....in the heat of this bar, me and The Copper talked.

'In my line of work,' he yelled in my ear, so loud were the cheesy songs being played, 'I see so much grief and horror that when I meet someone,' - and here, he paused. He'd done this before but at the time, I thought it really was the thought of Me that had led him to look at me with love in his eyes. It was probably just beer, I now realise. '...like you, I don't want to let them go.'

You know, I should've heard the warning bells when he said 'someone like you.' Not 'you,' not even my name, but just a feint parallel. This parallel, I was later to discover went along the lines of....

a/ Pulse
b/ Full complement of limbs
c/ Susceptible to flattery
d/ Gender not really a burning issue but nice if (s)/he has long hair

I think I giggled. I may even have said something but he was intent on having me almost immediately and invited me home.

'Here's a photo of my pad,' he said. Again, I'm kicking myself for not noticing that a man who uses the word 'pad,' is almost always emotionally obsolete. He scrolled through his phone for a pic but accidentally opened one of a girl, long dark hair in what looked like a negligee.

'Whoops!' he laughed, 'She's my....cousin.'

I can only admit that my cognitive facilities, at that point, could've only been improved by a bayonet in the head.

The pic eventually appeared. It was a farm-house. My heart leapt.

'Here is a man who can love me! And he owns a farmhouse! Maybe he owns some ho-

'I own some horses, too,' he said, reading my mind, so transparent in its premature glory that the words probably scrolled across my eyeballs like subtitles.


And at that point, I think we kissed, he stroked my bum and I left the bar on a high.

No, people, this doesn't end here!

Another One.....

Ooh, whilst raking through memories, I had to go for this one. This one's better than any of them so far. This one's a book. This one's a film. Hell, it's got its own sequel!

I met him on a car forum. Not the most auspicious of places, but amongst all the crap about exhausts and 'what does this button do?' there was a less salubrious place for the 'Sponsors' to chat away about everything and anything. And one rainy day, after I'd been a Sponsor for a while, I received a Private Message from this bloke. His girlfriend was also on the forum, but seemed quite a ballsy person so I'm assuming was used to her bloke ending PMs to girls with

'XXXX.'

I sure as hell wasn't, but he was cute - bleached blonde spiky hair, an abrupt, angry, funny manner and weird blue eyes that walked the thin line between madness and genius - or was it a stigmatism?

Within 3 hours of exchanging e-mails, he'd let me 'in so much further than anyone else before,' and we'd soon sped through the basic demographic exchange of information to his chequered, bloody and secretive military history. The next night we had a 5 hour MSN, the street-lights outside turning up their subtle blaze as night drew in on yours truly, furiously typing away into the lonely luminosity of the computer screen.

'I must go now, darling,' he typed at close to 3am. 'Think of me tightly, hold me close to you in your dreams.' I tottered back to my bedroom in a daze of something approaching love and lust. I awoke the next day to a text from him

'Good morning, my darling,' he said - nothing was to be short-handed, I later realised, nothing was to be cut out in his communication, other than the truth, naturellement - 'how are you?'

'Glowing,' I texted back simply - he said he was falling for my writing as much as anything, so I suckered it to him in one succinct word.

I got the 4 exes back and glowed a little more. Then I went downstairs and ate some Ready Brek and within a few minutes, was the only human being visible from the Moon....

You just know this one's got 'disaster' pinned all over it, don't you?

Got Me Thinking....

....someone did, from a website. She wrote about 'posh blokes' and it's got me thinking back to the ones which I dated, fresh out of a relationship. And, let's face it, this blog needs some non-teary momentum at the moment, doesn't it?
The first one (ominous opening words, I know), I met when I went to my local police station to give a witness statement. And I was met by this thing, this tall, brown-eyed man with a smile that crinkled like a crocodile's.

He thrust (the main verb of our relationship) his hand into mine (again.....) and said,

'Don't I know you from somewhere? The gym, perhaps?' I should've known there and then, ladies and gents, but I blustered and smiled and blushed and murmured something about 'Fitness First.'

'Ah, that explains it,' he said, eyes roaming my body which almost melted under his gaze.

We went into a little room, where he, long thighs nearly touching mine under the table, took me swiftly (no sniggering at the back, please) through the process. Finally, he said

'I'd never let anyone hurt you,' as I'd mumbled something about not wanting to get my face kicked in by a group of vigilantes.

Two weeks later, I was in a bar when in he walked, all swagger and bad coat (30-something man not quite relinquishing his youth to his past). He saw me, his eyebrows shot up and he again thrust that hand into the air.

I, knowing I looked cute, sauntered over to a midway point. The floor between us was empty. He raced up, like a Labrador, squeezing me in huge arms.

'Darling! I thought I'd never see you again!'

To be continued, folks.....

Settling Down....

