, the only women he's ever been attracted to. He had known all his life, and no doubt this had not helped his own biological longevity, that old-body sex or ugly-body sex is utterly unacceptable to him. It's been coming on now for a while. This is not a sudden deterioration. But the actual end of the sex, the moment, is in fact sudden.
He lies on his side, limp, behind the city woman where his arm is curled round her waist. The 'sex' is not going to work and it will never work again. Heavens, his body looks like a pink grub nowadays, smaller even than the woman. He releases the arm and rolls onto his back. Having returned inside himself now, he stares at the ceiling and contemplates the final stretch. He'll be ok with it. Why, he's already coming to terms surely. He turns his head and looks at her next to him. 'Woman' of course ever unable to grasp the horrors of 'Man' (just as 'Man' can't grasp hers, but you've always known that haven't you) lies next to him. Like him she lies facing the ceiling. Her eyes are open too. She is still firm and vibrant and she thinks of her girlfriends preoccupied with their pleasure in some place.
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