A Good Deed in a Naughty World

I’m not 100% sure I’m capable of romantic love.  Not the “wuv, twoo wuv” type of high romance people talk about, eventually mellowing to a comfortable coexistence once you’ve each sanded down the other’s rough edges and pointy corners.  I feel as though I am all pointy corners, which isn’t the easiest thing to get along with.

The closest I’ve come to a traditional romance was with R, and lord knows that was unintentional.

We met on a hookup site, and (brutal unvarnished truth in all its unromantic pragmatism) the main draw was his nearness.  He lived less than a five minute walk from me, was quite happy to fit around my availability and was ostensibly looking for uncomplicated physical adventure.  There were other attractions (his profile picture was a beautiful shoulder tattoo, a watercolour rendition of a liver bird, still one of the most attractive tattoos I’ve ever seen, and he never once used text speak – that alone was worth a blowjob to me), but I kept chatting to him primarily because of his location.

We chatted easily on the hookup site for a few days before agreeing to meet up.  We chatted about topics both sexual and non-sexual, and when he mentioned he worked four days a week in a finance call centre I made the sort of mental leap not often seen outside of detective fiction, when I realised I knew him.  I still have no idea how I managed to dredge him from my memory after not even thinking about him for decades, but I asked whether his surname was …, and he warily replied that it was.

Growing up our parents were great friends; I grew up with him and his siblings.  When we reached our teens I became a lover of monetarist policy while he stood in the town centre selling copies of the Socialist Worker.  I partied in clubs where he hung around parks smoking weed with his mates.  His mum loved the idea of us as a couple and frequently went out of her way to push us together, but our many incompatibilities made it a futile effort.

We decided to meet up anyway, though it was initially awkward.  I wasn’t as accustomed to hook-ups as I am now and there was a huge question of the etiquette of the thing when it’s an old family friend.  Thankfully between us we managed to move things to the bedroom where I bitterly regretted all the time we’d wasted when we could have been having astonishingly good sex.

While not a confirmed chubby-chaser R took great pleasure in my size.  Although he’d been with many different physical types his biggest crush was Liza Tarbuck, and he took huge comfort from burying his face in my breasts while his hands gripped my flesh.  It took some time to adapt to this preference and to go from hiding as much of myself as I could to happily walking around naked, but I never felt rushed by R – he accepted me where I was.

Some habits die hard.  He was still a big fan of drugs, and although he saved the coke and amphetamines for his birthday and New Year, he spent more every month on his weed bill than he did paying his mortgage.  His favourite combination for a special occasion when we met up was Viagra and E.  It meant everything felt amazing to him and he could go for hours, though it made orgasm difficult for him.  Most weeks he would take Viagra; as we only met up once a week he wanted to make the most of it.

He would arrive mid-morning, have a cup of tea and a catch up before going to bed.  We’d have sex two or three times over the next couple of hours, then at about one o’clock we’d have another cup of tea and a breather.  The Viagra did nasty things to his digestive system so although he was ravenous most food disagreed with him.  Eventually we found that apple pie was one of the few foods that didn’t make him feel nauseated, so each week I’d have a box of them waiting for him (Mr Kipling no less, only the best for my guests!).

Suitably refreshed, we’d head back to bed and spend a few hours more enjoying each other in a variety of pleasing and sometimes surprising ways, before one or the other of us was too exhausted to carry on, at which point R would head off home and I’d starfish across the bed.

I was initially still session bottom for a couple of people, but I reserved my Saturdays for R.  Sadly he had some jealousy over my other visits.  He wasn’t keen that I had male friends, so the fact another man was fingering me midweek caused him all sorts of mental turmoil.  He started attempting to mark his territory, buying me things for the flat; a TV, a coffee pot, a poster.  He would call me unexpectedly of an evening, messaging with increasing frequency.  We had a few conversations about monogamy but it never suited me and I was open about that from the start.

We had been seeing each other for around 6 months when a condom split.  At that point I was heading to the clinic for tests every few months anyway (no postal testing at the time) so it wasn’t the biggest issue in the world to call in for the morning after pill and a battery of tests.  For R it was a much bigger deal and his feelings on the matter ran much deeper.

It was ridiculous that I needed the morning after pill, but I’d relied solely on condoms as birth control for a long time.  I went through the options while at the clinic and had an implant fitted the following week.

We continued using condoms for a few weeks, but then R asked me flat out for monogamy.  Things had tailed off completely with one of my Doms and I was only an occasional lover of the other, so it wasn’t a huge issue to agree by this point.  I was fairly sure that R would keep me satisfied even with a once-weekly get together, I hadn’t slept with anyone else since the condom incident, we were halfway to the follow-up test that would allow bareback as an option.  The stars seemed to align.  I phoned my occasional Dom and explained the situation, and he retired gracefully with the option for me to call him if I wanted to see him again at some future point.

