Up, Down and Sideways

I have no idea how I feel today - at any given moment I am seconds from either tears or laughter. K is just plain miserable - i got 15 texts in 12 hours from him over Saturday night/Sunday morning. I am giving him some support, but I need to keep back some energy for me. I miss - if not him - then the security of a relationship, of a future. And of all things, I'm mourning the lack of holidays - 10 wasted years with him - what was it for?

Then there's D. He's been elusive, to say the least. Over the Easter weekend, his wife accused him of having an affair - obviously he denied everything. Apparently his 'performance' takes a while to recover after I've finished with him. Also I'm sure there's more to it that he hasn't said. So, due to my schedule and his, it was only accidental that we ended up in the same place last week, and he has declined a possible opportunity this week. He mentioned a chance the week after, and I was ambivalent. I'm currently feeling rather like an unpaid prostitute, on the basis that, as we all know, they are paid not for sex but for going away afterwards.

I want to crawl under the duvet and hide away, but I can't even close the curtains in the living room, til I've finished painting and put them up again. Its taken 5.5 days just to strip off all the bloody woodchip wallpaper, and there seems a mile of glossing to do. Sigh. On the day he left, I told K that I intended to start decorating. He looked around and admitted that we could have done it together years ago. Then he hit me with, "You should have nagged more." Sheesh - and they say there's no pleasing women - shame he didn't appreciate my numerous wonderful qualities when he had the chance.

Happy Easter

Its been a good one - spent entirely on my own, but in the company of beer, chocolate, the radio and about 30 square metres of peach-coloured woodchip wallpaper to strip. Doing the latter is quite cathartic - not my favourite distraction, but therapeutic nevertheless.

Of course I did have to drag myself away from a pornucopia of web-based smut this morning. The essential finale to this was a wank, sitting on the floor in the living room with my nose pressed to the window, knees spread wide. My breasts were pressed up against a warm radiator below, which in turn hid my blushes from passers-by, of which there were few, due to the inclement weather. Pity.

 

Six word memoir

I've arrived - I've been tagged, thanks to Akrazael. My six word memoir is:
Passionate about life, music and independence.

The rules are:
1. Write your own six word memoir
2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like
3. Link to the person that tagged you in your post and to this original post if possible, so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere
4. Tag five more blogs with links
5. And don’t forget to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play!

I'm tagging Titus Pepper, Duke Orsino, Ro, Ms R and the Naughty Secretary . Over to you guys.

Freedom

Now that I am officially single, and "of a mind" to play, I am mostly thinking in my spare time about cock. Seeing cock, holding cock, sucking cock, fucking cock. I am mentally running through the cock-owners of my acquaintance and considering the possibilities. I am aware that I could launch myself like an Exocet through their lives, and I should be wary.

There's F, a good friend who put in an early bid when he found out that I might be coming back onto the market - but I am also close to his girlfriend, so that doesn't feel right. There's Y, who so desperately needs a confidence boost, but I really must not go back to giving sympathy shags and really, he needs a full-time girlfriend, not a session with an older woman who will confuse him.

Work in general is already delivering complications enough. Orchestra would deliver my choice in septuagenarians. Hmm... new hunting grounds required?

Meme of the day

As Duke Orsino and Z have given this a go, I thought I'd bounce on the bandwagon...

Greed:	High
Gluttony:	Medium
Wrath:	Medium
Sloth:	Very High
Envy:	Low
Lust:	Very High
Pride:	High

Take the Seven Deadly Sins Quiz

Curry & Chocolate

Last night marked the first hotel-based escapade I've managed with D in a couple of weeks, what with the moving out of K. There have been a couple of car-seat shenanigans, which makes one shake one's head with minor embarassment that all these years further on, you're still acting like a randy teenager. But there's nothing quite like a full-on, mattress-enabled hotel-room fuck to remind you that age has its compensations.

