On Wednesday, my friend, Suki, came for supper. I made gazpacho soup and bread and a salad with French dressing and tzatziki. We ate and talked about why people believe in homeopathy, and about boys and having multiple irons in the fire while we played with the cats.

On Thursday, I was beside myself with tiredness. I had had three early-morning visits to the doctor to get more drugs and have my INR level checked with a blood test, so I was completely shattered. At work, we had a review meeting and everyone wrote down good and bad things about the past two weeks’ work and then we grouped them into categories for discussion. When we got to the final item, all the points were positive, so someone suggested we have a group hug, so we did. Each of the fifteen people in the meeting hugged each other person and it was very moving. I love the company I work for so much.

In the evening, I went to a programmer meetup and watched Dust give a talk about running a certain programming language on a certain hand-held device. I decided against going home to get some sleep and went to meet Malt and some work friends for someone’s leaving drinks. On the way home, I listened to Sunset Rubdown.

Today, I have pottered and, soon, Malt will arrive for supper.

Tomorrow, I get on the sleeper to Paris.

So, my boss arrived at around one p.m. and I changed into my pink and blue cotton dress that shows my shoulders and back and scar and we set off for the brunch place. We bantered and laughed and it was good. We arrived and ate foul German breakfast, all cheese and bread and, for the meat-eaters, speck. We talked in the front room of the pub, a smoky fire making the place smell like a place in a village my Dad used to take me to for roast beef sandwiches and lemonade and lime. We talked with my boss’s friend, Margo, and I used his phone to ssh into my remote server to restart a site I’ve been working on recently.

My boss’s friend rang and invited him for supper and he said he had planned to spend the evening with me and she very kindly said I could come, too. So, we set off for a long, a very long, walk to his private office in the centre of Berlin. We jumped fences and traversed river banks (he said if I fell in, I would have to remove my clothes to avoid drowning and he would finally get to see me naked). He took my hand. I found myself feeling quite tremulous and shivery, rather like I felt when I’d gone for even a short walk after I died. We got to a tram stop and he wrapped me up in his arms. It felt weird. We finally got to his office and he showed me the helicopter and the matrix of smoke generators he is working on.

We set off again and walked to his friend’s house. We arrived with beer and wine and everyone was so warm. There was Victoria, my boss’s friend and our hostess, a nice couple with a sweet baby with whom my boss played which made my heart melt, and Margo. I sat in the kitchen with the women while Victoria told this long story about her demanding friend and, I think, nearly broke down during the telling. They chatted fast and close as they prepared food and I felt like I was in a Woody Allen film, or maybe Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore. I tried to remain standing and worried I was going to be sick.

We went into the sitting room with all the raclette things and sat down and cooked the cheese and I ate pickled onions and scoffed down potatoes and a cherry tomato and felt so much better.

The group asked me whether there were any German stereotypes and whether I thought they were true. Treading carefully, I said Germany was known for being ruthlessly well organised, which I found to sometimes be true, like in running orders at gigs. I also said that German people were said to have no sense of humour, but I found that Germans are always laughing and have quite a similar sense of humour to the English. Someone speculated that this stereotype existed because, occasionally, foreigners would come up to Germans and say, Heil Hitler, as some kind of bizarre joke and would receive no laugh in response.

We talked about the German guilt about World War II and the holocaust, and they said that it is only recently that people have begun to make jokes about these things in Germany. Victoria said that she had gone to stay with a French family when she was small, and the father had been in the war. Her parents had warned her to be ultra polite and respectful and not to be insulted if she received a frosty reception. However, she said she was able to translate a letter written to the man by a German soldier and that, afterwards, he had hugged her.

As the supper went on, my boss and I exchanged close glances, and I fell for him more and more. There was a thread of closeness between us in the group, two people revolving around each other in the warmth of a friendship group. When I looked at him, I felt excited, felt proud.

Finally, we had to leave to go to a colleague’s birthday party. We hugged everyone goodbye and then came out onto the street and quickly kissed for the first time since the weekend before and then we walked to the U-Bahn, his arm around me.

We got to the bar and there was Olive, Thora the birthday girl, my boss’s best friend, John, and a few others. My boss and I sat on our stools with our legs touching, not really talking to one-another, but with that secret kinship you can share with someone when part of a group. I really like John – he is gentle and clearly adores my boss and they support each other a lot.

We moved to another bar and, on the way, plugged our headphones into this jack in a wall that lets you listen to the movements of the building. We danced to old ’60s girl groups like the Ronettes. I sat down and my boss sat down next to me and I put my hand on the inside leg of his trousers – very bold, for me, with a boy – and we kissed for a long time. He stroked me all over my arms and back and neck and shoulders and the slow desire that had built over the whole day turned into a scared certainty that I wanted to go home with him.

It was half four in the morning and I said that I needed to take my drugs which were at my house, but, that, if he wanted, he could come with me.

We got in a cab with Olive and got out and went into my apartment building and came upstairs, me very nervous. We drank water and I took my pills and then my boss took off his trousers and I took off my tights and we got into bed and I put out the light and we started kissing.

I just loved the way his hands stroked me all over. He put his hand in my underwear and stroked my clit and I started sighing into his ear and then he pushed a finger inside me and I bucked and squeaked and gasped and, thinking about it now, I get a twisting in my spine.

After a while of deliciousness, I faked and then we lay together for a while. I kissed him and pulled off his boxers, feeling really scared now, and knelt between his legs and put his cock in my mouth and began sucking him off.

OK, so he had, by far, the biggest cock I had ever seen. I could just about close my fingers around it, and could only get about a third of it into my mouth. I stopped for a moment and then asked him for advice and he said I was doing fine and I aborted and felt really bad.

We snuggled for a while and he said, “So, I think we got a problem. I am not sure I fit inside you.” And I decided to tell him about being intersex and he took it incredibly well, just as another of the scar stories I have told him. And he said, “We figure something out,” and I felt so happy that he was seeing it as a problem to be worked at.

So, he fucked me again with his hand and I pulled off my dress and he sucked at my breasts and it felt so good and I am pretty sure he will be able to make me come. I really wanted him to fuck me.

We fell asleep and I woke three or four hours later and woke him up and we talked and I asked him whether he considered himself a happy person and he said he was very happy until a few years ago when this girl he was in love with died, and, since then, he has been slowly healing. I listened and hugged him and kissed his cheek as he told the story.

