Monday Night

So I went to meet N for our tete a tete. The one I had ever so slightly been avoiding, whilst trying to appear casually no-avoiding and just busy. Not entirely sure it works that way, but oh well.

I went to his flat, and N opened the door wearing, surprisingly for him, a t-shirt. He was also wearing his custom black trousers, and braces which he’d left draping, rather than hoisted over his shoulders. It was a sweet look.

 He made me a cup of tea and ask for a hug, to get rid of any awkwardness. I guffawed about, proclaiming there was none, but I’m pretty sure I shot myself in the foot there, because when he went to kiss me, I did the super elegant thing of converting a full on pash into an clumsy kiss on the cheek. Elegant as always.

We sat on his sofa and chatted. We chatted about T and I, and also about N, and what his life was like. He looked me in the eye and said I was the only person he’d been attracted to in the last six months. I swore, and he told me it turned him on when I spoke like that. It was so straightforward, it was shocking. Much more shocking than any of the coy texts or flirting I got from S or M or even T. He told me what he wanted to do to me. He told me he wanted me to go to Paris with him. To stay in his hotel room. He told me he wanted me to call him Sir. That bit made me laugh/cringe, I have to say.

In a way, it was very appealing. It obviously had some appeal, because despite myself I felt myself being drawn into this dream, this fantasy, when if I’m honest I knew I didn’t want to get into even as I walked to his lovely flat. I said ‘yes', when what I really meant was ‘I don’t know’. The deal for me was sealed when he kissed me, and I felt nothing. It wasn’t even horror, or disgust or anything negative. It was simply the pressure of his large moist lips on mine. And that was all.

I haven’t kissed many people but I know it’s not supposed to feel like that. But I was weak, and I let him kiss me and I kissed him back. But down deep I knew I couldn’t give him what I wanted and more to the point, I didn’t want him. In the end, I don’t want a lover that I will never love. That’s not what this journey is supposed to be about.

I don’t know why I find it so hard to follow my own advice, and realise that when it’s not right, it’s not right. When you don’t follow that gut instinct is when you get into trouble. N would never hurt me (at least not in a way that we hadn’t agreed) but I felt the weight of his feeling to be so oppressive. I’ve often longed for someone to tell me that I am beautiful, and attractive and that they’ve never met anyone like me, and that after I leave they say how lovely it was to kiss me. But I never realised how unhappy it could make me, when I don’t feel the same way. It’s only a blessing when it’s reciprocated. How do you tell someone that it’s not you, it’s them? That you just don’t feel the same way, not because of something they’ve done, but because intrinsically you just aren’t attracted to them.

Three days went past, and the more time apart made me realise I couldn’t go through with it. It was making T unhappy, and I felt trapped and scared. I knew the longer it went on the worse it would get, and the more damage would be done to our friendship (in that I would play the avoiding game - that one that I am so good at). So on Thursday I called him and told him that the ‘yes’ I had given on Monday had become a ‘no’. It had always been a ‘no’, but I guess I just needed to work that bit out on my own.

N again

N called. He wants a tete a tete. I felt intrigued enough to agree to a night cap, so I'm on my way to his flat wondering if I feel powerful or out of my depth.

We'll find out!

The one that never really happened

I’d spent the last, lazy half hour of the day pretending to work while my best friend stood in front of me chatting with the man I had once fallen most desperately, painfully in love with. I knew and felt that it was never the good sort of love, the healthy sort of love, but the painful, foolish kind. The kind where you are shown every day that they don’t love you, hell, they don’t even want you, and yet you just can’t let that motherfucker die.

J was giving advice to S about his recent break up. I know. He’d just broken up with someone else, why the hell would he want me? I knew they’d broken up, I knew he was still in love with her but I just couldn't get rid of the feeling. I couldn't work out which was worse, not being able to see him and constantly thinking about him or seeing his goddamn face every day and not be able to get it out of your head. I was sitting at my desk, just behind the two of them, staring at my screen in what I hoped was a focussed way (and yet not-too-focussed way – that would give the game away) and typing made up words onto a made up document so it seemed that I wasn’t listening to every word they said. Which I was.

