The Fuck-Drunk Chronicles

Most of the stories I tell on here have two things in common: they’re entertaining (honest), and they happened a while ago.  I spent a good chunk of Monday night on a call with R, talking about a few different experiences we’ve each had, and the subject of T and my behaviour with him cropped up.  This only happened towards the back end of last year, so is far more recent than I would normally write about, but since T (the guy involved) was genuinely a good bloke and the comedy value of the tale rests entirely on my ridiculous lack of even the thinnest veneer of sexual sophistication, I figure it’s a safe story to tell without causing undue offence.  Plus both R and I were howling laughing to the point he kept choking and I couldn’t catch my breath, so I wanted to write it down before I forgot about it again.  Please God, at some point, let me forget about it. T had messaged me on the swingers’ site I’m currently using.  His message of “Fancy a drink?” is one...

Some poetry spoke to me from the first line I read.  Larkin’s Ugly Sister is eight lines of such sparse beauty it makes my heart swell just to read it.  I never felt that way about Heaney.  Heaney was… OK.  Nothing objectionable, but a blah bit of background noise that I didn’t pay attention to.  I had no idea he needed to be read aloud to be really appreciated. Anahorish, soft gradient of consonant, vowel-meadow On the page (or in this case the screen) it’s a pretty nothing.  Aloud it truly comes to life. I was 18, not long out of a relationship with a much (MUCH) older man who was dour and serious (and an insecure controlling bully, but nobody is perfect).  Life had been short on laughs for a little while and I was in need of a bit of pure unfettered fun.  Although my parental home wasn’t exactly a strict one (I spent unsupervised weekends home with my brother from the age of 13), it was my first year at uni and the opportunity to have ...

I have said it before and I’m quite sure I’ll say it again: I am fundamentally unsuited to relationships.  I was happily plodding along in ethical non-monogamy when Covid-19 hit.  5 months of solitude later, I can see advantages to living with someone!  I’m not anti-relationship.  For most people they are great, and the issues are mine rather than with the structure most people choose to live within. My early relationship history is a tawdry and hackneyed story with which I’ve no intention of boring anyone, but even with that understanding there are a few things I really miss about them, brought home by a conversation I had yesterday about the most banal and everyday of things: a lift home. I didn’t learn to drive until after my last cohabiting relationship ended, so the whole time I lived with anyone they would drive and I would be the passenger.  I adored the quiet intimacy of being driven home at night; just the two of us in the car in our own bubble, p...