Later, we sshed into my remote server and he helped me set up some handy stuff. He left about two p.m. and I went to go a mozzarella burger and chips and walked through the street listening to Bob Dylan in that vulnerable/oblivious state.

I realised how desperate I was to talk to Cat. She went home with her date last night, too, and I thought how magical it would be to discuss the feeling with someone who had it, too.

My boss texted me to arrange a time for meeting for brunch and I said that if he comes to pick me up, he could help me choose an outfit for the day. He agreed.

It started raining and we dashed inside and had a very cosy and funny talk about trans-continental humour, the role of electronic devices in separating or connecting us, our positions as devs who make the world for so many people. We laughed and laughed and I realised I was spending yet another evening being happy.

We went to see another colleague’s gig and it went on a bit long and the mood dissipated, so I came home. On the U-Bahn, I read a lovely email from Cat about how we are both going on dates ON THE SAME DAY. I replied and said so that means we are going on a transnational double date.

The show was surprisingly wonderful. Peaches came out in a white, cotton catsuit that had a high, empressesque stuffed collar. She somehow managed to be the whole of a musical ensemble as Chilly Gonzales hammered the piano in accompaniment. It was like watching a far more expressive ’50s crooner. The last song of the first half moved me especially: just her singing, “You liar. You Judas”, high high high, one spotlight on her face, slowly fading her into a ghost and then into nothing.

At the interval, Brown and I went outside and carried on talking and drank more beer. When we went back in, I sat in my seat as Peaches sang a couple of slow songs, almost sobbing, “Will no one stay awake with me? Peter, John, James? Will none of you wait with me? Peter, John, James?”, and felt perfectly drunk and warm and bathed in happiness.

After the show, Brown and I walked to find a bar, and just ended up walking the streets, having one of those wonderful conversations where you reach into another person. I told her about Potential and how it talks about the joy of having exciting possibilities ahead, and the pain of the draining feeling as they come to nothing. We talked about passing happiness and trying to hold onto it and regretting it leaving even while it’s still here. We talked about how one can look back on a happy time and the feeling, the quality, the texture of the happiness can still be so strong. I said that I was pretty sure I would look back on these last three weeks in Berlin as a very happy time.

We walked and walked and then finally came to Kreuzberg and went to my favourite pizza place. Brown told me about her recent long-distance fucked-up relationship with this bloke. She got to the part where they were sending flirty texts to each other, her in her hotel room, him on his way back home, and then said, “I’m sorry, I’m going into too much detail”, and I blurted out, “This is the stuff conversations are made of.”

Finally, we parted and she said, “I don’t know which I enjoyed more, Peaches, or the walk around Berlin.”

The next day, we went for a long walk across bridges and through dusty parks in the sun and ended up at the Soviet Memorial. I had been there with my old German girlfriend, Cassette, on a freezing cold night when it was pouring with rain and we were the only people there, the only warmth in the desolate, concrete wasteland. We were really in love with each other, then.

Archigram and I pottered about and talked about the war and having children and making a family.

We popped home and I changed into my sexy, slinky red dress and then we went to meet Brown for supper at the Italian she had taken me to for my birthday and had a cosy meal talking about triligual puns and people not understanding when you are being ironic. I ate spinach and ricotta ravioli steeped in butter and we dipped pieces of bread in oil and balsamic vinegar. Then, we went to the gay/biker/hipster bar for drinks and met Malt, his cute friend, Steffi, Cal and Smirk. We talked about nginx and ejaculation and the Kit Kat Club. Malt and Archigram got along famously.

The three of us went to play Lord of the Rings pinball and then Dust texted me to say he was outside. I went into the street and sat on the kerb with him and his friends and bantered and it felt so continental to drink beer perched on pavement and have a back and forth with a group of happy people.

Presently, everyone from inside came outside and we walked to the club. We got there and then Reed and his lovely girlfriend, Thora, and Wally from work arrived and we all danced faster and harder. Some time passed in dancing and talking and cigarettes outside, and Malt and I made a mini-gang we dashed about the club and danced. He did his winning smile at me like you would smile at a beloved but dimwitted child, or the smile people do when they are mocking you. We went to the unisex loo and it felt pleasingly public with the guys at the urinals and the people in the cubicles snorting cocaine and came out and stood real close and he stroked my back and my neck and I put my arm around his waist and we both stared into the crowd and I looked up at him and he was still looking outwards and then I looked up again and he kissed me and stroked my all over my sides and back and shoulders and it felt really good.

I heard Reed’s braying voice and realised that half the company would have seen, and I cared a bit, but not a lot. The night went on and Malt and I kissed a few more times and he kept on stroking my back and bottom and sides and I remember that, when I kissed him, I pushed my hips against his.

Finally, it was five a.m. and Archigram wanted to go home so we left. We got home and the cats hurled themselves at my bedroom door for the next hour until Archigram made me get up and stop them. But it was nice to share a bed with him again.

We wandered around on Sunday in a daze, went to the new national art gallery and drank coffee. He set off for the airport in the evening and I was very sad to see him go.

On Monday, it was obviously a bit awkward with Malt. No one else commented, which was gooood. A sense of horror and it-was-a-mistake-but-I-couldn’t-have-known-in-advance-ness crept over me, but dissipated when I went out for supper with Malt in the evening. He said he would be Ok with being friends and OK with more, which was very brave. I said I had always found sex with boys difficult and that I naturally leant towards girls and he said it was OK to take it slow.

So, at the moment, I am at the precise nexus of my feelings growing or shrinking. I wish I had the full text of my old Susie Down blog so I could refresh my memory on how my feelings for Dusk evolved. I do know that I felt only trepidation and not longing int the days after we slept together. However, when we had a threesome with Tourista a month later, I remember asking her whether she was keen on him and so I was probably, by that point, keen on him myself.

Today, when I came out of work, sexy D followed me down the stairs and smiled at me with his “I am thinking about having sex with you right now” smile and I skipped away to the U-Bahn light-footed and happy.

We sat to eat and it was very lovely.

Since Wednesday, I’ve been out four nights running. I have finally had a week in Berlin where I had nothing planned and was busy. Things have happened under their own momentum.

