I started coughing and spluttering the day before Christmas. Although I made it through singing carols at Mass, and the day itself (although everyone took a nap in the afternoon; it was an odd day), Boxing Day passed in a haze of sneezes and tissues.

The rest of the week has been similar – a miasma of struggling to move, foggy thoughts, Glee marathons on Disney+, Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Beechams Flu Plus. I’m meant to be going back to work next week, and exciting as that may be, I’m really not feeling it.

When I’m this sick, it’s very hard to feel sexy. Yesterday I read through my diary in preparation for tomorrow’s #orgasmcount, and in the moment, it felt like something Herculean to even think about being hard, horny or anywhere close to ejaculation. Even if I tried, it’s hard to imagine my hand co-operating with my dick.*

[*But I’m still going to try.]

If I’m not having orgasms, then I usually end up having my awkward dreams about not quite getting to have sex. Or being naked in public. Or both. Or fiddling with my dick. All four, if you count the dream I had about masturbating on the local bus that goes to town from the corner of my road. Inevitably I wake up hard from having these, and more often than not a little frustrated (not that I ever get to have sex in the dreams; the fact that it could happen is what keeps them going!).

But that’s not been happening either. I’ve been lying in bed feeling sick, day and night, every now and again trying to muster the strength to sit anywhere else – even in my own computer chair. The struggle, dear reader, is real.

Late last night I had a dream about watching porn. I don’t remember which porn it was, or if it even exists. All I recall, really, was a dream about watching porn, in my chair, on my own. (That’s how I usually do so, which is probably what made it so realistic.) And that’s how, in the dream, I had one of the biggest, hardest, throbbing erections I’ve had in the past few years.

And then I woke up and realised it was a real one.

Which was nice.