The worst part was that I had started to be so cold to him. I had to be. I couldn't let him in any further otherwise I thought I would actually break. The coldness was my effort to keep some dignity for myself, and if I am completely honest, to punish him for not feeling the way I do. I wanted him to hurt the way that I did.

It’s a terrible tale, and I’m ashamed to tell it. But there I was, stuck in a fucked up one way love story. It wasn’t always this way. I seem to remember there was a point when I hadn't loved him. When I didn’t even consider him.

We’d managed to work together for nearly a year, eight months or so, when I had a silly dream about him one night. It wasn’t even particularly graphic, we were just pressed up against each other in a bar, in a crowd of our friends. It was the feeling that really through me. I had this incredible sense in the dream that what we were doing was illicit, and that we were both complicit in it. During the day I couldn’t stop thinking about it, and it had felt so real to me that I was heady with it. I went down to talk to our resident agony aunt (the receptionist) J2. Even she had had one, about the most unlikely Casanova in the office. Her advice was to tell him, you can then both have a laugh about it and you’ll be able to move on.

It wasn’t until I practically rammed into him, coming around the corner from the kitchen that I blurted out ‘Oh I just remembered that I had a dream about you last night’ and promptly walked off. I sat down and about five minutes later I had an email from S asking what this dream was about. And that is how it started.

I admit my part in all of this. I am aware that I made a series of choices that got me to this point and that at any moment it could have seriously come back and bitten me on the arse. I knew that going in but I played the game and fell right in. A sucker for the adrenaline. I can’t imagine what else I was thinking. It wasn’t as if my relationship at the time suddenly meant nothing, although perhaps I acted in that way.

It fucked me right up. I had never made one mistake in my life that has made me so unhappy. S and I never slept together. But instead of making love we made intimacy with each other that mutually went beyond the boundaries that either of our partners would have been happy with. So I didn’t tell him. I raised another up to the same level as him in my heart.

After a while I realised I’d actually broken it. What was whole before became deformed and twisted and only selfish. I don’t know what I wanted from S. I wanted sex, and passion, but I also wanted intimacy and a friendship so intense that it would make me forget how lonely I was, and how few real friends I now had. To fill up the part of me that others couldn’t fill. I never told S this, I just became disappointed, painfully so, when he didn’t give it to me.

Our affair was very post modern. Next to nothing of a physical nature but hot as lava over technology. He would text me such things that the memory of them would stop me on the stairs in the middle of the day. I would blush making tea and the sugar spoon would shudder in my hand. Coming to work was a unique mix of pleasure and pain, because just to see him would make me wet, and yet we would barely speak to each other. A month of headiness. Of heightened feeling. Those feelings were so high but the foundations they were built on were weak.

I didn't separate sex and emotion well back then and the passion I was feeling and receiving didn’t satisfy me, it left me craving more. I couldn’t tell if we were just playing a game of if it was real. The jokes and games always continued but they culminated in him picking me up in the mornings. He talked about touching me as he drove. He asked if I wanted to touch him. I felt shy. So he said he would go first. He touched me, touched me on the thigh. Then he pulled up my dress and touched my bare skin. I sighed with shock and pleasure and fear all the while feeling how heavenly it was. Heat rushed to my face and I felt feverish. He brushed his hand up over my thigh, then dipped it in between my legs. He touched my underwear, then pushed it aside to put his fingers inside my cunt. I was wet. He told me to touch him, so I put my hand on the bulge in his trousers. He removed his hand from my warmth and unbutton himself. I placed my hand through the zipper and felt how warm he was. Burning. Then as he slipped his fingers back inside me I realised how large his cock was. My confidence rose and I pushed my hand further inside his zipper until I met with flesh, and my hand surrounded it. It was shocking. He pulled in the car park and we composed ourselves.

I couldn’t stop myself, I didn’t want to stop myself and I wanted more of him. But after that morning it was never the same. A peak had been reached, a line had been crossed and all of a sudden it wasn’t just make believe. It wasn’t a game any more and we had both done something that we not only couldn’t defend, but couldn’t dismiss as ‘just flirting’ or just words. That evening I got the text I’d dreaded, and the beautiful short sweet affair was over.