On Wednesday, I went to see Yeasayer. Natasha and her bloke were there, but I didn’t manage to find them, and I invited Malt, my boss, and forgot I’d invited Cal, and bumped into a guy from work and went with him and Cal for a delicious, greasy fried-mozzarella burger in a punk rock place and then got to the venue and bumped into four other people from work so we were a big gang.

We talked about the first track of the album Cal and I are going to write: The Time I Got Thrown Out of The Lesbian Bookshop/The Lesbians Said No. Malt talked about a visit to Kit Kat Club, and so we were able to name track two: I Went to a Sex Club With a Gynecologist.

I wrapped myself up in Malt’s attention, snuggling into his alpha maleness. He is tall, and has an arresting way of towering over me and looking down into my eyes with a half-mocking, half-tender expression on his face.

We watched the gig. I was completely carried away by their rendition of I Remember as the singer’s voice echoed up high high in the rafters. Malt put his hands under my arms and momentarily lifted me up so I could see what his view of the band was like. I am starting to feel that two-people-revolving-around-each-other-within-a-group feeling. I am starting to feel that luxuriation in his company that I feel with Dusk and my closest boy friends from University.

After the gig, Cal, I and four others from work set out into the night. We hiked across a large barren area around the gig venue that felt like no man’s land, like machine gun fire was about to burst out from the darkness. We surged along, a happy gang, laughing and talking and shouting. We got to the bar and I spoke at length about pop music to one guy, and about online-dating to another girl. We drank beer and talked about the Bible and places we’ve lived and drug-dealers and the German language. The beer went down easy and, suddenly, it was two a.m. so I picked up and walked home along the wide, deserted, still, crisp streets listening to I Remember which goes, “You’re stuck in my mind. All the time.” I reached a cross-roads and stood in the middle of the street and looked down at the stillness in all four directions. I got to my apartment building and leaned against the wall to finish my cigarette, and my head flushed with the beer and smoke and filled with happiness and my smile was so wide and I couldn’t help but laugh.

I came inside and wrote all this to Cat, ending with, “I wish I could lie down with you and whisper all this in your ear.”

On Thursday, Dust came for lunch at work. I met him a while ago on the organising committee of those unconferences I was involved with in London. He looks very like Dusk: same smile, same colour hair, same shape of face, and I think my attraction to him is at least partially owing to that. Anyway, he, Malt and I talked about our jobs and it was good.

A little later, Dust asked me if I wanted to go to see Alice in Wonderland with him and a friend. I had put on a dress that morning, chiefly for Dust’s and Malt’s benefit. I now walked to the cinema in it, freezing fucking cold. We sat on a wall like a group of kids slumped on the pavement while Dust and his friend smoked a spliff, then went in. The film was terrible. We went to a Turkish place afterwards and I ate a falafel sandwich and then I walked home, yet again basking in the wonder of living in such a central and lively place.

On Friday night, I went for some drinks with people from work. We drank in a Russian place and cracked coding jokes (from fist import pain) and talked about Wally’s old job as a theatre technician (or, honk, a person with no special skills – “OK, I’m going to need three honks to set up this lighting rig”). We laughed a lot and drank a lot and talked about Dark Star and John Carpenter and the third song, Just Call Me Hank, on Cal and I’s record. A few of us went onto another bar in Kreuzberg and played table football and I walked home drunk again listening to Between the Buried and Me that I discovered on some geek’s blog.

I slowly recuperated on Saturday, making it out of the house for long enough to buy some food. I went up to Prenslauer Berg for Brown’s extremely genteel, grown-up party. The occasion was the installing of her new sofa that conspicuously lacks a boyfriend to sit on it. I talked to the journos about the dying newspaper industry and drank yet more beer and had a long, jokey conversation and half fell in love with with a pretty, blonde-redhead editor who looks like Lauren Lee Smith.

Malt texted me and said he was at Kottbusser Tor and I yipped excitedly inside and left the party about twelve a.m. On my way out, I walked through Brown’s apartment building and felt like I was in a bombed-out Russian hallway heading out into the unknown.

On the way to the U-Bahn, I thought about and interview I’d read with Al Pacino. He said that when they were making the film, he was in love, for one of the few times in his life. And he would come home from the horribleness and the violence to his girl and they would just be together. It made me wish for that railroadedness, that sanctuary, that marked-out-of-timeness.

Malt picked me up at Kottbusser Tor, and, in an endearingly formal move, held out his hand for me to shake it, and brought me inside. He was there with a very old friend from school, an interesting man who told me about his job as a diplomat, a girl he knows from University, and a third woman who, when I smiled, gave me an astonishingly blank expression that felt like a challenge. Later on, she warmed up a bit.

The bar was upstairs and small, and we were wedged in a corner on stools, surrounded by people and head-nodding techno. After more beer (my tolerance seems to have gone up quite a bit), everyone else left and Malt and I were left alone. We talked my perfect mix of bullshit and serious: his ideas for a terror trombone replacement for the Death Star, my puppy-drowning career and membership in the top 1% of programmers (a running joke), gender politics of the German language and spandex suits. We leant against each other, my legs tucked against his, laughing close and lovely.

Then, the conversation took an alarming and baffling turn. I began on a dissertation about why I think Rails is much better than TurboGears and he attacked my arguments, speaking in a tone of voice that bordered on angry. We vigourously debated the points for a while, and he trotted out the old argument about it not being OK to trust €XX million of the company’s business to default configs. I felt anger rising inside me at the feting of the earning of money. I wondered whether I was talking myself out of a job, and thought I didn’t much care if I was. Fortunately, we were able to get back on track, and had a good laugh again.

We left the bar about five a.m. and I walked home.

On Thursday, Musk, Vanilla, Vanilla’s mother and I all at supper together. It was nice. Things are so domestic here: we share the shopping and they buy tulips and mangoes and there is beer in the fridge. The apartment is light and airy and has a great view down the street. For the first time in my life, I am living in precisely the area I want.

On Friday, I went to meet Brown for a Vietnamese and then we met some of her friends at a weird hybrid gay/hipster/biker bar. We drank beer and talked about the BBC and Brown’s failed romance with a chap who lives in Cairo. There were quite a few gays in our party, but they were not annoying. We went on to a basement bar in Neukölln that was red lit and full of fairly boring people. I left about two and got home and played with Rocket on my duvet and wrote to Cat.

