mess

on sleeping with an ex

i had met this ex for drinks before and that thing wasn’t there—the thing that would make us want to do that—the linking feeling, that twinkling open-handedness. therefore the possibility of sex was not at all in my mind. i didn’t put on perfume or dress nice. it was cold for april and i was wearing a massive heavy irish wool sweater that smells like a sheep, genuinely, it smells like what you would smell if you lowered yourself down onto the animal.

this ex and i make something fun together. each time we meet we’re good for at least one really really hard laugh. we’re excellent at conversation with each other; we’re clever together, we listen and deepen, we associate in funny ways, we uncover things. when we broke up for the first time four years ago this ex said to me sadly, tragically, ‘who am i going to talk to?’

at the first pub there was no indication we would be having sex. here we had our big hard laugh. then at the second pub we were gossiping, and through following a different thread of gossip it was revealed that my ex had been involved—get ready—in a foursome, and two of the three others were people i knew. oh my goodness! oh, my goodness! the delight, pulling the hair of the jealousy, licking the neck of the need to pry—there was a disco in me—it was absurd gossip, the best possible gossip, from a primary source as greedy for the telling as i was for the hearing—and so we got another round and settled in and on and on the tale went. i ran the play by play. ex obliged. so you did that? and then what? did you kiss her? did you kiss him? positioned like how? how did it feel? how did it end?