Far too many places... in All Good Things

I can’t believe it’s been over a month since I last wrote here. Since then I’ve been all over the place, and am heading for Cardiff in the morning and then the Netherlands next week via France, Belgium and Germany (all in a single day). So much for no more travel.....but at least most of my travel these days is for pleasure, not for work (other than the trip I just got back from to Dubai).

Tonight. Oh, tonight. It wasn’t meant to be this way....

Why do our bodies react to certain people? Why THEM, why not somebody else? Anybody else? What is it between their cells and ours that leaps to life so catastrophically?

There’s someone. Call him S. I’ve been so good about staying away from him for the past four months, only saw him once and that was supposed to be to say goodbye. But then tonight happened. Not much happened. Everything happened. I still see the universe in his eyes. We still can’t bear to let go of each other (even when his MOTHER is the person looking on). Our bodies still gravitate towards each other helplessly like the moon pulls the tide. And I felt alive again for the first time in months. I’d forgotten what it felt like, to feel.

Why him? Why can’t it be someone single, available, someone I can have?

But then there’s a similar physical reaction with E. I mentioned him before, and the difference is that he’s gay so it’s obviously not sexual, but our bodies have a similar pull, a similar strain towards each other, a similar need to be touching. I’ve never been a very physically affectionate person, I usually hate hugs or being touched in any way, yet with these two men I’m ravenous for their touch. With E, it’s easy. The other day in Southampton he couldn’t stop wrapping me up in his arms, and I couldn’t stop clinging to him. We were talking about the future, a future all too close when we’ll no longer be able to meet up so frequently, and while we were talking about it perfectly rationally, our bodies kept grabbing for each other. Why is that? What is the call between his cells and mine?

And is it the same with S? But because he’s straight (and I am, too, obviously), we interpret it sexually? Or is it different with him and it really is sexual? God, I no longer know. It was extremely, monumentally sexual tonight. But is it actually just the same need that I feel for E?

I don’t know which one of them I love more, or miss more when we’re apart. It’s so easy with E, uncomplicated and innocent. He can wrap himself around me in front of his boyfriend and there’s no problem. I can cling to him in front of all our friends and nobody bats an eyelid. Whereas with S.....it’s always been a problem. We always have to hide it. Nobody knows what I feel for him. No one has a clue what he feels for me - including me a lot of the time, because he hides it so well, other than the fact that his body gives him away. And his eyes. Oh, those riveting golden eyes. How I have missed their focus on me. I’d forgotten what it felt like, being speared by them. Illuminated by them.

As he danced in front of me tonight, it felt like everyone else in the theatre disappeared and he was giving me my own private show. He’s done that before, but never in a show that was such raw sex. Those eyes, on mine, as that body in the spotlight moves in ways that are meant for darkness, unblinking, searing into me. He couldn’t stop looking and neither could I. And afterwards we couldn’t stop touching. Neither of us was ready to let go.

Perhaps I should have stayed away. Perhaps I should have left it ended.

I don’t know what’s going to happen. Tomorrow I scurry back into E’s arms for the last time for possibly months, and I’m going to cry, I know I am, because he’s been my ray of sunshine through this dark winter since I said goodbye to S, he’s come to mean the world to me and become my favourite person perhaps ever. Then next week I will see S again. I’d intended tonight to be the last.....but my body won’t hear of it. And he kept saying to me, “Next week, next week,” and I’m not strong enough to resist. So I will go, and we will see.

And then?

Meanwhile, Will’s girlfriend has moved in with him. I went over there last night to lend him something and spent most of my time talking to her. She has no idea I’m his wife, since he only ever spoke of me as his flatmate, but I think she senses something because she did ask me if it was all right that she’d moved in. I told her the truth: that I’d been hoping she would. She’s lovely, a lot lovelier than he deserves, and I hope he treats her better than he treated me.