Today, I went to meet my cousin, who is visiting Berlin, and his girlfriend. We ate an early lunch in a good cafe down the road from my house and talked about the films they make and our family and living in a foreign country and my job. It was really nice.

This evening, I went to meet my boss, Malt, for Capture the Flag. It was cold and raining, and, despite some kind translations, I found it hard to join in properly because I couldn’t really communicate. But, it was great to hang out with Malt. I think I might be falling for him. We have banter and his smiles give me little lurches and he’s tall and a little protective and confident and alpha. Thinking of having sex with him brings a mixture of desire and repulsion and shyness and fear. I haven’t fantasised about him yet. But, this slow growing of attraction is the way it always seems to go with boys.

Malt left about nine to go to a house-warming party. He didn’t invite me, and I’m not sure why.

It struck me that I always give savoury names to the boys I really like: Grain, Dusk, Malt.

I got the U-Bahn back to Kottbusser Tor and walked up through Kreuzberg. I stopped off and had a soul-warming pizza and beer, then came home.

Tomorrow, I am hopefully going for a massage with Canvas.

I’ve just started reading Endgame Vol. 1: The Problem of Civilisation by Derrick Jensen.

I am sitting in my kitchen in the dark, smoking a cigarette and listening to Bob Dylan’s Idiot Wind.

Thank you so much for the book. I have never read any porn, nor SM literature. I am going to tuck myself up in bed with it after I write to you.

It was really good to talk to you today: a contact point with caring.

It has been a strange, disembodied day. After work, I went for a sedate drink with some colleagues, then left to meet my new friend. I took the U-Bahn across Berlin, got a measured happy birthday text from Matte and then walked through the snow listening to increasingly brutal music: Lone Wolf and Cub, then The Blood Brothers and finally the raging Converge. I stood outside the gallery and smoked a cigarette, freezing cold, feeling increasingly disconnected.

Brown and her two friends arrived and we talked and looked at paintings. Then, we went for a truly fabulous Italian meal at a place that felt like a sort of peasant restaurant with people at long tables talking and eating as a part of their lives, rather than as a special event. The atmosphere had the texture of good, nourishing bread. I ate buttery spinach and ricotta parcels with melting Parmesan. I will take you there.

We went to a weird casual hipster bar and drank some beer.

It felt peculiar to spend my birthday with strangers in a foreign city in the dark, snowy weather. But it was living very close to the surface, very in the right fucking now. And they were so kind to take me out, and it was a good time.

Tell me about Kilroy.

I have begun work on your CD. It is an especially trickalicious task because I know nothing of your taste in music.

With Flick, I was slightly surprised we didn’t become more frequent lovers. Other than that, I saw him as a remote friend, but someone I could closely relate to. But I haven’t seen him in years.

I can’t wait to hear your thoughts about Potential. And I think my life hasn’t moved on from hers either. Especially fashion-wise.

When is the queer party? Tonight or tomorrow? What are you going to wear with your shorts?

Sleep tight, dear Cat,
Many kisses
Ruby

We went to the shops to get some last-minute supplies and then spent the rest of the afternoon talking.

In the early evening, Richard, Haz, Dusk, Grain, my Dad, my brother, and my Mum’s friends Sue and Vince arrived. My brother began cooking like a hero and everyone milled around in the kitchen and drank a lot and talked. It made my heart glad to see my friends and family together, and to see my friends who didn’t know each other getting on. I think pretty much everyone talked to pretty much everyone.

Dusk seemed a little withdrawn, but I’m not sure why. My Mum thinks it was because he was older than most of my friends, but I’m not so sure. I think maybe he was tired and maybe he was distracted by his meeting and maybe he was phased by meeting lots of confident friends of mine. He said he has a theory that middle-class families are, fundamentally, articulate and discuss abstract concepts, whereas working-class families don’t talk about things outside their direct experience. He said this results in a higher ability of the middle classes to adapt and aspire.

We did an informal survey, and found that, of the people who identified as a person with a working class background, he, Grain and Cyp thought their families supported the theory. Archigram’s girlfriend felt her family did not.

I had been nervous about showing Dusk where I grew up, because my Mum’s house is big and has a big garden and she and my step-Dad are rich. (At the same time, I was excited to show him off to my family and other friends.) I asked him whether meeting my family and seeing our house illuminated anything about me. He said another piece had slotted into the jigsaw puzzle: the articulate and well-to-do environment I grew up in explains why I can move to a country without speaking the language or knowing anyone there. He might be right.

I wore my red clingy American Apparel dress and Cyp said, “Ruby, if you weren’t a lesbian [his word for me being queer]…” He’s so damn handsome, but I just don’t fancy him.

Three thirty a.m. came and most of us staggered off to bed. Richard and my brother stayed up and sat at the kitchen table and drank a bottle of Amaretto.

I went to bed with Grain. He kissed me on the mouth and said, Goodnight, Ruby, and he asked if I’d like to spoon and I said yes and he wrapped me up in his arms and curled terribly close around me and said I am good to snuggle because I am petite.

I didn’t really sleep that well because I preferred being snuggled to moving so I could relieve my cramp or undead a limb. So, most of the night passed in a strange half-wake half-sleep where I listened to Grain breathe and thought how nice it was to snuggle after such a long time spent with Matte’s dislike of nighttime snuggles.

We slept in lots of different positions: me with my head on Grain’s chest, turned together with legs entwined, me on my back and Grain with a knee around my hips and and our hand together and Grain’s breath on my cheek. I slowly got more and more turned on. He kissed me all over my neck. I kissed his cheek slowly and delicately.

Thing is, though, we’re friends. I feel something very deep in my heartt for Grain. But, whatever it is, my feelings about our friendship and his relationship prohibit further exploration. When I came to the next morning, my desire faded into the deepness.

We got up and I fetched Grain a bowl of Wheetos and a cup of tea. Then, we saw that everyone else was already up and had started building an igloo in the garden. We went out to help. For the next three hours, a few of us gathered snow, heaped it in a sledge, took it to the igloo and shaped it into flat blocks. Then, the others sawed it up into bricks and built the structure. Mum brought us out cups of tea and we drank those. Richard brought out beers and we drank those (I felt fantastic for twenty minutes, then rather ill, then OK). At last, Archigram, his girlfriend, Richard and my brother had a beautifully-curved structure mostly complete. We spent an hour doing the almost and then horizontal roof, and then it was done. We got candles and my Mum took a photo of all eight of us inside. It was utterly joyous: the hard work, the euphoric warmth, the beer, my family, my close friends and the utterly pointless but oh so beautiful house.