I was more okay than I thought I would be. Life went on, and surprisingly it wasn’t much different than it had been before. I went to sleep with the person I still loved I woke up next to him. He still made me laugh and I still loved stroking his soft cheek. But now, instead of being whole, these simple things and an undercurrent of unhappiness in my heart. I knew what I had risked, and I knew how capable of hurting D I was. I realised that I had foolishly gambled that for someone who was no longer replying to my texts.

S and I still laughed together at work, but now I looked at him a little longer. I stopped going into the kitchen when he was there because I didn’t want him to think that I gone there to get him alone. I was terribly terribly conscious of myself and forever conscious of him. It was what I imagine having a child is like – a sixth sense for knowing where they are. The days he was out seeing clients was terrible. Empty. What was the point if the only reason I was now here was to see him? Suddenly my life had a new, self destructive focus and that was S.

Then all of a sudden, a text. Out of the blue. It started again. Nothing as passionate as the first time and more cautious. An offer to drive me home. I accepted. I showed him the new flat I shared with Dan. I showed him the whole place and then the bedroom. He said ‘so this is where the magic happens’. Then he thrust me up against a wall and asked me if this is what I wanted. Was this the way I wanted it? Did I like it when he did this? His hand slid up my skirt again and I watched his face discover that I had taken off my underwear at the office. His beautiful large fingers slipped inside and me and he fingered me in a way that D didn’t. I don’t know if I preferred it but I relished that it was different. I couldn’t speak. I felt shy and scared but I didn’t want him to stop. He came closer to me and I wrapped my arms around his neck and felt his burning cheek next to mine. He whispered that he wanted to fuck me. He wanted to turn me around and fuck me with his big cock from behind. I didn’t let him. Jesus Christ I wanted to, but there was something fucked up inside me that said if I didn’t fuck him, then what I was doing wasn’t as bad as I thought it was.  


He told me he cared for me after he came on my tits. It was so foolish. I believed it for a few months longer, and then one day I realised that he didn’t actually want me at all. That was such a painful epiphany. He’d never wanted me, but had just seized the opportunity of me wanting him. 


It’s only the time that has passed now that lets me reflect on this. It was a terrible, foolish time in my life that I will never ever be able to undo.

G, 2008

I met G in a gay bar in my home city. I’d worked late with some pals and my sister, and after the shindig had been and gone we wanted to carry on into the night. This bar was famed in our city for it’s debauchery - mud wrestling and lady lovin’ abounded here. I’d never had any luck there before; one disadvantage of being a femininely dressed bisexual woman is that people assume that you’re there for support rather than as a punter. It could be worse, I suppose.

That night I could have cared less though, and it may have been the wine that made me feel powerful, or the liberation of having cut all my long brown hair off a few weeks earlier. My body started buzzing. It was electric. I danced and danced with my sister on the lit up floor, until we couldn’t breathe and our lips were dry and parched. So many people. We went outside to the rooftop bar.

We immediately saw our friend V, and older guy in our industry who hadn’t really made it much of a secret that he wanted to slip me one. It had been sort of weird between us, and I found him so unattractive that the thought of fucking him took on a majorly kinky not-sure-if-I’m-prepared-to-actually-live-this-fantasy quality that I was still working out. He bought us bubbly drinks, and we all chatted and then we watched him start to really drink. It was eye opening.

Then I saw G. He was standing talking to what I later found out to be his very pretty blonde friend. He was French, and fucking gorgeous. I don’t know how we started talking, but we did, and I remember finding out he was French and just losing my shit. I’m utterly obsessed with France and the fact that he was just so goddamn good looking made me instantly moist up. His English was at the stage where I could work out what he was saying, but not without some effort. He was making my skin vibrate so eventually I straight up asked him if he wanted to come home with me. He was concerned that his English meant he had misunderstood me, but I reassured him - yes, I really was inviting him home to fuck my brains out. He said yes, but that he needed to take his friend home first.

I ran to my sister and told her (totally excitedly) that I was going to get sex! The look on her face went from unbelieving delight to a bit of shock and she said ‘I think I’m going to stay at Mum’s’. Good idea.

My sister left ad all of a sudden I felt a fool, and convinced that G had taken the opportunity to swiftly escape me. I was losing hope swiftly when he reappeared and told me to get my coat stat (obviously not exactly in those words). We took a taxi to mine and I remember his hot mouth bursting all over my lips. It was incredible. We both stumbled up my carpeted stairs and fell onto my bed. As he stood before me I took his tshirt off to reveal a muscular and incredibly tanned body. He came towards me and his skin was so hot it was as if he burned his imprint onto my body. I can still feel it. He took off my black singlet and deftly (miraculously, even) removed all my other clothes without me really realising.

