Communication

Time to be honest with myself - is this affair doing it for me? Am I hiding behind my determination not to appear clingy and vulnerable? Is it stopping me from pointing out that a fortnightly shag with minimal contact in-between is not making me feel better about myself? The problem is, I can rationally understand that using work email or comms is stupid, that affairs limit contact time and points, but nevertheless....

Part of it is my history - I seem to have ended up with the sneaking suspicion that every man will treat me in a way I feel is crap, unless I intervene and have the difficult conversations, which, being a coward & unconfident, I don't, til far too late. It seems unfair to suspect everyone's motives as being negative, and of course the possibility exists that they don't see it as crap at all. I'm not specifically referring to D here.

Still, Tuesday night, I was in the mood to take it slower, as I hadn't seen him for a week. He was eager to go straight to it, and I can't blame him as the week before, the roles were reversed - he'd been surprised at my urgency. His ebbing jetlag this week meant it would have been a cruelty not to have dispatched him back to his own duvet as soon as I'd finished with him, but something's missing.

On the other hand, I see the way he looks at me in the office. Before his recent trip, we had a conversation, mostly about my career, and it was so damn inspiring (temporarily - the effect has worn off now!) Verbal communication is so complicated compared to sex - the latter is so bloody easy, its a shame its not the be-all and end all of life.

Then

Sitting here, I stroke the crust, the scab of too affirmative attention. Just the underside of the right nipple, just in little patches. And as I stare into space, the faint smile on my lips matching the warmth below, I remember...snippets, snapshots, glimpses? A sensation of heaviness, lying across him, one arm trapped underneath, the other without the energy or urge to defend or push away. Physically fucked out, mentally floating away, untethered to reality. I am powerless to protest, incapable of speech. Longing only to wantonly acquiesce and to submit to those nails and those teeth that grate, twist, puncture and torture. The only sound I can form is a betraying whimper of desire. The only conscious thought is....more.

The Good-Mood One

The hormones have delivered, I'm cheerful today! The offspring are back from their two-week jaunt: tanned and exuberant, babbling in Italiaise and bearing gifts of food and wine. Sometimes I sit back and marvel that I; a short, round, antisocial, misanthropic Hair Monster managed to produce two such sophisticated, sociable, culinary-enabled polyglots. If it weren't for the obvious height genetic influence, I'd assume a mix-up at the maternity ward.

Anyway, they've swept off to play with their little step-brother & sister for a few hours and I plodded off to the shops. I live at the bottom of the hill, at the cheaper end of town - to get anywhere interesting on foot, one has to perambulate past the posh houses and tackle the gradient. A couple of years ago, this was a challenge to which (to my shame) I was unequal. Attempting the hill would leave me breathless, panting and with stabbing pains in my shins. Eventually I decided that if that was the state I was in in my mid-thirties, how much pain and discomfort would I be storing up for myself come retirement? So although Hair Monsters are not gerbils, and the treadmill is not their natural habitat, a gym membership was lashed out for, and some determined exercise and stretching routines mean that I can at least now nimbly nip up the hill. Still. But only just, 'cos that membership has been collecting dust for the last 3 months.

I'm in a money-spending mood, unfortunately. This isn't fantastic, considering my newly straitened circumstances, but occasionally, needs must and in celebration of my newly single status, some new makeup and extra perfume was purchased. This is in addition to the £100 frittered away over the web at Figleaves during the week. Those little scraps of silky nothingness arrived this morning, and are delightful. I have a major presentation coming up at work in just over a week. We each have our own version of smoke and mirrors. Mine will be to distract the audience from criticism of my proposal with subliminal consideration of whether I'm actually wearing suspenders under my new dress. Oh the delights of working in a male-dominated industry!

Whilst in town, I scoped the coffee-shops for pulling potential. I chose one on a corner, with plenty of windows for people watching opportunities and ensconced myself at a window seat with a cappuchino and a book. This is part of my longer-term plan for the single life - become a regular and force myself to talk to people. There were a couple of blokes there together, obviously there to pass the time and watch the world go by. I was idly wondering if they were straight, mentally discounting the one with the facial fungus, despite his rather dishy bum, when a woman in a wheelchair manoeuvred her way into the cafe. She charmed the staff, clocked the other one as someone she recognised from her gym and chatted them both up for the next half hour. Well, if she can do it with gammy legs and a speech impediment, I've really got no excuse. Its humbling when a cripple is doing better at pulling than I am! So on the mental checklist - make the cafe a regular stop, and go back to the gym.