The entrance and egress to the hotel was complicated by the fact that half the senior management team were staying there again, and at some point someone will twig that D & I keep shuffling off to dinner by ourselves. As I pointed out, after a staggered, comedy-routine escape, we were either going to have to pack it in, get a bit smarter at booking hotels or just take out a full-page ad on the company intranet and have done with it. As it was, I had to smuggle out the gift of the chocolate egg he'd bought me, if only because he'd been out at lunchtime and met a colleague who'd stayed with him while he bought it. Eventually we escaped, for a pie & a pint for him, shiraz & curry for me.

But the necessary irritations of the mechanics of work affairs aside, the compensation is the moments of time-arresting pleasure. The countless orgasms are delicious, the novelty of cumming through having my neck kissed, my nipples pinched, helped along with penetrating fingers, tongue and cock is joyful. The memory that sticks with me though is D falling asleep; two fingers still buried deep in my warm wetness, head resting on my breast where his teeth had been teasing my nipples. Pulling him to me, cradling and rocking him to temporary oblivion makes me wistful - that urge to protect, tend and nurture is so strong. I have to remember that like a library book, I'm only borrowing him for a few hours - I have to give him back.

Still, back indoors for the long Easter weekend, I'm embarking on that enterprise that traditionally marks the time of year or the end of a relationship - decorating!

Power

I am a woman in charge - in charge of myself, my space, my sexuality, my time, my attention, my body. Power displayed by men is purportedly an aphrodisiac for women - but I never really grasped my own power over men before. This year has been astonishing, I am newly aware of lines of men desparate to sleep with me. It's amusing, it's astonishing.

I could have them all, I need none of them, I may choose some of them. Casual cruelty could come as easily as warm affection. Why didn't I realise the extent of my power 20 years ago? But perhaps I didn't have it then - time, experience, wrinkles and carefreeness of survival pipping the carelessness of youth and naivity.

My lover jumps when I walk into the office - he finds excuses to talk, to touch, to smell me. He is distracted, infatuated, overwhelmed with lust. And I smile, safe in my power, enjoying every single minute. If we meet this week, excellent. If not, it will wait. I can wait.

The Aftermath

So, the deed is done, I am now officially single. K and his stuff have gone, leaving behind a beautiful letter, a huge bunch of flowers and the crap furniture. Amazing; he's had 10 years to buy me flowers, why wait til the morning I throw his arse out?

I can't quite shake the suspicion that as soon as I have the house straight and everything sorted, I'll think, "Hmm, that's better, now when will K be home to see it all?" I'll miss his smile, but I've missed that for ages now. Part of me thinks I'm being incredibly selfish, immature and unrealistic to expect a relationship where we were both happy. From the example of my parents' marriage, judged a "success" by society simply due to its length, I learnt that I never wanted to spend my adult years in the poisonous atmosphere of the silent war, like I had my childhood. But that's often where we ended up, unless I folded.

Apart from the sly attempts to meet women off the Internet  (and lie about it), the passive aggressive silences and the occasions when the aggression had nothing passive about it, it was the emotional manipulation that wore me down. Strangely, it was often around food. K had very definite ideas about the purchase, the preparation, the cooking, the time and location of eating and the clearing up afterwards. Neither I nor the off-spring were that fanatical in our beliefs about any of it, so to keep the peace, we'd go with the flow, mostly.

But it was extremely difficult to point out the difference between the reasonableness of the request (can someone wash up afterwards) and the unreasonableness of the full-on sulk if he didn't immediately get his own way. Sometimes people get phone calls straight after dinner, and so don't start the washing up for an hour or two. That shouldn't be an "issue" but it always was. It was so difficult to point out that there was nothing wrong with requesting that we usually eat early due to his work schedule, but there is something wrong when no-one dares have a life or arrange anything after work for fear of upsetting his cooking schedule. Try to make the point, and you are bombarded with the reasons that his request is reasonable, and it is. What's not reasonable is a 4 day period of only speaking to answer questions with a grunt because someone forgot to mention they'd eaten the last of the bran-flakes, despite there being a cupboard full of other cereal. Or something equally petty., but he could never see that.

