a place to hide

A sense of contentment has descended upon me over the past few days. Maybe that is why my writing has become sporadic. In someways I have become used to this, it is a completely different way of approaching a situation. Before there was a duty, now there is but a suggestion, sometimes not even that.

Although some days I do feel like the femme fatal of many a french film, batting my eyes at the lapping men while I know there is no chance in hell it would happen. Just for kicks, just for kicks. It does sound awful but it's fun. Why not when you are young an unattached.

But then you realize that the men that have been and gone, or so you thought, are still clinging on with their bleeding fingertips to the last humane feeling left in you, guilt.

I was at a party and it was going particularly well. The people, music, atmosphere, drugs, dancing and so on were up to scratch for once. And I had brought along a new girlfriend to introduce her to the lot. Half way through the seemingly successful evening I spotted him arriving. The danger approached, with his hair and his face.

From his eyes I knew this was bad news, they swam like children; skipping with glee and intoxication. He span me on to the dance floor and for a moment it felt like the old times. We would escape our friends and gossip into this dungeon club with sweat seeping from the walls and dance with tequila and beer.

He was the man who only last week told me he had fallen in love with another woman and I was so happy for him. Now he clasped his arms around my waist and filled my ear with nonsense. Like a love potion poured in by a witch.

All I could do, as it is that all I can ever do these days, was run.

I think my legs are getting a little tired of the run, maybe I should rest where no one can find me.

to last but a summer

True love?

A dear friend of mine sat looking out into the street, watching the passing traffic. The lights became patterns of thought that jumped into our seemingly normal catch up. It had been two years since we had seen each other and his face had sharpened, brighter and stronger.

He looked noble as he turned to me. I'm marrying her. A police van scattered tourists in the streets and the blue set off the red of the bar. His eyes looked alive, and I could see that he was for real. He is still very young but there was such a true tenderness and honesty in his look that he really believed in it.

It got me thinking. I remember when someone talked about me in that way. And there maybe someone who still does. With that true abandon.

It was winter and a small group of us had huddled in a kitchen with tea and cigarettes. It was dark and had that incredible feeling of intimacy you do when it's warm inside and you know you have escaped the bitter.

Me and this respective boyfriend hadn't been getting on all that well in those past few months and I had the feeling like it was coming to a close. He had the habit of making public declarations, whether it was about having an argument or the great sex we were apparently having.

So he turned to the group who were discussing relationships and declared, I could rob banks with this woman, I could steal a horse.

I don't think I understand that purity. I could feel it, see it, almost taste it. From both of them, this boyfriend and my friend in the bar.

Does this make me heartless?

I don't think I understand that complete trust and surrender that they felt. To plunge so deep, so trusting. I can't believe it is my age, as I have concluded that there are things that go beyond age and experience. And I think especially in this case in particular. Maybe it is just a youthful feeling that may have passed me by.

Or maybe one day it will smack me in the face and I will be a stumbling idiot proclaiming my love and surrendering my everything to, even my grandmothers silk shawl!

No, I think I have something else. And my friend could see it, even through his beautiful haze of love for this most fortunate woman, that I am practical. I can't do that, I want independence.

Not that I want to ridicule him for his courageous jump into matrimony. He will be happy. I even stalked his couple facebook pictures and smiled to myself at their loving looks. One had an arm around the other, the other holding the camera up for all the world to see, their deliriously happy world of beautiful bed linen and shared cups of coffee with the papers of a Sunday morning.

the visitor

there is a pureness of light in this room. he looked at me and nodded, closing in on me. it felt like a sweet fold of so many times that had past, long before. without force we discussed, like always.

he had come to me to tell me he was in love with someone else. not that he had ever needed to. I would never have to tell him, he always knew when I was in love, or not in love. that's one of the reasons why we were no more. I think he smelt it on me, love secreting from my pours.

he had brought wine and we sat facing each other, as if resting in a place of peace, sharing communion. the whole process became measured. he would murmur something and I would repeat, then we would sip wine and I would murmur something and so on.

lovers come and go, but old ones stay. I think it was sweet that he thought it was necessary to tell me about this new woman, kind even.

I guess the next question to ask is am I nervous of her. somehow through the labarynth of friends I know of her, and she feels like she is similar to me. does that annoy me a little?

if I am asking the question, probably.

now he's going to be happy. I'm not sure if I am used to that one.

gin queen

The night was drunken and stupid. when all fails, you can always text obscene messages to past conquests. I have been very infrequent with my posts these past few days, not that I've had nothing to say, more that lazy way that just infects every part of me.

