It probably has a lot to do with how much one idealizes or romanticizes sexuality itself, Richard. Is it something sacred to you? Or is it just something enjoyable? Does it have deep personal meaning? Or is it simply an appetite that needs to express itself? This would vary a great deal from one person to another, wouldn't it? They would all certainly have the appetite, but they might find radically different levels of meaning in it.

I always idealized sexuality. I wanted to connect it with an idealized form of romantic "love" before experiencing it. That's just the way I happened to approach it. It might have to do with my basic nature...or it might have to do with whatever I was exposed to when I was a young child. Parents' attitudes toward such things can have quite an effect on a growing child's perceptions. So can books you read when you're first forming ideas about it, and I read a lot of books when I was a youngster. Most of the books I read presented romantic love in a very idealized form.

Now, if you had a dad who liked reading Playboy and Hustler, and those magazines were lying around the house when you were a kid, well, then you'd probably develop an earthier sense of what sense is about, right? It wouldn't nearly as romanticized in your mind.

There was nothing remotely like a Playboy magazine ever around in our house when I was a kid...

So I grew up with a very romantic set of ideas in my head...and I was looking for "true love" from day 1. That and that alone, period. It was basically a mental concept, a head trip. When you're looking for that you are not looking for just any generic physical female to satisfy a generic physical need...you're looking for someone "special"...and such people seemed, in my experience, to be rather few and far between.