So, I went to see Matte in Leeds. The train from Cambridge to London was delayed, so I missed the train to Leeds, and then the one I got broke down. Train rage welled up. I watched Jim Jarmusch’s film, Stranger Than Paradise. It’s in black and white and each scene is filmed in one static shot and nothing really happens, but not in a good way.

I arrived and Matte and I were deferential and danced around each other. We went for some Japanese food and she told me about being in the forest. It sounds like she is happy: she is exactly where she wants to be. She mentioned that she is hardly seeing Abel anymore. Apparently, things kind of fell apart after they started spending extended periods of time together.

We wandered around in the cold and then went to a pub that had a fake fire. We talked about how things felt a bit weird. I figured it was because we were seeing each other for the first time where there was no romance. It was so fucking different from when we last saw each other again after we broke up the first time and we couldn’t stop touching. I said something, and I can’t remember what it was, and tears welled up. Later, I said I missed her so much, and that I was really worried about meeting the paramedics who saved me, and that I was totally discombobulated by the thought of moving to Berlin. And then I got even closer to crying so I went to the loo to do that in private.

The thing that became clear, and that made me cry repeatedly over the next few days: she has basically moved on.

I wanted to tell her about this scene in Stone Butch Blues where Jess takes two children to the zoo. It’s snowing and freezing cold and the animals are forlorn. One of the children asks her whether she’s leaving and she says, Yes because I have to, and the children cry. And the whole scene is suffused with that strange hopeless sadness of childhood that comes when something bad happens that is completely beyond your control. My Mum said that when my Dad left home, she told me, Daddy’s leaving, and I cried and said, No, and, though I don’t remember that moment, when I think of it now I get the same feeling as that scene.

So, I wanted to tell Matte, but I kind of knew in advance that, like some of the other really strong things in my head, she just wouldn’t get it. Very few people do.

We wandered around in the snow by the canal. She showed me where she used to smoke weed and snog her friends, and her favourite bridge to stand on and look at the old factories (now all office buildings). At last, we went to the station and hugged and kissed once on the lips and then I got on the train and cried most of the way home.

I listened to the recording I made of Efterklang’s Cutting Ice To Snow, and thought about how tears rolled down my cheeks as they played, and that the lyrics, which I heard as, “You’ve gone too far, despite my city walls”, were, for me, about Matte becoming a person I was no longer compatible with, who existed outside my borders: in the wild, away from big cities, polyamorous.

You know how sometimes when you dream of someone you’re in love with them for the rest of the day? Do you think that if you dream of someone often enough you could just be in love with them all the time?

Anyway, so I watched Annie Hall today and I think Diane Keaton’s upper lip is like Julianne Moore’s and like Allure’s.

Fuck it.

Christmas passed with a walk, drinks, a stubbornly uncooperative log fire, lots of food, a game of Cranium and easy conversations.

Now, I am back at the Mom’s house sitting on the sofa with my little sisters and cousin. Em is being fucked around by her dicksuck of a boyfriend.

The event itself was a horrendous disappointment. I got no sense of AM at all. It was just all other poets and musicians reinterpreting his work. There were a few successful performances, but they simply succeeded on their own merit, rather than because they were “celebrations”. My Mum and our family friend and my Auntie seemed to love the whole evening, and I was baffled by their choices of favourite performances. My Mum asked me after the interval what I thought of the performance, I forced out a vacant, “Wonderful”, so I didn’t hurt her feelings.

Just as I was leaving the loos, I thought I saw Allure (1, 2). When I returned to my seat, I scanned the audience, but couldn’t see her.

On the tube home, I realised she was sitting opposite me. Fuck, man, this girl just keeps on turning up. A condensed history: we met via friend Hardcore Boy who fancied her, we kissed in front of him (what a dick), we met at least a year later at HB’s party, she pursued me, I had that amazing night at her party, she cut off contact, we somehow got in touch in London, she travelled the world for a year, and so it goes.

We had a great conversation, parted in Brixton and she said she’d Facebook me. We’ll see.

That is my favourite film of the last two years. It blows my mind that there were left-wing fighters in a rich European country who wouldn’t hesitate to open fire on the police.

After the film, we talked about Matte, and Grain’s girlfriend. We talked about how relationships are so much more complicated than they appear when you are a child. We talked about the way that individual problems can be solved with a rational approach, but that whole relationships cannot be analysed logically: either it makes you happy enough, or it doesn’t.

We discussed marriage and children and watched the Hitler Doesn’t Get His MDMA Pizza video on YouTube.

I had been feeling intermittent chest pain under my arm all afternoon and, faced with the prospect of an evening alone, decided to ring NHS Direct just to be safe. I answered no to all the heart attack questions, but, upon hearing about my recent cardiac arrest, they sent an ambulance.

The paramedics arrived and did an ECG and took blood and asked me heart attack questions. They decided to take me to hospital – again, just to be safe. Grain instantly charmed the paramedics with his calm buoyancy and was excited that we were riding with blues and twos.

We arrived at A&E and the nurses put on a blood pressure cuff and oxygen saturation snapper. They took blood and I said Grain could stay while they put on dots and clips for an ECG. I desperately wanted him to see me with no top on. I think because I wanted him to be my boyfriend. He remarked later that my boobs are bigger than he remembered them.

Wave one of doctors decided that I wasn’t about to die. Wave two said that the only possible explanation for re pain was that my grafted bypass had come away. They would check that later with a blood test.

In the meantime, Grain sat on my bed and we held hands and he told me the story of his friend who lost his mind whilst tripping on mushrooms.

I realised that I didn’t want any of the girls I like: not Matte or Allure. I wanted nurture and strength: Grain and Dusk.

We saw a gurney go past with a covered body on it. We looked at each other in silence. I felt terribly upset that someone had died while we were there. I leant forward and Grain hugged me for a long time and said I was precious to him and that he loved me. For the hundredth time, I fell on love with him.

A little later, I was taken up to the cardiac ward. At two a.m., the nurse took some blood. I got about three hours’ sleep and then woke at six a.m. I’ve just heard that my blood test came back normal and that I should be discharged when the doctors do their rounds.