He turned to me and asked me what I did for a living. ‘I’m a student’ I said and he nodded. ‘Do you want to know what I do?’ he asked. Sure. Why not. ‘I am porn star’.

Now I am pretty open minded but I was completely not expecting that answer and I’m sure the shock registered on my face because after a few seconds he laughed, shook his head and told me he was joking. ‘My cock is not big enough’. Imagine a naked man in front of you saying that with a French accent. EXACTLY. Hilarious. ‘I am osteopath.’ Three little words that actually could not have delighted me more. I love being touched and have relatively constant back problems, so it was ideal that after he fucked my back up by fucking me hard from behind, he could readjust me and give me a rub down! What’s not to like?

He bent me over the side of my bed, and pushed the head of himself inside me. That achingly pleasurable first entrance. Christ. I had a full bush at this point and he seemed to quite like it, perhaps a European thing? Embarrassingly, I don’t remember much else of the sex part, other than I enjoyed it but didn’t climax. I do remember being particularly vocal as my sister wasn’t there though...

Around this time, I was starting to realise that even great sex for me was often sans-climax. I just couldn’t seem to get there when someone else was present. After he came, clenching my ass as he shot, he actually did give me a rub down. A full blown, full body massage. It was gorgeous. Afterwards I gave him a beer (!) and we chatted about France, about our families and about our lives. He tried to teach me some French and when we slept he pulled me closer to him and held me there all night.

In the morning, I walked him to the bus stop and he left. It wasn’t until afterwards that I realised how stupid I had been not to get his details. I never saw him again.

Wednesday

T and I are back on an even keel after what was a slightly rocky week or two. Back to enjoying each other, which is a relief.

We went to the cinema last night and I looked at his face, lit up by the screen. It is so familiar to me, almost more so than my own. It's home, and I've been reminded of that a lot recently. He still makes me laugh, laugh until I choke and there's something to be said for that. Indeed there is.

M is still away, and we're not in touch very much. In a way it's a blessing because I've been able to move through the horrible part of him being away and now the ache that I feel when I think of him is vaguely pleasurable, and recalling past escapades with him makes me weak at the knees and brings a smile to my face. I am fairly sure we'll see each other again when he's back, but am now at the point where it doesn't seem so vital.

I reprimanded myself for missing him, because in one way I should just accept it for what it is now. But I realised that I miss him because I genuinely like him on a friend level too, and just when we were getting to know each other he left. Oh well. Hopefully we can pick up where we left off.

N

N is a relatively recent friend of mine that has turned out to be quite the surprising chap indeed. His thing is authority, and after seeing him rather too deftly facilitate discussions I’ve been involved in, I knew that I never really wanted to get on the wrong side of him. He’s very self possessed, with just a touch of arrogance that makes people do pretty much whatever he wants them to do. If it wasn’t vaguely frightening, it’d be quite entertaining to watch him whip people into line.

As I said, I knew I had absolutely no desire to get on the wrong side of N, but as it turns out, N would rather like me to. We’re involved in a project together, and due to my incredibly non-amazing skills of attention to detail, N sent me a text saying I’d made an error that had been published. I tried to make light of it, and was surprised (shocked?) to read his reply involved giving me a rather red bottom. Turns out N is one for a bit of the old spanking, and he made no secret that he wanted me to be the recipient of his authoritative smacks.

I’m by no means adverse to a bit of a blurry pain/pleasure line in the bedroom, but knowing N the way I do I was surprised to find myself the object of his desire. Perhaps it’s because I am so spectacularly crap that he feels justified in doling out punishment? Who is to know? The idea of being submissive makes me a little bit wet and I’d like to know for sure if it’s something I’d like, but is N the person to find that out with? Or is because I’m ever so slightly afraid of him the exact reason that I should try it? I can tell that T is not super into the idea, but he finds N remarkably unattractive personally and he can’t look past it.

