2008

Now is not the time to become squeamish about my lust for my friends. If I am to flesh out the modern story, this echo of my past that is played out in fantasy on a daily basis, then i must do so as boldly as I have with the safely distant past. These intensely private people that I fall a little in love with will become a part of the fabric of my book. Names changed, certainly, but even with a pseudonym they will be recognisable to those I am closest to. I know what will make the best counter-story, the infatuation I fell into several infatuations ago, the one that hurt most deeply, and almost killed me. The one that I am now so calm about, the firm friend who will probably be there at my death bed given that I have no children to see me out of the world. That incriminating lust that ripped at my world until I was a hollow thing filled with shadowy scenes of sex that filled me with guilt. I am still not certain that I can go anywhere near that time in my life. The shrapnel from that time would sting the living flesh around me now.

There is the one that I have written about, but tat one has eased without a climax that could ever be disclosed publicly and even though I am still a little in lust and a lot in love, I am not sure I have anything else of that story to tell.

There is the current one, my playful little toing and froing and I feel like I can be less gentle with this. It hasn't erupted into anything serious and it is well documented. Perhaps this is the safest path to take.

All paths must surely try my husband's patience, my wonderful husband, my love and lover. Poor man. Poor tolerant man. He tells me that I cannot write about our sex, and I will honour that. My vow to him. Because at the end of it all he will always be there with me and for me, and because we love.