A few days ago, I watched a film called Lost and Delirious. It’s about two girls at a boarding school who are in a relationship. And whenever I think of the one who was more in love, or perhaps less cautious, the doomed one I get that same feeling of sadness and comfort that I get when I think of Aimee Argote from Des Ark.

Today, I have that strange, close feeling when I think of Grain. It’s like that feeling you have when you think of someone you dreamed intimately of the previous night. I know if he walked onto the ward, he would greet me with his usual enthusiastic, broad hello and a hug and a kiss on the mouth. But the closeness I feel is nearer to the thought that, last night, he saw me half undressed.

I said that I wasn’t happy any more. I said that the distance problem is even worse and I never see her. And so I said I don’t want to go out with her. She said she had been thinking of coming to London for the whole of January and I said that would be a wonderful way to end, but that I didn’t relish the thought of limping through two more months. She finally agreed and said that if we were thrashing through some sadness to get to a new phase then that would make sense, but fighting to get to the end is just silly.

I explained that I would have told her when I came to visit her in the forest, but that it would just make our last time together really weird and horrid. I told her how I had realised that a) I admire her because of her tree warriorship and b) that she understands me. I told her that I thought our second go at a relationship was much better than our first. I told her that I will miss fucking her. I told her that I will never forget the way she supported me when I died. I told her that, though the support of my family and friends was essential, it was her being there that gave me something to look forward to, something to be excited about.

She said she was walking around on some pallets in the forest and the moon was casting halos in the misty sky and making silhouettes of the trees and making the mud glisten. I lay in my bed and cried.

She said she didn’t want to hang up. We said I love you a few times and talked a little more and then said goodbye.

Afterwards, I talked things over with my little sisters in the bathroom and they were very sweet and supportive and gave me hugs. My Mum said she would probably have let things drag on in the holding pattern for a while and Emma said I am very “clear-headed”.

It is weird that I can say to Matte, “I am desperately in love with you”, and then break up with her.

This week: an answer on whether I have the job, two random gigs, Efterklang with an orchestra, house hunting, supper with two old friends from school and a geeky conference about the artistic aspects of game design.

Tomorrow, I’m off to Berlin for a job interview with a very cool music company. I’ll arrive late at night and take a cab across the city to Alexanderplatz, check into my hotel, get some sleep and then interview on Thursday. I won’t have time see Gertrude, my old auxiliary girlfriend musician whom I cheated on Matte with for several months. I won’t even tell her I’m there, because I will probably not get the job and since I was a bit of a dick to Gertrude, there seems no sense in rocking that boat until it needs to be rocked.

She was in a tent in a forest near Sunderland. She said she loves me very very very very very much and it warmed my heart. It was the first time she had sounded both needy and happy.

I cried while I read it, I think because I am struggling to find the new purpose that the guy found. I’m not living like every moment is important.

I try to make my life more like how I want it to be. I do something really cool, or have a great time, but I can’t maintain it. I want to have a relationship with someone in London, but I can’t find anyone. I want to write more songs, but they come out of me so slowly. I want to hack on a personal project for a living, but I can’t find users for the things I build. I look for a third place, but can’t find it. I want to play gigs, but can’t find people who will put me on.

On 14th February, two days after my 28th birthday, I wrote this post:

The good: I’ve got a solo music project that is pretty good; I’m spending a lot of time with my family; I’ve got several art projects on the go; I’m reading a lot; I live in London; I’m going to lots of gigs; I’m heavily involved with the tech scene.

The bad: I’m not playing enough gigs; I wish I was in some more bands; I’m not in the US; I haven’t got a girlfriend or a boyfriend or both; I’m not doing any politics; I’m not playing squash; my job is not what I love.

I am trying to sort out the job thing at the moment. I am trying to sort out the squash thing, too. I have a girlfriend, but our relationship makes me sad as much as it makes me happy. [Full disclosure: I think the only relationships I'm into are the ones that make me sad.]

Some people are happy, man. It fucking blows my mind.

On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 11:12 am

Hello! I was just thinking about you. V. sorry to hear about your poor drowned phone. Hopefully the little lad will come back to life (no wonder he was unable to take calls when you asked me to ring him – it’s hard to talk while you’re swimming).

I texted you the following:

1. Just got home. Thank you for a weird and amazing few days. I am so proud of you and your adventure. I love you x

2. Saw the following at elephant and castle roundabout. Billboard: “Does God exist? Yes. No. Probably [ticked].” Graffiti: “But when you kiss me, I don’t really care.”

3. And you have been away before – to Guatemala xxx

Like I said in bed yesterday morning, I love you gently and fiercely. And I miss you muchly.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Tue, Sep 29, 2009 at 5:22 pm

Hi sweetie,

Don’t worry about the jarmeys. You can have them, if you want to wear them, or you could pass them on as some sort of guest-jarmeys for use by people staying at your house.

I am happy, yes. I am going out for supper with Archigram, Brother, Pony and Shure this evening, then to the cinema w/ Frost tomorrow, then to a gig where people write code that makes music, then my friend is coming to stay for the weekend.

Wow, it must be so weird to dismantle your life like this: taking down your room, giving away your things, saying farewell, moving out of your house. But you can rebuild everything on your bike: in your panniers, in your head, in the miles you ride and with people you meet and with the things you make.

I miss you so much, too. Can’t stop thinking about you, actually. My head is still in Bradford – it’s still making the pastry for your pumpkin pie, and sitting in the kitchen with a coat and hoodie on and watching you walk about in that way you do with your fingers clasped and hands raised, and falling asleep wrapped up with you in your filthy bed, and looking back over my shoulder as you lie fucking me with your head beside my hips, and varnishing the bathroom floor, and slouching on the sofa with my arm around you at three in the morning and wishing time would stop, and standing in the train and watching you disappear out of the frame of the window.

I love you very much. Ruby.

PS Here is a light-as-air, clean-cut kiss for your cheek: x

Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 5:55 pm

[This last letter is appearing here before I have sent it to Matte.]

Oh, sweetie, I’m not surprised you’re tremulous at the moment: you’re about to do a really big and scary and unusual (and super cool) thing. Plus, as you say, night time magnifies all scary feelings times ten. I remember the summer before I left Leeds when I was doing secret missions and going to NYC and deciding to move to London; for weeks I lay in bed at night and just shook and could not sleep. I thought it was because I had given up smoking. I am glad Abel was there to give you hugs.