What frightens me is that I know N. That path is a one way street and once you drive down it, you can’t come back. Having M as my lover is easy for me, because I have never known him as anything else, but N.....I don’t know. But I should like to find out.

Monday, about 6pm

I had an hour and a half on Monday night to see M. He lives pretty close to my work so it wasn’t unfeasible to squeeze in a little meet up before going to the theatre with T. I felt kind of bad about it, and deservedly so, because I’d planned to see him all day and only discussed it with T at about lunch time. Not exactly great form there, but T was forgiving, as it is all so new.
M asked me how long he had with me, and I got a pang of sadness. It suddenly seemed unfair to ask him to settle for snatched hours here and there with me, but then swiftly following that thought was maybe he only wanted snatched hours with me and that maybe our arrangement suited him just fine. One of my aims of this venture is to trust myself and to trust others. I don’t need to be responsible for what a 32 year old man isn’t saying to me. The look on M’s face when he sees me says to me that he wants me and right now that’s enough.
The hour went quickly, as I guess they always will, and it was a wrench to tear myself away. Another semi-unsuccessful night on the penetration front but the intimacy is growing. It’s so nice to be around him and to feel again that newness, and that the person lying next to you wants you to stay.
I got on my bike and rode to the theatre to meet T. He wasn’t there but another friend, N was. N revealed to me the night before that he quite fancied taking a paddle to my backside, and was rather keen in getting me involved. I wasn’t so shocked at the idea, more shocked that it was me he wanted to take a paddle to, so I am determined not to let it get weird. If I’m honest, N isn’t the sort of person I had ever imagined would take a paddle to me, and there is a slightly weird dynamic in our relationship already - but who knows, never say never. It’s off the cards for the time being.
Anyway I saw N and briefly chatted after a kiss on the cheek. I couldn’t see T and our tickets had already been collected from the box office so was kind of confused. M had also given me quite the hammering earlier, and I had a pain. It felt like my uterus was throbbing and about to fall straight out of me (I’m sure that’s normal -right?) so I was in no mood for shenanigans. I tried to call, to no avail, when suddenly T walks in the foyer of the theatre with A, a mutual friend and the current object of T’s desire. They looked very chummy, and whilst I felt a small teensy pang of something related to jealousy, I reminded myself I’d only just had my brains fucked out by M and so I was one to talk. I like A too, and she’s a bit of a sauce-pot herself, so all in all I would be glad for her to be T’s lover.
As is my style, I fell asleep in the theatre, and woke in time to see the credits roll and a text from M to appear telling me that he was thinking about me naked. It was very pleasing. T, A and myself walked home and I fell into T’s arms in bed, thinking how wondrously bizarre these few days had been.

Saturday, 2pm

Saturday 11am I get a text from M saying ‘Good Morning’. I’m in a meeting at my favourite cafe discussing an upcoming event and I’m trying to secretly reply to him whilst maintaining a look of supreme and uninterrupted interest in what we’re discussing.

I thought I was the scaredy puss one, but it turns out it was M. We’d drunkenly agreed to meet in the afternoon - M had wanted to kidnap me - but I wasn’t sure if it would go ahead. Turns out M wasn't sure either. But fuck it, what am I here for if not to be honest and get something I am looking for? Something I want? It sounds so horribly selfish to put that in words but it’s the truth. I wanted a lover, I wanted someone in addition to T and I wanted to fuck them. M showed up and I liked him, so why should I bother beating around the proverbial bush?

I replied enthusiastically in the affirmative, and we discussed where and what time to meet. I knew vaguely of the place where he lived but hadn’t actually been there. My sense of direction in interpretive at best. We agreed and I pretended I knew where he was talking about and then dashed home for a quick and hopefully accurate de-hairing and effortless make-up applying session.

Choosing clothes to meet your first non-monogamous lover in is surprisingly difficult. I’d mentioned M to T that morning, and he’d okay’d the afternoon meet up, so I was free to race home alone and make the necessary preparations. I thought I would chance it and so wore a bra but no knickers. Then I left to meet him. I got lost on the route even though I’d walked that way a thousand times before and when I saw M and his lovely grey hoodie walk towards me my heart gave a subtle leap into my mouth and I suddenly realised how damn fucking excited I was! We kissed straight away, and although my mind registered that I should be careful who saw me, I didn’t actually care because I knew I wasn’t doing anything wrong. That is quite the best thing.

