the sex I don't have

He opens the door to me and I kiss him, once, quickly, to get this thing out of the way. It is a kiss that will last a second but somehow it does not stop as it should, it becomes a hungry open-mouthed thing that colonises my whole body. A kiss that I feel in my groin, a kiss that I will think about for years.

But of course this does not happen. Nothing happens. That is not the life I am leading and he isn't attracted to me anyway.

We wander out onto the grass and we lie there with the sun on our cheeks and all the sky and it is a small thing to hold hands. Just a simple linking of fingers, but the gravitational force of such a contact sees me rolling onto him and into him, the irresistible merging of flesh to flesh the wearing away of the edges of things, the transgression that leaves us both shaking with the force of such seismic shifts in the solid state of the earth.


But of course this does not happen. Nothing happens. That is not the life I am leading and he isn't attracted to me anyway.

I remove my clothing and slide into the water. I am naked and he is watching me naked and surprisingly he is not repulsed by the thick unlovliness of my body. I am a fact, exposed. I am what I am and I am mostly nerve-endings and quick, passionate responses. I am all mouth and cunt and there is nothing but warm dampness and desire. He reaches a hand, breaks the surface of the water. I am floating within reach. He reaches. I bob into the cup of his palm and let the tide caress me into his hand and into my pleasure.

But none of this happens. He does not desire me not even for a moment. And I do not desire the repercussions of stray fantasies made flesh. I am not that kind of person despite my own nature. In spite of myself, I have become someone else, this dry husk of what I might have been, this puff of dust, this memory, this person who touches the water, fully-clothed, with her fingertip and says aloud that it might be nice to swim.

So I am not myself any more. I am someone else, but I am not sure who that other self may be.