Ruby Stark

I know the boring relationship machinations with Matte have been going on and on. But, as usual and as consolation to the reader for his trouble, there sex at the end.

Matte came to visit on Wednesday.  Our relationship has become so complicated in my head.  And how I feel about it changes: sometimes, I am cool, sometimes, I cry, sometimes, I jump for joy.  I wonder whether how I feel is just based upon how deep into the relationship I think, how far I resolve all of the implications of the facts.  I wonder whether, at the bottom, there is the truth that makes me feel just sadness, and, the less far I go down, the more happy I am.

There are some new facts.  First, Matte’s new bloke is called Abel.  He is an American, in a band touring the UK, very young, a ragamuffin anarcho and probably a nice person.  Second, she is in love with him.  Third, she is about to move out of her house to go traveling.  Fourth, some of this traveling will be with him.  Fifth, at some point, he will return to the US.  Sixth, she is pretty sure she doesn’t want to see anyone else but me and him.

Matte told me these facts in the park near my house.  We went there to eat olives, spelt crackers, houmous and bread.  We lay down in the long grass and talked and talked.

I felt better: her see-saw metaphor made sense (her in the middle and two people on either end stops her tumbling down and turning into the person on one side when it clunks down without any weight at the other), I quite liked the sound of Abel, things would be more stable and so my mind would be able to solidify.

I still can’t bear the idea of someone else having sex with her.  I am still simultaneously happy and unhappy that Abel is totally different from me; really, I want to give Matte everything. I am afraid that her traveling all the time will make it hard for us to have a relationship.

Fundamentally, I feel like non-monogamy is underwater: I dive down and things feel fine, but, after a while, the pressure builds and I have to surface and breathe.

On the night she arrived, we went to see The Time Traveler’s Wife. I preferred the book – especially as it is so wrapped up in my head with the time I went to New York City – but the film was fine and Matte and I held hands. We spent a day with my Dad at the Tate Britain. We held hands a lot. We went out to supper with my brother, sister and some of my friends. Matte didn’t say much. We went to supper at the house of my friend, Archigram, and had a delightful evening of cracking jokes, eating vegan fish cakes, drinking beer and smoking. Matte didn’t say much. I wish she would talk more to the people I love. We had sex in the mornings and afternoons and evenings.

On Saturday, she brought up discussion number two. She said that she wished we could stop filling time. This is actually something I’ve been trying to solve ever since we got together the first time way back in July 2007. I sometimes feel like an events coordinator, trying to think up stuff she will like. Because we don’t live in the same city, we can’t carry on our own lives and projects when we are together; because we spend sections of time together, we can’t see each other and then go about our own business. We agreed that we’d try to just hang out more.

I said I wish we could stop talking about this fucking relationship and start having it.

I have just re-read some of the posts I wrote about the time when we got back together. (They start here.) There are definitely very low points, but there are lots of very high points, too. Are we just getting through stuff before we come to the other side? Were the previous high points because we were in the first (second) flush?

Saturday, her birthday, was pure joy. We went to see a stage production of Peter Pan, her favourite novel, in Kensington Gardens. The actor playing Peter was just the right mix of cocky and vulnerable, and the script didn’t shy away from Wendy’s ambiguous mother/lover role. When the children flew up into the sky, I couldn’t help crying. Flying and motherhood – those seem to be what get me.

After the play, we ate our picnic of ginger and orange marmalade, bread, houmous and crackers, and drank peppermint tea from the Thermos. Then, we walked through Kensington Gardens on the hunt for chips. We found none, but picked a few blackberries that were in range of the fences. Dispensing with coyness, I scaled a fence that protected some particularly laden bushes. After a short while, Matte followed me and we filled up two carrier bags.

We walked to Trafalgar Square and caught the bus home. Matte made letter pasta with garlic, onion, courgette and tomatoes, and an apple and blackberry crumble. I mixed mojitos for her and drank beer. We ate and then hung out on the sofa. I changed into my faded blue and pink cotton strappy dress. We were both quite drunk. My housemates were out.

Normally, when one is in a relationship, sex starts with a few kisses or an insinuating stroke, or before you are hardly even awake. This time, the whole day felt like a first date. I lay on the sofa and our eyes met and she came over and lay beside me and our sex started bashful. The day before, we’d talked a lot about fantasies. Hers include Rachel Stevens in Sweet Dreams My LA Ex, threesomes and switching from being a boy to being a girl. I had told her that I sometimes think about being fucked in a dress in a corridor by a boy or JD Samson.

So, Matte took me into the corridor and put me against the wall and kissed my neck and shoulders and pulled down my dress and kissed my breasts until I skip-gasped into her ear. She put her hand up my skirt and into my underwear and shuddered when she felt how wet I was and then she stroked me round and round. I think I was quite loud when I said, “Oh, fuckkkkkkkk, you’re so hot”, and then I got even more louder when she pushed one and then two fingers into me and fucked me with her hand. It felt so good. I faked coming after a while and whispered, “Will you take me to bed?”

She did. During our fantasy conversation, I’d told her I adore it when she stands behind me and kisses my neck. She had asked if I wanted her to fuck me from behind and I said, “Mmm, possibly.” Now, in bed, I reminded her of this. I lay on my front and she kissed my neck and shoulders and back and I squirmed and squeaked. She took a handful of my hear and yanked around my head to kiss my mouth. Then, without warning, she put her hands on my bottom and pulled me up so I was on my knees and elbows. She pushed her fingers inside me fast and low and I bucked and sighed. After a little, she sat behind me and eeeked with pleasure as she fucked me.

I made love to her and made her come with her sitting on top of me, my whole hand inside her. I took her into the corridor and knelt down at her feet and slid my fingers inside her and ate her out as come ran down her legs. We slept.

The next afternoon, I took her to the train station.

In the morning, we had made love again. She got on her hands and knees and I curled around above and we kissed as I slid inside.

We held hands in St Pancras while we waited.

I fucked her with two and then three fingers and then knelt behind her and moved my hips against her ass and pretended I was a boy fucking her with my cock. I turned my hand 90 degrees and suddenly she gave an explosion of ahh ahh ahhs ahh and came faster than ever before.

When she went through the barriers onto the platform, she kept on looking back at me and waving as she walked away.

My curtains had fallen down, revealing us naked and vulnerable and nowhere near the real world to anyone out there who cared to look.

I was talking to Matte this evening about how sex toys are not that sexy when you’re not turned on. For a while, we have been idly batting back and forth the idea of me getting a strap-on. We both agreed it was hard to tell whether it would be erotic or hilarious. Further, my fantasies of fucking girls as a boy always involve me being an actual bio boy.

I asked her how she would respond if I told her to suck my dick. She laughed and said she wasn’t sure. But, a bit later, she said it was pretty hot. And, the more I think about it, the more I love the idea of her sucking my cock.