We made it to his room before ripping each others’ clothes off. The quantity of alcohol consumed the night before had meant that last night’s performance hadn’t been the best for either of us but today was different. I could feel his stubble take the skin off my face, but I didn’t care, I loved it. I loved the roughness of him, the thickness of him where T was thin and his lovely Northern humour that was so different yet familiar to my own. He fucking lavished me with attention and spent most of the afternoon between my legs. When he tasted me he looked like he enjoyed it and for the first time in a really long time I wasn’t afraid of my taste. Or my smell or how he found me. I’ve been so scared of cunnilingus - god knows why when I have a very enthusiastic and kind partner at home - but today it was ok. Although having said that I’m really sensitive there and if I am being painfully honest, the gasps that he thought were of pleasure were sometimes a bit of ‘holy fuck too fucking sensitive!!!’

He seemed to love it though, which relaxed me. He made me revel in my own womanliness and although I can’t think of a single thing M said to make me feel so at ease, they are the exact words I would use to describe how I felt that afternoon. Even awkward putting-on-condom moments seemed fine, and funny and normal and not scary with him. Maybe it’s an age thing, I get the impression that being somewhat older than me (the best part of a decade) and in his particular job role, M has had quite a bit more experience than me. There were some tricky moments though, like when he couldn’t stop his body from freaking out about using a condom and he couldn’t get it up. That sort of sucked but I’m sure not nearly as much for me as it did for him. It must be totally shit to be trying to impress someone with your sexing skills only to lose your hard on. His deftness in the licking-out department hinted that this wasn’t the first time it had happened but who cares. I liked being naked with him and I liked being licked out so it was really him that was suffering.

We worked out a pattern of getting all hot and bothered - kissing and grinding each other and just about getting out shit together, and then taking a break. Getting to know each other in the most obvious way - by asking direct questions. I found myself looking at his face and stroking it with the palm of my hand. ‘So sweet’ I remember thinking. So very sweet.

I left at six, and had walked around the corner when I realised I’d left my glasses in M's room, so had to come back. His grey hoodie walked towards me again and that reassuring feeling of excitement came back as we kissed goodbye again.

That Friday Night, about 11pm

I don’t know what it is with gay bars, but I am seeming to get quite the track record with meeting straight men there who apparently like me.

I’d had dinner with Tom and M2, a friend, and we’d all had red wine and roast beef and listened to music that made us feel happy and giddy and like we didn’t want the dinner to be over. M2 had to leave and after he’d gone T and I looked at each other and sort of did a sighing thing. We had always entertained M2 ensemble, rarely alone and the time we spent with him was like a courtship, plying him with funny stories, food and wine in the hopes of winning him as our friend.

I couldn’t bare it after he left and so told T I was going to meet up with some friends from work who were out for R's birthday. I didn’t have R’s number and although I had the numbers of other friends, I couldn’t be fagged texting to see where they were and assumed I would just make a delicious surprise entrance at the gay bar, where they were sure to be by now. It was a twenty minute walk there and I just fucking knew as soon as I walked in that they weren’t there. I casually looked for them, and then thought ‘fuck it’ and got a drink, sat at the bar and got my frosty bitch face on. I seem to think that ice queen is the look of choice when you’re standing alone at a bar.

The girls next to me walked outside, and soon after, he walked in. M. He looked at the place where the girls had been, then looked up at me. I hadn’t seen the grey hoodie you had asked for (although I have come to know it well now) and then I saw you cheekily sweetly ask the barmaid if it was behind the bar. I said I’d seen the girls leave but that I hadn’t seen them take your jacket. You said you were going to kill them if they’d lost it. They came back in, and immediately one pointed to the floor at your casually crumpled grey hoodie.

I must have failed completely at the ice queen thing, and rather unexpectedly succeeded at the ‘lost lamb who has been stood up’ look (although that wasn’t entirely the case) and your lovely friends started to chat to me, asking what I did and teasing you a hell of a lot. You said you knew me from somewhere and although I know your ex-girlfriend by sight you seemed to think we had had several meaningful conversations which I had conveniently forgotten. We all chatted and chatted, and I thought I got some vibes from you but wasn’t sure. You disappeared and the girls went out for a smoke. I was suddenly bored of the smoke, bored of being treated like a wee lass and wanted my friends. I faked a phone call and told your friends that my friends were walking up the road - when I walked to the entrance they were standing there. I went inside with them and got a drink.