That is v. cool that you are contributing to the band’s mission. I was wondering whether you were going to join. By the way, I made up a joke:

What does a member of Abel’s band say to their fellow members as they approach a hill?

Let’s get up some steam.

Here is a video of Slub, a livecoder. The guy will have written a ton of code in advance and then his performance is him triggering, combining and modifying parts of it: http://blip.tv/play/AYGD5CQC

By the way, there was something different about when we had sex while I was visiting you. I tried to articulate it when we were lying in bed, but I don’t think I did a very good job. Your fingers stopped being curvy and proddy and sharp and constricted and became straight and slippy and full. It’s not that either was better – they felt v. different – it was just that the latter felt kind of like I always imagined penetration would feel and when it happened, my head went all swimmy and all I could feel was your fingers but as well as feeling it in my cunt, I felt the sensation in my shoulders and across my neck and at the base of my spine.

Yes, who knows where we will meet next? Berlin? London? A tree? I am excited. I also have love in my tummy – when I think of you, I get all melty and turny.

I love you and I love your sloppy, passionate kisses

Ruby xxx

On Thursday, I went to see Matte in Bradford. On the train up, I thought about the scene in Magnolia where Tom Cruise is at his dying, absent father’s deathbed and he chokes out, “I’m not going to cry. I’m not going to cry for you.”

Matte is moving out of her house to go on the road on her bike to Scotland and stay in a protest camp in the woods for a while and then move on to who knows where? So, this weekend was the last of the normality in our relationship. From now on, we will see each other more intermittently: when I go to visit her in the forest or she comes to see me in London.

Weirder, Matte’s boyfriend was staying over with his band. She picked me up from the station and we walked back to her house holding hands like a shot from a Scorsese film, through the front door, down the stairs, past the kitchen and into the storeroom, and she said, “Ruby, this is Abel”, and I said, “Hi”, and he said, “Hi”. He is skinny and had on cycling shoes and baggy trousers tucked into the tops of his socks and a big knitted jumper and an old farmer flat-cap. He has slightly sticky-out eyes and an arrogant smile, blonde hair mis-shapenly cut and down to his shoulders in places. I fucking hate description in books: you should be able to suggest everything with one detail, or with the way the character acts. However, I studied Abel’s appearance very closely and tried to draw conclusions about how Matte saw him. (Later, I said since I would only meet him for a few days, could she tell me what was, “pretty great”, about him. She said he is fearless and gets really into the thing he is doing, he is sparky, he is very gentle and loving and he has nice eyes.)

We spent the first day in the sitting room: we fitted part of a new ceiling, moved a ton of stuff to other places in the house, rearranged furniture, hoovered and swept.

In the evening, we hung out in the kitchen. I talked to Abel a little, but he spent a lot of time reading. I mostly spoke to his bandmates, Canvas and Scandinavia, about Denver and the US. I also developed a crush on one of Matte’s housemates, Waxen: her animation and looseskinny t-shirt that I wanted to take off and her solid, soothing personality.

After a lovely supper of stir-fry and tofu with Matte, the band, Waxen and Matte’s other housemates, I had a long conversation with Abel’s other bandmate, Mohair, about whether an aeroplane on a conveyer belt will take off. Part way through, Abel and Matte began whispering and laughing and said then they got up and left, saying, “Let’s go into the sitting room.” I finished the aeroplane debate with my stomach in my mouth. I said goodbye to Mohair and went to get my book and sat back in the kitchen, now on my own, reading the same sentences over and over.

Eventually, Matte came back in and asked if I was OK and I said that the situation with Abel, her and I was a delicate balance that could be upset by any kind of us and themness and that I had felt left out when they had left. She said sorry and I said we were all learning and it was tricky. After that, though I felt tiny frissions of jealousy when Abel and Matte cuddled, things were basically fine. Matte divided herself between us amazingly well. When bedtime came, Matte said goodnight to Abel and we left the sitting room and went up to her bedroom and it felt fucking weird. I felt bad for him.

Matte and I got into bed and I kissed her hard and pulled her to me and wrapped her up in my arms. I did it because I needed to feel close, but I felt not a bit sexy. However, that came eventually and we made love a few times. We woke in the morning and made love again. I ate her out and felt like a good boy performing a duty he enjoys.

We did more tidying and pottering the next day. Being at Matte’s house means I live closer to the ground. I have less choice in how I spend my time and no base to retreat to. Everything takes more time: hours go by spent cooking, running a bath, putting up curtains, or hanging out in the kitchen talking to the people who wander in and out. The manual labour and lack of solitude and permanent feeling of cold mean I live far less in my head. It’s unsettling and hard work, but a relief.

In the evening, I went to see my old beloved boy, Dusk, in Leeds for supper. Matte had asked whether I wanted her to come and I had thought it politic to suggest she spend the evening with Abel.

When I arrived at the place, I sat on a stool at the bar and waited for Dusk and drank a glass of lager and let my face become more impassive and felt my cheeks go redder and my legs slacken and watched the bar staff serve the other customers.

Dusk arrived and he told me about his forest research trips to Gabon, Cameroon and Tanzania. He told me the story of how he broke his ankle. We discussed our sexual histories and talked a little of my polyamourous relationship (he had no advice because his only experience is based on being in Matte’s position).

The evening was a handy breather from the weirdness back in Bradford. I dashed off to get my train and realised that, perhaps for the first time ever, I wanted to be with Matte more than Dusk. For the first time, he wasn’t the centre of the universe.

When I got back, I hung out in Matte’s room with her and Abel. He and I talked a bit about Settlers of Catan, and some other board games I hadn’t heard of. He told me about his band and how they tell stories in their songs about a mutant cat, a clown, sea-life and things that have happened to them on tour.

I could tell that Matte was happy that we were all hanging out together. Unfortunately, the last hour was Abel surfing Myspace for old bands and events from Denver and the communal spirit fell apart. Matte and I cuddled on the bed and, eventually, he went downstairs to his mattress.

The next day, Matte and I began the day by making love, then went shopping and then hung out in the kitchen. I made her some pastry and she used it for her cinnamon and nutmeg pumpkin pie. I used the left-over pastry to make an apple pie which Matte would later drop on the floor. Matte made a vegan maple and pecan cheesecake.