Entitlement

The quality of the writing on some other blogs: The Naked Truth, Bittersweet-Me never fails to impress me - how they manage to capture a moment in time, freeze-frame it, spin it out microsecond by microsecond, describe and make explicit the implicit, the subconcious with clever metaphor and simile and I tried to mentally photograph moments to describe here, but its no good. I get lost in the moment too completely and it slides through my mental grasp like a wet paintbrush over the bit of carpet you didn't cover.

Alas, the discreet hotel was full, so his secretary booked him into the usual, goldfish-bowl one. I bowed to the inevitable, and got a different secretary to book me in too. Despite the fact that I have spent less time thinking about him this week, seeing him occasionally during day between meetings made me realise that I was absolutely gagging for it.

We rushed away from work to check in early - to get a couple of hours' peace and quiet, and we made good use. Orgasm followed hard upon orgasm but as the count rose higher, so did the emotional overload. Too many hard orgasms can make me cry even at the best of times, and this is not the best of times for me - vulnerable, rocky and unstable are all words that wouldn't be out of place to describe me at the moment. At least I didn't break into full-on, snot-snorting sobbing; let's be grateful for small mercies, but it was touch and go at one point. I was so pathetically pleased to be with someone, for a touch, for a conversation, for him.

"Has it been very quiet indoors?", he gently inquired. He knows the offspring are away, to return on Friday. What could I say? That, yes, it has been, and sometimes that's ok and sometimes it isn't. Again he mused out loud on how long I will want this reality, how long it will be enough, how long I will want him. I wonder too - the stubborn, invulnerable, fuck-em-all part of me thinks that I shouldn't settle for the precarious state of mistress for a second longer, that I should need nothing and no-one unless they are prepared and free to court me fully and properly, and that I should demand nothing less for myself. But the human, vulnerable needy me that I don't like to admit exists realises that as little as this is, its a precious something, and its removal would leave a gaping void. No promises, no expectations, I told him. One occasion at a time - that way there's less room to get hurt, even though we all know I will be.

I want to say to him that I was touched that he'd bought champagne the other week, even though we didn't get a chance to drink it. But if I did, I might go on to admit that I was so touched, because no man has ever bought me champagne before, and fatally, go on to wonder out loud if that was because I wasn't that sort of woman, or because I don't attract that sort of man. I can't decide which answer is more depressing.

Oh I have the grots tonight, it must be hormonal. I promise in a day or two, I will post happy, positive posts. My ceanothus bushes are poised to burst into glory, the Mexican Orange Blossom is pregnant with budding beauty, the aquilegia is verging on colourful delight. The occasional snow-flurries can't stop the march of Spring and now the decorating is finished and BST-lit evenings are here, fresh air and exercise will prod your blogger into better moods, I promise.

The Past, The Present

Today started like the last few, with a steely determination to finish the interminable decorating, which I have. Give it another few hours for the gloss to really dry before I rip off the masking tape and I can reassemble my living room. Rehanging the curtains was a relief and the sofa covers are washed, clean and replaced. It won't be long before my house will be my home again - new, improved, lonely?

I met K for lunch today. Ostensibly to transfer temporary ownership of the paint stripping heat gun, but also to chat, to explore. I had no concerns about the meeting - he did. He confessed to nervous shaking. But he looked good. Losing nearly 3 stone suits him and the antidepressants seem to be kicking in. He's more positive, more relaxed, more like his old self.

And it is my turn to be depressed. I realised that I do miss him a fair bit. I certainly miss his cooking; I think I'm getting scurvy. Most of all, I miss the life we should have had together. Before his first visit to the counsellor, he canvassed his ex-wife for her opinions on how he was to live with, which he repeated to me. It just confirmed to me that we should never have got together in the first place - she remembers him as social, fun to be with, sulks that lasted no more than an afternoon. Why did I get the rough end of the deal - what is it with me? Perhaps now he'll go back to the happy person he used to be, before I screwed up his life. Oh I know this is negative thinking, but part of me wishes that I had some security, some certainty, something reliable.

Tonight I had a ticket to go the Barbican to hear Midori play the Britten Violin Concerto. I had been looking forward to this hugely - I booked it up the weekend K left. When I mentioned this to him this afternoon, he offered to come with me, and started complicating the simple pleasure I was looking forward to. In the end, we decided that he shouldn't come, but it still took the edge off the whole experience. Rather than looking on it as an adventure, I was just watching the couples, wondering I would ever be one of them, in a happy, stable way. Crap. There is a theme - see/speak to K and I'm down afterwards. Despite the fact Midori was breathtaking.