.....though not with one man, you understand, though that, paradoxically, is my truest desire. I'm just scared, so scared, to walk away from someone. Despite my duplicity, I'm a coward when it comes to hurting people, to cutting the slack from their life to mine and setting them free. So, one hand I have QIE, the other, My Proper Boyfriend and on the third (can I make it a foot?), I have The Manager. And if I could chop bits off one, add them to another, and then stretch my hands inside their minds and, again, tweek (GSOH from QIE, urgent compassion from The Manager, innocence from MPB), then I'd be happy.

Well, I wouldn't. That's an outrageous lie. I'd then meet another man and go, 'Ooh, it wouldn't hurt to have a taste, would it?' Kid in a candy store comes to mind, but if they did and he was above the age of consent, I might even have a go at him, too. I really don't understand why I have no boundaries. I'm an affection junkie, loving the way that I can inspire love in others but am slowly realising that - and I realise you read this for insights into a wild sex life so I appreciate you may be bored to tears by this Jezza Kyle confessional; apologies but tough shit - it's only until I turn the locus of my self-esteem from out to in, will I ever sort out this problem.....

A Confession

I'm sitting here crying. There. God, I want to quit the games and the lies and all the bullshit. But I suppose if I did, you folk would be lumbered with a blog about Finnish politics. Or someone buying a new dog. If you want to comment, by the way, please do. And I mean that. I like the feeling I'm writing to someone, to people who read and form opinions and if any of you have advice, or observations, or just something to give back, well, at 00.08am, and feeling tearful and bad, I'd appreciate it.

Guilt

The guilt is getting harder to manage. I didn't think it would, as long as I had my car, my iPod, a suitably convenient stack of imagined places to throw into texts to Bloke A, Bloke B, Bloke C, but this weekend, when QIE, who's rapidly becoming less Q and I and E, grinned at me and said,

'I'd have a child with you in a shot,' I, all hair and incredulous smile, felt the dam(n) inside me burst. Sure, he was a bastard the first time round, and even this time, he'd not shaved in 2 days leaving me with a prickle of stubble whenever he kissed me, but he'd let me drive his Audi, Goddamnit! And read to me in bed when I was too tired to fuck and simply wanted to be snuggled in someone's arms...he read me Enid Blyton, he read me The Faraway Tree (the original not the non-Fannied one). And then he folded the book back into its ragged, red covers and took me gently.

Afterwards, I cried. And he's too clever to think that he was simply bad in bed and so began an unravelling of my conscience, but only into the safety of another lie. I can blink back tears like Meryl Streep and even inside me, I can feel similar swathes of emotion to hide the real black churn of guilt and even possibly, self-loathing. Talk meandered into the evening, I calmed, he theorised and settled on a friend of his.

'Phil has such a capacity for self-deception,' he said, as he told me about this bloke's marriage, the sham that it is, the lack of sex and love and purpose that seemingly inevitably diminishes between two people over the years. And I nodded, ripping the skin from my fingers with increasing viciousness.

Sorry folks, the absence of a conscience may have proven entertaining for so long, but even this party is slowing down. But to be followed, no doubt, by drama of epic proportions. Stay tuned but perhaps, and for the right reasons this time, bring the Kleenex.....

....and there's more

After sex, (I'm tempted to put 'post-coitus' but, er, no....), we went to the pub. I looked quite cute, my hair straightened, but still substantial, still Sienna Miller jagged. Big green eyes. Long lean body in jeans and an off-the-shoulder top. We went to his local, a low-ceilinged country affair into which you expect Chief Inspector Barnaby to come, head politely bowed under the beams, a tight smile, bright eyes and a warrant card. But no, those (barring the latter) belonged to QIE as he returned to our table clutching my perennial favourite and a pint of lager for himself. We chatted away about literature, about work, about all those things which ringfence the real horrors of quiet chats in pubs between couples.

'You want reassurance, don't you?' he prodded. I'd chosen to tuck my feet in their white, pony-hoof trainers beneath me like a little kid. The hair was ripe for playing with, for drawing childish curtains across conversations that I really didn't want to have.

'No!' I replied, trying to be 'cool.'

'Yes, you do,' he chided, grinning at me. He has a look which we call 'sideways, incisive.' He did it then. He does it now in my mind, Goddamnit. And like Pavlov's dog, I crumbled a little bit, sniffing through a resistance to tears that,

'I really like you.....and.....I thought we were together.'

This massively ironic statement coming from the girl with The Rude and Immoral Blog. I know, I know and I know again but, well nothing, really. There's cock-all defence for my behaviour and I know (x 3) it more than you lot reading it. I'm trying to write a pithy defence, but it would only be defending my ego which, to be honest, loves this.....from the gawky one at school to the one with a man in every county. At least that's how it feels and my tyres are wearing thin with the effort of Driving Miss Crazy.

