Our Nights In

With JB, there's no rushing. No pressure to see the latest gallery opening or to spend half a soggy evening in line to a new bar. 

Maybe it's because he's a near-decade older than me, but the story of our relationship is much more about cosy evenings in getting gently sozzled on wine and doing a puzzle. Just like this evening. I can't imagine anything I'd rather be doing. 

I’m a silly cunt sometimes

I’ve fallen for my housemate. I’m a total idiot, and should have known better. He’s called JB, he’s lovely, and had I met him in a different life, who knows? It could have been different.

The night I came to look at the house was so much fun. I wasn’t exactly sure how to find it, but I knew he was at home waiting for me, and in the quickly darkening evening I could see him sitting on the sofa  playing on an ipad and drinking red wine. All the signs were good that this was going to be somewhere I’d be happy living.

I can hear his voice so clearly, welcoming me. “Hello”. He was excited and nervous - we’d met once before at a mutual friend’s birthday party, and as we all left, JB and I danced to the train station. I found him on facebook, and found his art blog. He remembers me as his first following. We seemed to be quietly noteworthy in each others’ lives.

He showed me the house. A study (yay), with room for my sewing machine. filled with books. Heaven. A lobby, beautifully decorated to exactly my taste. A lovely bathroom and a new kitchen, just put in. He showed me the room, it was great. We went to the kitchen, and he gave me the key. It was that easy. He poured me some wine.

We chatted. We talked our way through three bottles of wine, and I was having a great time. We agreed on so many things, and agreed at how stupid those who didn’t agree with us were. I told him I was polyamorous. We watched Youtube clips and laughed together on the sofa. We let our bodies touch. I don’t really remember saying this (although definitely not out of the realm of possibility) but apparently I said “so is fucking part of the deal?”. Ugh

So we kissed, we really made out. He took me upstairs, I ripped his (and my own) clothes off. We touched, I sucked his cock. I remember a hazy and not very enjoyable 69 (those things scare me - too much chance for a nose up the bum) and then him not being able to keep it up. I remember waking up a lot, and feeling very thirsty. It was a little weird.

A few days later I came to show my four year old nephew the house. JB thanked me for being cool. I felt cool. I like fucking people and although it wasn’t my most successful drunken fuck, I had enjoyed myself. I moved in.

We started a weird friendship, a slight romance. We enjoyed each other so much, and began to fool around most weekends. I was fine - I was really ok with it all, and JB was so clear that a real relationship between us wasn’t really an option.

I ignored him. I wondered what it would be like if we were together. I thought if I pretended hard enough, he’d change his mind. He kept saying how excellent I was, and I thought that meant he wanted to be with me, and was coming around to the idea.

He wasn’t. I know that categorically, after starting to cry when we agreed we should probably stop the kissing, the fucking and the cuddling up to watch TV, I confessed I was upset because I loved him. Accidentally loved him. He was (is?) shocked, and as gently as possible told me that I would never make it into his heart.

I’m retreating now, trying to get some distance without being mean (although my lesser self wants him to be as hurt as I feel), but I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all.

I want him.

The Weekend of You: Saturday

We arrived at J's house, a former worker's cottage of a nearby estate, and he led me through the garden to the back door of the house. We went inside, I de-coated and de-scarved, and perched on a chair whilst J made tea. The taxi ride to the house had been pleasant, but tentative, and I'm sure the taxi driver thought we were both completely nuts, sitting there and grinning like loons and teasing each other.

J has been calling me The White Witch of Narnia, because after speaking about it together, Cambridge had their first frost of the season. In the car he'd handed me a package, which I opened at his table. Turkish Delight.

We chatted, and grinned some more, before we re-coated and re-scarved and after thrusting a particularly unattractive hat on my head, he led me out of the house and we wandered into Cambridge city. He gave me the full tour experience, chatting confidently about writers who had lived in the villages near him, the history of the place and the reason that so many academics still revolved around this historic place.

He took me inside Cambridge, we saw King's College and Trinity. What heaven, and how marvellous to have studied there. There is a studious air there, and J is right, King's Student Bar was the only Student Bar I've ever been to where everyone is sitting around and talking about their subjects. We repaired to the cafe for a hot chocolate, and I think it was there that the first chipping away at the strangeness of my being there happened. I had to speak to T, and J called out to say hello. I liked it, it was new and a bit scary but I liked it. We confronted the nature of our meeting head on. We're both polyamorous. I'm in a 4 year relationship with T. I didn't really want to go to Cambridge to forget about that, but having said that I didn't want it to loom inauspiciously over the whole weekend. It was ok, J seemed to say. This is ok.

We then started to wander somewhat awkwardly holding hands or walking arm-in-arm. The next day I realised he was nervous and wasn't sure how much I wanted to do that, and at the time I felt the same way. He didn't seem to overly want me to hold his hand, but maybe he was just better and seeming cool and calm than I was. So I just touched him when I wanted to. It seemed to work just fine. Outside Trinity College he kissed me, and I felt my knees buckle with the arousal that come from finally being taken the way you crave.

From then on, I was hazy with desire and my only real wish was to go back to his warm cottage and have him inside me. But there was a whole lunch to get through! We shared a bottle of wine and some pasta at a well known Italian Restaurant in the city centre. We talked and talked and talked. And kissed. He told me who he was and then so did I. We talked about polyamory, and that T might go to see J's other lover. J liked that. He liked the synergy, and that we'd all come full circle. We had the kind of conversation that makes you not want to leave the table, as you know that as soon as the spell is broken it wont be the same when you come back. He told me I had the softest lips he'd ever kissed. I told him that I was so turned on I could hardly stand it. He paid, we left, I got his coat whilst he settled and he was delighted that I knew which one it was.

Back at the cottage he tried to unlock the door, but suddenly it was too much and we stood kissing on his stoop and undressing each other. His warm, wet kisses enveloping my face, his hands touching my breasts whilst I unbuttoned his coat. I stole my lips away from him to whisper open the door. We went inside.