Gadget Glory

I can be just a little bit geeky sometimes, and I've just treated myself to a new toy: a Logitech DJ media streamer. Its fantastic! Nearly all my music is stored on various pcs but who wants to listen to music on the pc speakers? The transmitter is currently plugged into my daughter's desktop upstairs, the receiver is plugged into the hi-fi down here and I can search her pc and listen to all her Nine Inch Nails tracks. Ok, maybe not, but I have most of a pc littering up the spare-room. I just need a new motherboard, or to sufficiently cannibalise what's already there and I can leave my spare hard drive plugged in up there and listen to it down here. Cool!

Expectations

After a couple of days characterised by frequent episodes of "Angry & Bitter 10 Minutes", accompanied by spontaneous sobbing fits, I woke this morning feeling much calmer and more peaceful. Yesterday evening I was full of self-pity and dramatic internal declarations that I would not stand for being ignored and that I would not be at D's beck and call, pathetically waiting for crumbs of attention.

And this morning, when our paths crossed at the distant office, I was cool, possibly even frosty. I put him out of my mind for the rest of the day, but bumped into him later. I knew he was staying over tonight, so was prepared that, despite Monday's stammered excuses that there would be a lot of people at the hotel and he would need to entertain, he might have a change of heart and invite me back. And of course, he did. Did your intrepid blogger crack? Of course she bloody did, the pathetically easy tart! I thought about the state of the motorway at that time of day and considered the pleasure of a stop-over of a couple of hours with benefits, and smiled, "Ring me when you're leaving".

Ring he did, but to apologise that he had been called into another meeting. I said I'd give him half hour and if he wasn't out, I'd go, which is what I eventually did. He rang again when I'd been on the road a while, hoping to persuade me back and apologised again. I mentioned that he'd seemed much more distant since Easter, and I had been wondering if he wanted to continue our arrangement. Again, more apologies, but more interestingly, the promise of a night next week in a more discreet hotel. We shall see.

In a comment, Akrazael wrote that she was grateful for being in a relationship herself as a guard against how possessive she might otherwise become. I am utterly useless at caring for 2 people at the same time. It would be helpful if I could, but I have failed to achieve this state on a couple of occasions in my life. I'm astonished that I waited as long as a month to ask K to leave after sleeping with D. If it had been a ONS, then perhaps, but knowing that I had every intention of doing it again put the mockers on continuing the relationship - what was left of it - with K.

Which begs the question - how long will I be happy being the "other woman", and how will I transition from that state to a more conventional relationship with someone who is free to form one, when I'm ready to? Why have I finally decided to stand up for myself against what I perceive as K's inconsiderateness and lack of appreciation, only to form a relationship of sorts with someone who can only spare me specks of time? Well I think the answer is the heading I've given to this post. A full-time, serious, one-on-one relationship carries huge expectations with it, and if there's one thing I think my life has taught me, its that putting expectations on the behaviour of others is a waste of time. Or maybe that's a self-fulfilling prophecy, I don't know.

I do know however that in contrast to the complications of negotiating wants, needs and expectations in a full-time relationship, having a fling is wonderously, seductively simple. The unspoken expectation is of pleasure, for a short, allotted few hours, and nothing else is promised. It might be implied, it can be bargained for, but the bottom line is that you meet, you have a great time, you part, you have some good memories, and if all else is equal, you do it again. I like that, I understand that and right now, that feels strangely honest for an activity derided as cheating.

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Addendum
Reading back the first paragraph, I think I need to clarify that my misery and bitterness were caused by mulling over the gap between what I had hoped from a long-term relationship with K and what I ended up with. Yes, I wanted to guard against being pathetic again, but I wouldn't want anyone to think I was gnashing my teeth that an inevitably short-term affair might have already reached its conclusion!

Protein Feed

Gloomily inspecting my first obvious wrinkle in the mirror this morning, I identified why my skin elasticity has taken a turn for the worse recently. To my horror, I realise that I've only swallowed twice so far this year and we're in April already. At this rate, by my birthday, my face will look like a crackle-glazed wardrobe. This is a dreadful turn of affairs, I don't actually think I can go much longer without.