Test results in and the all-clear given a few weeks later again, we moved to sex without condoms, which was a beautiful thing.  R had some kinks of course, one being that he loved to go down on me after he’d climaxed inside me.  As clean-ups go that suited me too, even if viewed from a purely practical perspective.

Eventually the L word was uttered.  Frankly the sex was so good I was fully prepared to say anything in my dehydrated and exhausted stupor, so I was more than happy to say it back.  In my own way, I did truly love him, just not in the way he wanted.

R was a romantic at heart.  He wanted to go on dates, to hold hands in an art gallery, to slow dance and snog at a gig, to go on picnics in country parks and lie in fields of wild flowers.  I thought it a waste of time that would be better spent balls-deep in me, but when the suggestions were something I wanted to do anyway I would agree.

He was thoughtful in ways I laughed off.  He would make me mix tapes on data sticks and leave them under the windscreen wiper of my car to surprise me when things were uncomfortable at work.  He would download books he thought I’d like, films he wanted to share with me.  One day he left me an external hard drive packed with books and music.  In the years since I’ve come to realise how much effort went into that gift.  Some of the tracks on there are a little obscure (legacy of spending a considerable amount of time travelling and finding local acts to watch), and although I don’t recall talking about them with R, there they were.

Although R only worked four days a week we mostly kept to our Saturday-only arrangement.  I have a busy life and it doesn’t suit me to meet up in the week most of the time.  I was working for a company who gave me holidays, and eventually the conversation turned to how I would use them.

I was travelling enough for work at that point and had some family concerns, so I decided to stay at home.  I booked a week off, only for R to book the same week.  I had no complaints; a week of good sex seemed the ideal break for me!

We met up as usual on Saturday, then had a brief interlude on Sunday (I have standing plans so couldn’t spend the entire day).  Monday we had a glorious day that somehow felt illicit when I thought of my colleagues toiling away in work.  Tuesday he came around again, but then on Tuesday night I had a slightly abrupt message to say he couldn’t make Wednesday.  Slightly odd, but it gave me a chance to catch up with some housework and go for a swim, so it all worked out well.

Thursday he rocked up at the flat, slightly bashful and not really looking me in the eye.

It turned out he’d spent Wednesday at the local GUM clinic with a suspected infection.  His penis was sore and angry-looking, so he thought he’d caught a dose from me and went to have it tested.  He’d managed to get friction burns along his shaft from so much sex.  Unfazed, he arrived with a box of condoms that were coated in a local anaesthetic, meant to delay ejaculation but exactly suited to his current situation.

I told this story recently to the response that it sounded like a Craig David song.  It does, except that David chilled on Sunday rather than spending the day in a clap clinic.  One thing I did learn was not to give head to a man who has worn those condoms unless he thoroughly washes first.  Having no feeling in your lips and tongue is not ideal when you’ve a mouth full of penis.

All things end.  As his 40^th birthday approached R became increasingly obsessed with having a child.  I explained the implant (lord knows what he thought had happened up to that point – we’d been having ostensibly unprotected sex for a couple of years), and when it became obvious children were not on the cards for me he gave me an ultimatum of kids or we split.  We split.

I don’t think I ever gave R enough credit for all his thoughtfulness.  I laughed at his tenderness, and found him a slightly comical figure outside the bedroom.  We were never made for a happily ever after because we still had too many incompatibilities, but being with someone who genuinely didn’t give a damn about his career or material shows of success made me question myself and re-evaluate my priorities to bring a little more balance into my life.

He once spent a grand and a few days setting up his own pot farm.  As with everything he did, he put a deal of thought into it and spared no effort, from laying a fresh concrete slab for the shed to sit on through to putting multiple layers of insulation on it so that any police helicopters wouldn’t see it on infrared.  When he turned the lights on and went to work the first day, only to find it burned down while he was out (too much insulation touching a heat lamp), I couldn’t help but laugh, even as he tried to claim on his insurance, telling the risk assessor he was growing heritage radish for the city centre hotels.  Weirdly they didn’t believe him.

He really was the sweetest of muppets.  Elmo from Sesame Street with a high sex drive.  He now has the child he wanted so terribly, and I truly wish him happy.  I hope his partner appreciates him far more than I ever did, though in my own way I was thoughtful too.  R’s fantasy was two women at once, and I managed to find a very sexy woman who would help me fulfil it.  Sadly R and I split before he had a chance to enjoy it, but J (the woman in question) found another willing man and off we went.  R may not have got to experience it, but I’m sure on some wider level it balances, a cosmic expiation for my sneering ingratitude.