About ten minutes later I saw you again, on your own, and suddenly felt horrible for abandoning you when you had been so nice to me before. You’d made it seem as though it was totally normal to be standing in a bar on your own on a Friday evening. That I was part of the gaggle of women that you’d come here with. I was feeling pretty lubed up from the vodka lemonades I’d been having (why do I even order these? I hate them, I just drink them when I get nervous and can’t think what to order) and so strutted over to you and started talking in your ear. Your friends came to say they were leaving and you stayed with me. We talked more and I can’t remember what we talked about, other than we were laughing and having a good time. You bought me another drink and my friend E came over to do a shot. It was a bit awkward, and I remember not wanting her there with us but also trying to make it look like I wasn’t completely flirting my head off (which I was) because E knew T. But she didn’t know the arrangement that T and I had come to. We did the shot and then blew E off. I knew it was on by this stage and took your hand and pulled you onto the dance floor. Into the dark shadowy bits.

God I am a sass-pot when I am drunk. I sure as hell don’t mess around and I am consistently surprised at my sheer fucking audacity, because I am so scared of repercussions when I am sober. Maybe it’s my authentic self coming the hell out to party.

I told you then that I had a boyfriend, but that we had an agreement about taking other lovers and you were visibly shocked. You were mostly intrigued though, and I remember dancing on my own in front of you and feeling so fuck-off powerful. Not over you, but over myself. I wanted something and I was going after it. You kissed me, and I asked you if you wanted to go outside to make out. You did.

Coping with Not Coping.

On reflecting on my last post, I guess that I am trying to teach myself how to be okay when I don't feel okay. How to be happy in yourself when people aren't reacting the way you want them to or when you feel insecure.

M is away. He will continue to be away and I might not hear from him. Let's just take a breath here and be okay with that.

Sunday, 8pm

M has been away for two days now and I’m finding it hard. Not because he’s away, I can deal with away, but because I haven’t heard from him in two days, and I can feel myself turning into psycho-missing-you-bitch-text-me-you-fucker.

I texted him yesterday morning, and when I didn’t hear back I left it to sit for a while. I’ve gone through the full gamut of emotions these last two days and the weirdness has been heightened by the fact that T and I have had a lovely, loving weekend together. T and I feel closer together than ever before, but there has seemed to be this grey part of me, in the back of my mind, waiting for a time when I’m alone to jump on me and make me miss M. It’s been so long since I’ve felt that way.

M and I have been lovers for a week. T and I have been lovers for three and a half years. I love T, I am in love with T but the brand spanking newness of being with M is just that. Brand spankingly new. I don’t need to be forced to admit that M and I barely know each other. We don’t necessarily have that much in common other than the fact that last Friday night we picked each other, and since then spent a week in his bed.

Part of me has enjoyed the sensation of missing him. I’ve felt his absence after getting used to the piss taking all week. The way he just talks and talks and talks and fills up the silences until he doesn’t need to. How he talks about nothing for 45 minutes and just when you start to lose interest he’ll mention something dark and dirty about himself, to make you wake up and realise there is a hell of a lot more going on in there than you ever realised. I enjoyed the absence of him because it made me remember that I like it when he was here. That this whole adventure that T and I decided to go on together wasn’t some big mistake, and that fun times and meaningfulness and kooky sex could happen and my world wouldn’t implode. But I swiftly stopped enjoying the sensation and now my brain is doing that thing where it plans out the worst scenario and convinces me that something incredibly unlikely is going to happen. Like he will suddenly realise that I am full of shit and the things that I told him I could offer him weren’t enough and he didn’t want to be with me anymore and didn’t care enough to tell me (even by cunting text) and he’s just going to ignore me or worse laugh at me for years to come with all his soldier friends.

I know that it’s not real, these absurd worries. Even more I know that he is thinking about me and that he’s probably playing the same game as me - don’t text and keep it cool - so he doesn’t get in too deep either.

He’ll be back in three weeks or so. I guess we’ll wait and see what happens when he gets back!