Now I am completely alone I can have no excuses. Last night for the first time in a long time it feels, I had the notion of being completely independent. Something that I have been fighting for for years. I am a woman and this is my world. I guess this feeling is very temporal but it gives me the realization that I am doing the right thing.

Even if I did try and arrange a booty call at four in the morning with someone very inappropriate. It was dark and cold, and that's what you do when the weather gets this way. It's not my fault, honestly!

I've recently made friends with this stunning young woman, she is glamourous and exciting, everything that I wish I could be. So we went out, all night, running through the streets, dancing, smashing glasses and being generally outrageous. Does it matter that I have a bit of a crush on her?

Not sure with that one, I mean it's probably the program that is testing me, making me jump for anything where possible. We were dancing in this bar with her friends and her boyfriend, the music ran through me, infecting everything and the lights cut through the sound. Suddenly it was just me and her, surrounded by noise and darkness, she had a hold of my hands and we were rushing through the sound. We could have been super heros, we could have been anything.

I couldn't take my eyes off her. She was beautiful, magnificent, she was trapping me in a world that I had never been. I wanted every part of her, everything. And the music and the light and the darkness and everything was consuming me, and I it.

Then out of the corner of my eye I could see this face, not sinister, but smiling. Her boyfriend reached in and grabbed each of our hands and sped us out of our dark universe as fast as we came into it.

And the feeling diminished, and we drank the rest of the gin.

following an intuition

I let go of something. Like forgetting a day, absentminded and easy. It just slipped from my fingers and looking back the pictures are somehow more beautiful than they felt.

The blurred images of us, we sweep in and out of the frame.

He had been fighting against me and now he pushes me the other way. And now what do I do?

I gave him up.

coming back

I could hear my friend laughing down the phone at me, are you surviving? She’s my rock, the one that helps me if I fall a little. It’s like the support network in an AA group. Oh dear, this is not an addiction, but a trial, a program, a test.

When I’ve discussed my situation with my friends they look at me with an odd expression. First impressed, then confused. But why do you want to do that to yourself? I can see it laced in their eyes. To take something away that is so great, what is the point?

Some times I don’t know what the point is.

I have started to look at men differently. With more interest, not interest in their bodies, looks etc, but their minds. What do you think they are thinking when they see me? Before I would just think they wanted to jump my bones, now, I see beyond that, into something much deeper, more complex. Of course I have the intelligence to see beyond men’s sexual appetite, but now I’m more interested in their darkness.

There is something that they carry which women do not have, something truly secretive. I am generalising far too much in this one, but I think it is a valid point.

Do they pity me, like my friends who try to look encouraging? Maybe that is it. Maybe. They pity for me because I am a woman and women suffer, for my suffering I will weep. So they pity.

I have been accepted by my boyfriend after finally he has been tempting me for days. So now I have the others to contend with. A particular older man who I sat next to at a dinner party was one story. He warmed to me, sweetly, and the conversation was brilliant, I laughed, he laughed, I laughed again and as he went for the next laugh he slung his head on my shoulder like a schoolgirl. I laughed forward, not wanting to draw attention to this advance, but shoving him off effectively. He handed me the coffee and held my hand while I poured, I looked up at him as the party went on around us. Let’s get out of here, he said with an odd smile, I could see from the state of his teeth that he was about the same age as my father. Let’s make a run for it, my place. And then he lunged for my ear, nibbling away like a hungry kitten. I felt nauseous, maybe from the wine, but now accelerated by this geriatric trying to remove my lobe.

I had to get out, I downed the coffee and swiftly exited. The rain was pouring, again, and I could hear him calling my name down the street. The rain was soaking my face, clearing the feeling that kept washing back up from my body to my thoughts, come back, come back.

the choice of many

Today I don’t want to tell you about sex, men or any of that. I’m bored of it. It seems that my life has been revolving around the subject for far too long. I want to write about the chase, but not mine.

Can a person be content without the thought of their next conquest?

I feel that I had become two dimensional, but even sitting here in this bar I can feel myself drawn to the eyes of strangers. Shit. I fall into the trap so easily, again and again. The eyes go past, lingering a little too long on my space in the window, and retreat back into the crowd. Maybe I even positioned myself at this prime spot for just this purpose, to pick up.

That’s sad, really sad.

In some ways I am a little ashamed about publishing such personal thoughts, these are things that I find hard to admit to myself even. It’s easier to pack them away and carry on as normal, pretending that I am a good person. I am in most ways, but that selfish draw to the next sexual accomplishment is fucking sad.

Maybe this program is a way of getting rid of my self-pitying cycle, to feel proud of myself in my personal life.

