Safely extracting possible NULLs

The following occurred to me while thinking about a way for storing NULLs safely. It's just a quick-shot, so it's heavily debatable, and what I'm aiming at is really something that is supported by the language, or at least by a very short language construct - avoiding the clumsy getter/setter semantics. I just couldn't do it quickly in C++...




#include<iostream>
#include<exception>
using namespace std;


class IntMaybeNull {
    private:
        int *thePointer;
        bool hasBeenAsked;
    public:
        IntMaybeNull(int *aPointer) : thePointer(aPointer), hasBeenAsked(false) {}
        void setPointer(int *newPointer) {
            thePointer = newPointer;
            hasBeenAsked = false;
        }
        bool ask() {
            hasBeenAsked = true;
            return (thePointer != NULL);
        }
        int *getPointer() const {
            if (hasBeenAsked && thePointer != NULL)
                return thePointer;
            else
                throw exception();
        }
};


int main() {
    int x = 20;
    IntMaybeNull i(&x);
    try {
        int *ii = i.getPointer();
    } catch(exception e) {
        cout << "dereferencing without asking - buuuh!" << endl;
    }


    try {
        if (i.ask()) {
            int *ii = i.getPointer();
            cout << *ii << endl;
        }
    } catch(exception e) {
        cout << "dereferencing without asking - buuuh!" << endl;
    }
    return 0;
}