For a month now I’ve avoided any intimate contact with women. I know, I know, this isn’t the sexiest way to begin a column about sex. But to every column there is a season; a column about lap dances and a column about failed seduction, a column about one-night stands and a column about lusting after that new NGO girl from Scandinavia. I’ve been there. Now it’s time that the Fox says Farewell.

The year 2013 means no more sleeping around, and trust me, my regular life is not entertaining enough to fill even half a page of a weekly magazine.

Let me double back to that really erotic topic I mentioned above: time. The selfish thought of time to myself to do some of the things I had neglected at home was part of my reason for coming here. Instead, I played a silly masquerade and achieved little but a wasted body and lonely mind.

All those hours I spent flirting with girls, riding home in tuk-tuks, unlocking the endless locks that need unlocking to get into my home, then waking up hungover and scheming on ways to do it all over again. If I had gone home earlier and more sober, I might have woken up and joined a gym, and started to get exercise of a different kind. I might have had a six-pack by now. I might have finished that book. Man, I might have written a book.

I didn’t lack for subject matter. I aped the ‘European lover’ so I could seduce a Texan girl travelling through Cambodia. I obsessed over a girl’s Facebook profile, only to be baffled by her personality and indifferent when we were in bed. These are my stories. I have conned, confused and ignored people. When I played games I made a girl feel guilty for stealing drink coupons from my pocket. To win my attention she ended up performing a naked lap dance for me.

There were many more encounters.

I don’t regret having lived a little foxy. It might have left me jaded, but, if I hadn’t tried, I might have spent time thinking I missed out. And now that I’m confessing, I might as well confess that my life was never really that edgy. There were no pregnancies, no crowded orgies, no STDs, no stalkers. But it made made me a lonely man – one-night stands are an easy way to get close to someone quickly, especially in a foreign country.

In a transient expat community like Phnom Penh it can be hard to form substantial relationships, but you can’t force intimacy. Trying to do that has made me more alone than ever – but not in the way I intended. I think it is this contradiction that makes people come to Cambodia and have much more sex than at home: wanting to spend time alone and at the same time not being able to.

This year I’d like to exchange promiscuity for the company of good friends, and one-night stands for weekend trips. I don’t know how this new life will suit me. I might need a little time, but with the Fox gone, there will be plenty of that to go around.