The sense of Laura still working its warm magic, our secret exchanged glances, her smile, her skin’s need for a man’s touch. Strange how the decision not to pursue her feels like liberation. Now and forever, we’ll be perfect lovers, unspoiled by physical contact or disappointment or actuality or life’s grinding down.
Just like the student at the supermarket, my day lights up every time I see her. Sometimes our eyes meet, there’s a mysterious connection, fleeting but unmistakeable, like a small electric shock. Other times, we pass each other unacknowledged, afraid of overexposure, exchange glances too often and it’ll become formulaic, tiresome.
Laura and the student, both of them like a fragrance, transforming the world, difficult to capture, easy to tire of. Best to be taken by surprise, enjoy the ravishment whilst it’s there, accept its fading away, hope that perchance it returns one day.
Lying back, feeling happy. Lucky to have two such women, even if only in my mind.
Then there’s Jane. The polar opposite. Laura and the student, they float into my life, wonderful while they’re there, fundamentally unnoticeable when they’re not. Jane, she’s wired into my basic make-up, it’s impossible to imagine how life would have been if I’d never met her.
Strange how her sexual escapades don’t make any real difference. Just like when I heard she’d got married, I still felt close to her. My own exclusive closeness, unaffected by her having taken a husband. Or now, sexual clients. If anything, her adventurousness makes me yearn for her more.
Or Jenny, for whom I’m a sexual client amongst many. I wonder if she too has a special man, one she’s known since childhood, someone she emails with stories of what she’s done.
The alarm clock starting its ring. Reaching over, turning it off. Rising. Thinking, that list could go on and on, I’ve been lucky with my loves.