Anyway, the upshot is that after his marriage broke down (3 years ago), and his last girlfriend dumped him a week before they were due to move in together (1 year ago), he's feeling a little wary. And all this after a gentle slagging of his friends, middle-aged married men, like himself, who, unlike himself, don't have the 'two things between your legs' necessary to get out of difficult situations. He'd given me this bleating rant as I sat there modestly, smiling, thinking that whilst he might be shit hot at getting himself out of ruts, he doesn't half fuck around when it comes to getting into something challenging.

We walked home. It wasn't quite dark, despite the time. The church bells rang and an owl hooted. We rounded the corner of his road and he put one arm through mine.

'You're special,' he said, 'I miss you when you're not here and I think about you a lot.'

He also wanted sex that night. I denied him, rolled over onto my beating stomach and mimicked sleep until, come 2am, it finally got to me and I surrendered myself to his contented snores.

I've Found Religion....

....well, I haven't actually and I doubt that even if I had, any of them would take me, but after a weekend which has left me feeling, by turns, confused, guilty and horny, I now at least know how a Catholic priest must feel

I stayed with Proper Boyfriend towards the end of last week and, once more, had explosive sex all over his house. The more I see him, the more I want him - an unusual trend in a relationship, admittedly, but a nice one. And then I kissed him goodbye and buggered off up North to frolic with QIE. I rolled up late and he'd finished a 12 hour day so we didn't do much apart from sleepily take off our clothes and, at some point between his sofa and his bedroom, have sex. It wasn't particularly horny but it was strangely comfortable....him and I, ghostly moonlight pooling on the floor of his flat as we went through the ritual. He knows what to do to me to make me squeal and though he comes quietly, I have (cue poor German accent....) 'vays ov making him talk.'

The next day, he woke up early to go to work and I had the run of his flat. Resisting the temptation to peer through his life contents, I did however use his laptop (with his texted permission) and found a photo entitled

'Hannah Hartley Black Stockinged Fuck,' amidst a few of his daughter, his workmates and an aeroplane backed with a glorious, dying sunset.

It would be facetious to say that you don't know a man until you've been through his hard drive but to be frank, ladies, you don't.....the oldest bloke I've ever loved is my dad and I doubt that he sits there, ostensibly 'looking at his investment funds,' whilst scrolling through Thai Brides, keeping my mum at bay with cheerful replies to her domestic chatter, but it does make me wonder.....(cuts thought stone dead)

He came home at 6.30pm.

'Hey honey, I'm home,' he jested, walking up the stairs, and we kissed in the hall before moving the foot to his hall mirror where we undressed each other. I'm 6'1, he's shorter, his head just in the crook of my chin, his hands on my breasts, us both pressing up against each other, capturing the visuals of the moment. And then to bed, where we spent 90 minutes reacquainting ourselves with each other. He ripped an old shirt to pieces and tied me to the bed, before I, giggling, wrestled myself free and, sitting atop him, gave him the choice of being blindfolded, gagged or tied. His big blue eyes widened in surprise, but it's amazing what a day of flat-bound captivity does to a girl's sex drive. We compromised on blindfold and bindings.

'Christ,' he murmured, through the maze of my hair, 'I've missed you......'

Better Late Than Never....

....where was I? At the pub, shaking myself dry? Possibly. Probably. Oh, and that was the weekend where I'd discovered that G+T trounced my usual red wine for taste, price and immunity to hangovers. So he'd bought a bottle in, plus the tonic, plus a single lemon in the fridge. But sod it, we were at the pub, his golden stoned place was at least a twenty yard splashy dash away so we hunkered down there to drink. Joined by another couple, we chatted, sometimes politely, sometimes veering towards politics....

'Name me a famous redhead who's NOT a tosser,' he challenged us at one point

'Thatcher,' I replied, remembering her hair being aflame, her mouth issuing terse statements.

'No fucking way!' he spluttered, 'don't get me started on that woman!'

Back to X Factor and Strictly Come Dancing then.....

Back to his flat. It was dark. He lit a fire (open, roaring). It got a little lighter and warmer around its stony hearth, above which was suspended an ancient tribal knife that he'd brought home from his own boy's adventure story. 19 years old. The Sudan. Pictures of him, in flares and a light shirt, a casual moustache and even more casual hair. We shagged on his sofa, the leather an intrusive companion to our intimacy. My legs wrapped round his waist, us cradled together, his hand supporting my neck as I gasped into the barrel of his chest....

And then? And then, I went home. Not immediately after the sex, granted. We spent the next day together, too. Again back to the pub, met some of his friends and gassed about things I'll probably never experience. I felt approving eyes on me as I went to the bar, the loo, as I scampered myself up comfortably in his lap, throwing cheeky asides into the conversation. He stroked my hair and looked slightly disquieted at this, his own tender action. And then, kissing him goodbye, I went home...