I am sitting watching this girl play the part that I have played many times before. I have to admit I think I would have executed the conquest much better than she. But it is interesting to watch the moves.

She’s having dinner with these two men, it probably started out as a casual drink but from her advances I can see she can persuade them easily. She swung between the two men who at first had no interest in her. She picked at their plates as they sat for dinner, making glutinous noises and lingering eyes at her victims while she grazed. Unfortunately her physique was such that she could not entice with her body, just the eyes. Then she had them both limp and it was crunch time, who to have. That’s the hardest decision, when you’ve been playing two or even three along, which one to continue the night with? You don’t want to damage your chances with the others if the one you chose falls short. It’s a tiring business, juggling all your options, all your players, maintaining there happiness and still continuing a little resistance in order to make them feel like it was their idea in the first place.

Poor girl, she looked tired as she left with the largest man.

Rain Man

I nearly fell at the first hurdle. Nearly.

Deeply embedded in me I have this code, but I guess it comes with being in a relationship as well. He takes me out, we have an amazing time, we go home and it is just courteous to sleep with him.

But this is where I have to retreat, I don’t want to be in his bed, I want to be left alone. His eagerness is starting to repulse me. Is that a bad thing?

I had this boyfriend a few years ago who was a bit of a Dorian Gray character. With or without clothes on he looked fantastic, he was the kind of man that you would find sitting in the pages of a glossy staring with a tasteful allure at the world. He could excite me when we went out, having a distance from him, I found that with just the eyes I was drawn to him.

As the door was closed he was so eager, so bouncy, lapping like a dog. Literally slobbering over my neck, drowning me in his lust that he simply physically repulsed me. I think there were many more reasons why he repulsed me, but that is another story entirely; this one played a big factor.

Why do men think it’s ok to be so forward? A woman wants a bit of a game, a smile, a tease. No one wants to be devoured so quickly, so entirely.

I think I forgot to say I’m in a relationship. It’s part of the problem, being with someone and then the others. Not that there have been many. But the fact that it’s happening still, when I just thought it was the nature of the last relationship I was in. No, the problem is within me.

Leaving work the other day I was accosted on the steps by a colleague. He is not just some man, we spent an incredible night together, and that was the catalyst for this program.

It had been raining all day and he caught my hand making sure I would not trip. He said wanted to make sure that it was ok between us after our rendezvous. He was standing close to me, still holding my hand. I had to play coy, I couldn’t lead him on and I couldn’t tell him about my change of status, instead I laughed too much at the things he was saying. I thought the situation was ridiculous, in the rain and this man is trying to kiss me and I can still smell my boyfriends sweat in my hair from his eagerness last night. But the greatest thing about this situation, and of the night before, is that I could walk away.

Before, I would be drawn in, it would be hard to say no, my morals would crumble against the sight of a beautiful man in the rain holding my back and trying to look in my eyes. Yes this is so cheesy, so clichéd, so unreal, but this bit I assure you is not fiction.

And, I did walk away, smiling.

a pretentious poem

Like that I gave it up

withdrew my wrestling techniques

learnt over many summers

and it was hard to swallow.

Held off the sticky touch

of eyes and eyes across coffee

up in his room because it’s better

not to smoke in the kitchen

after a tidy date.

Like a long haul driver

retiring, parking his machine for the last time.

Not to feel the engine shudder beneath

to know how the load fits around tight bends.

He turns to me

wondering if I’d like to stay

I smile politely

after peeking at his neatly laid bed

on my way back from the loo.

it would smell better if I did

in the morning

when the alarm shakes my pillow

or his

to crease the starch

scrape the layers off his back

to be that unforgettable one

that the flat mates would role

eyes about over toast.

He lit a candle

the light lifted my eyes

to make me infinitely more attractive

I catch the last bus home.

the first day

this is the first day in a six week program. to change a way of life. change old habits. they say, old habits die hard. this going to die harder than a vicar's erection.

let me explain the situation.

after more than eight years of promiscuity, countless numbers of relationships shattered by my own stupidity and search for something more exotic, etc. i have decided to abstain. and yes, from everything.

sex became something that i could consume, it became easy and less and less fulfilling. it became a way to connect with people. it started to take away my creativity, all energy was usurped on the chase. i can and do catch me on the street, just with my eyes. draw them in so easily. you can make a man just want you from passing them in the street, to half smile and look away, the coy thing. or the one that is the most exciting is starring them ring in the face. the cold stare. they love that the best. want to get into you, feel your coldness, fill up your loneliness.

so this will be a documentation of this challenge, and who knows, i may even become a better person for it.