So I was left with the choice of continually rowing over petty, nonsensical trivia, or not sweating the small stuff and giving in. The problem was that the expectation became set that emotional manipulation works, and the situations in which it was deployed spread and spread. Thursday night, we had the classic, "Either you share a bed with me tonight, or you'd better look after my sleeping pills for me." No direct threats to kill himself, just the wild implication in the hope that emotional blackmail would get me onto the same mattress as him once last time. The joke is that after Monday's heart scare, I'd promised to spend one last night, just cuddling. I don't mind doing something freely offered - I object strongly into being manoeuvred into the same thing. "This - is precisely why you're moving out on Saturday." I tartly informed him.

Waiting...

In deference to the current situation, I didn't stay away the night before today's monthly meeting that has become a bit of a regular fixture, but got up at sparrow's fart to drive there instead. D was there, of course, and the challenge of touching each other with a room full of potential witnesses was the name of the game. On a tour of a new facility, he managed to sidle up behind me, and I rubbed myself against him in passing a couple of times. The most fun was in the lift - squashed in at the back gave us 8 floors-worth of opportunity to touch, rub and hold hands.... childish, but amusing.

However, his faced dropped when I mentioned that I have tomorrow booked off. Its the final packing for K & I said I'd help out. But next week, I will be free to pursue this affair to my heart's content. I hope I have more sense than to sit around and wait for opportunities to do just that - but if the alternative is "speed-dating", I may take up hermitry full time.

You must be joking. Right?

Just when you think everything is sorted....along comes fate. I got home this evening to a bizarrely quiet house. It was hard initially to say what was wrong or what was out of place - the living room is full of half-filled boxes after all. But K's car was there, with no obvious sign of K. He might have been asleep upstairs, but instinct and a quick check showed otherwise. Prowling around, I got alarmed to find his heart-rate monitor abandoned on the sofa, and the empty medipak of single-use patient electrode pads on the window sill confirmed that I really should start considering the possibility I was trying very hard not to.

No answer on his phone, none of his family had heard from him. Just as I was about to wildly accuse them of ganging up to exclude me, he rang the landline. He was in the local hospital, having an ECG, having had palpitations most of the day. Funny how imminent tragedy can focus the mind. I was surprised on the dash to the hospital how concerned I was - despite the cool, bitchy part of me hissing that is was probably a panic attack. But its not - the ECG shows a definite physiological problem. The diagnosis is yet to be finalised, but the most likely outcome is yet more daily tablets to prevent further problems.

He looked so sad and lonely, I just wanted to put my arms around him and tell him it will be ok, that he won't be alone, that I'll look after him. But the cool bitchy part of me knows that once the immediate shock has worn off, the issues will be back and as much as I want to make him happy, I don't want to have sex with him again, and that relatively minor point is nevertheless quite critical in relationships. I told him that he didn't have to move out on Saturday. But when I got back to the hospital with an overnight bag complete with new slippers for him (God bless 24-hour Tescos), he gently reminded me that if it wasn't this week, it would be in 1 month, 2 months' time, and what was the point?

I've realised that I habitually spend the first few years of new relationships focusing on making the other person happy, and that, in itself, is enough to make me happy. However eventually, I notice the person as an individual and not as a container for my attention, tenderness, affection, sexual indulgence, whatever and I stop asking myself what I can do for them, and start wondering what they can do for me. I'm in considerable danger of doing it all over again. I know I can make D happy for a few hours at a time with lashing of attention, flattery, wild sex, concern, etc, and doing that gives me short-term comfort. It saves me from focusing on my own fuck-up of a life for a few hours. Where's that going to leave him though, poor sod?

Thank Feck it's Friday

A busy day today.

I got up early to beat D into the office to leave him a card and a pressie for his birthday over the coming weekend. Obviously I had to get in before anyone else or the office feckwit would comment long and loud on why I'd bought D a present, where was his, blah, blah, blah. And what do you buy the married man you've been seeing for only 2 months when you think its probably not just sex but neither of you have explicitly confirmed otherwise? A chocolate sportscar of course - a token of a mid-life crisis from a token of a mid-life crisis!

As we were chatting, I thought I'd better drop in the news about the split from K. He'd gathered something was up and asked me out for a drink after work - conveniently our company still honours the tradition of POETS day. Surreptitious arrangements were made and we convened at a suitably remote hostelry for a pint of shandy. It was a relief to just sit and chat in comfort and relative privacy. When you're in a hotel*, its a wicked shame to waste the bed-time and although you think you remember that this person is someone you could have a conversation with, its nice to have it confirmed. After we finished our pints, he suggested we go for a "walk in the country". Too bloody perishing - we'll go for a drive.

I know you're supposed to find a hidden lovers lane under the cover of darkness, behind high hedges, discreet-like. But hey, I have needs, it was his birthday and the countryside offered nothing but endless open fields. So we pulled onto the verge.

• The thing about which I am most smug: this morning's classy decision to go with the matching knickers on the off-chance I might get some action.
  
• The thing that took me most aback: he said he wanted to arrange a night away next week, and the week after, and the week after that, and the week after that, and the week after that....
  
• The thing that made me most impatient: his repeated fear that I would find someone younger and leave him.
  
• The thing which most made me catch my breath: His admission that as soon as he got near his office this morning, he knew immediately that I'd been there as he could smell my perfume; that he could always smell it for a day after he'd had me.
  
• The thing that was the best: feeling his teeth on my nipples again. It still works.
  
• The thing that was the close second: hearing him gasp as my lips slid over the head of his cock.
  
• 
  

So the day was generally lovely, and then home to K. I made what I thought was a reasonable offer of more cash in order to keep the bedroom furniture. In fact, not all of it, just the one chest of drawers I use. He replied that he wanted it all and felt he was being "done over". This irritated me beyond belief. I've subsidised the git for 10 years on living costs - his quid pro quo was to provide the big ticket items. Anyway, I'm pissed at myself for getting riled, and I'm reminding myself that at least I was smart enough to make sure his name isn't on any of the bills, or it could all be a lot worse. Deep breaths, deep breaths. Roll on Saturday week.

Oh, and even if that trip to Australia is off because I can't afford it, I'm determined that this will be the year I finally do that weekend in Amsterdam, perhaps for my 40th in the summer. I've got my girlfriends lined up to go with me, it could be great!

* Nearly forgot to mention, the incredibly talented Z describes moments in hotel rooms so perfectly here that I find myself screaming, "yes, Yes.... Yes, oh fuck yes, God Yes, OH. GOD. YEEEES!". Its all so true, and wonderfully written.

Maggot or Caterpillar?

Well, its all over, including most of the shouting, with K. He officially moves out next Saturday and the house is being pulled apart and tagged as his or hers. There have been some dicey moments when the threat of a row around who had absolute right to the wok loomed, but we've managed to back away from total insanity. We've even been getting on reasonably well, until he started to try to pin me down to what nights I was eating at what time and I could feel my blood pressure start to rise again.

And I've cried and told him that I'm sad its over. He's found somewhere to rent that is a state at the moment, but hopefully will be tarted up before he moves in. The location is perfect for him and he may even be able to buy it. If I give him a whacking great lump sum for the deposit. Which will sting a bit, but is fair enough. I'd rather see him settled - its one less thing on my conscience.

So I'm now starting to face up to reality of life on my own. I swing from ecstatic to terrified. The sprog is contemplating moving out, so I may have to get in a lodger at some point. Yuck - but perhaps that's too negative. And I have to acknowledge the growing infatuation with D. You know the pathetic thing where you can't settle until you know where they are, but once you do, you're just happy to be sharing the same building with them? Pitiful!

So which am I - a maggot for ending a 10 year relationship, or a caterpillar, about to metamorphosise?

Like it says up there

This week has been rather stressful and I have reacted to it mostly by focusing on the two items up top - curry & chocolate. Which is quite nice, but I've eaten too much and drunk too much and not slept enough. That will all have to be reversed, but I don't reckon March will be the month to do it....