The party began and I spent time talking to Highschool and Matte’s friend Clive, Matte’s sister, Hardcore Boy and his girl. The band played and their accordion and saw and double-bass were great, but the stories and glockenspiel not so much. I did like the band in general and, bar his saw-playing, I disliked Abel’s contributions.

While I was in Bradford, I thought a lot about whether I liked Abel. I vacillated between quite liking him and being able to admire his adventurousness and dedication to creating an alternate universe for himself and finding him a morose, cliquey, self-absorbed little boy. However, I can’t pretend to know whether my feelings about him are an accurate reflection of him. On a side note, he seemed pretty remote with Matte: she always went to snuggle with him, or hang out with him, and he was always absenting himself to read his book.

The night drifted away in smoked cigarettes and gentle conversations. I went to bed about four a.m. and Matte followed me soon afterwards. We snuggled in her filthy bed, me still wearing my hoodie.

The next day, we made love again and got up at half two in the afternoon. We hung out in the kitchen while Canvas very slowly made pancakes and the rest of us talked about the Lappersfort protest camp and tripping and lock-ons and work ethics and music. We ate and I made hot chocolates with home-made soya milk. Matte and I started work on a new pecan pie and then I had to leave.

She walked me to the station and when we got there, we sat and waited. I said as I looked down the platform at the red light in the humid Sunday goodbye air that I felt like time had stopped. We talked about a life where time had stopped for everyone and everything that wasn’t near us. We talked about how we would survive if we lived in a house. You’d have to be near to something to make it grow.

I got on the train and we talked until the doors closed. I pointed to myself and made a heart shape with my hands and pointed at Matte and she did the same back. The train pulled away and she slid out of the frame of the window and I went and sat down and cried all the way to Leeds.

“Seen from the back of a train.
I rode away from your station.
They drifted in the air.
Like memoirs of old conversations.”

- Sunset Rubdown.

I will meet Abel for the first time at the party. I had decided to go to Bradford on Saturday and come home on Sunday a) because I have booked tickets to evening geek talks on Thursday and Friday and b) to appear offhand. However, as I was sitting on a beanbag watching boring presentations at this weekend’s hack day, I thought, Fuck it, changed my mind and texted Matte to tell her I would arrive on Thursday.

We got to Penzance and then Mousehole and walked up the hill to find our cottage. We went in and ran around the house like little girls. There was a baby boat-cabin attic, a huge main bedroom with an utterly commanding view of the bay and its little island, an auxiliary bedroom and weird conservatory we never went into, a curiously austere sitting room and a homely kitchen.

On the first night, we pottered about, Matte cooking pasta that we ate for the one and only time in the dining room. We retired upstairs and sat in the chairs in the window of the bedroom and looked at the foggy penumbra glows of the Christmas lights slung above the sea wall. We went to sleep both facing out of the window.

I can’t remember where we went the next morning, but I do remember lying on the sofa and pashing while Remains Of The Day droned on in the background. I remember falling onto the floor and undressing Matte and putting my thigh against her between her legs and bucking viciously as she gasped and her breaths jerked out. After a little while, I slid two fingers inside her and she hitched up her knees so I could slide further inside and lifted her head so she could see. Her hand curled around under her bottom and her fingers joined mine inside her cunt and we fucked her. Her eyes got wider and wider at how sexy she found what she was seeing.

Afterwards, we talked about videoing ourselves having sex and Matte said that watching it “might be really gruesome”. I went to smoke a cigarette on the front step. I don’t understand why I always have this need to get away after an intense experience: a great night out, a great fuck, a happy time with my family.

Later that day, we went to the supermarket in Penzance to get some supplies. Matte said that she had, without thinking, invited Abel, her unboyfriend, to her house-leaving party and so I would meet him. As we went up and down the aisles, we did a sort of abortive version of our non-monogamy disclosure dance: she tells me something, I am calm as I ask her questions, I feel angry and upset, I express the more rational of my thoughts, we maybe reach a conclusion and then I slowly get used to the new data over the next few days. I say abortive because I seem to be getting better at coping with non-monogamy.

I said that I was mainly sad about the fact that I wouldn’t get to spend her last weekend in civilisation with her. I also asked what would happen at bed time. I asked her whether she was hoping we would all have sex and she said she had thought about it, but mostly when she was alone in bed. She said that her imperfect solution was that we would all go to our separate beds.

We went home and got into the bath and I stroked Matte very gently between her legs and she twitched and pushed towards me. I kept that going for ages with her franticly trying to get me to touch her harder. She said, “There’s nothing so sexy as not having sex, is there?”

We went into our bedroom and she put me on my hands and knees and slid her fingers in and out of me as her hips bucked against my bottom. After a little, she sat down behind me and I looked back and she was watching her fingers go in and out of me whispering, “That’s so sexy.” and “You’ve gone hollow and I’m so deep in you.”

Afterwards, we sat in the armchairs in the window and I said that I had imagined she was a boy and she said she had imagined she was Brian. I saw the look on her face and I said, “You’re worried about how in love with me you are, aren’t you?” She said she was and that she’d just realised she hadn’t thought of Abel for twenty-four hours.

We cuddled and started dozing off and she said she was going to fall asleep with the image of her fingers disappearing inside me.

The next day, we stayed in. We lay in bed and Matte started reading erotica on my iPhone. I lay beside her as she read aloud and slowly rubbed her between her legs. She told the story of a married couple, Brian and Tracy, and their slow sexual awaking of their eighteen-year-old next door neighbour, Rachel.

Later, after some toast and blackcurrant jam, I told her one of my wank fantasies. I said that Ben (me, when I am feeling like a boy) is at a bar and he meets Matte and Rachel. The three of them go home together and the girls suck Ben off and kiss and suck him off again then he gets Matte on her hands and knees and, as her fucks her, she licks out Rachel between her spread legs.

All the while, as I spoke, I stroked Matte’s cunt. Afterwards, her jarmeys and the sheets were soaked with come.

On Tuesday, we went to Pendeen. After two hours of getting on the wrong buses and going the wrong way on the right buses, we got there and tried to walk down to coast. We climbed over wall after wall and marched through field after field, Matte getting angrier and whinier and more scared of the cows. Eventually, we gave up, went back and found the road to the coast.

We ate beetroots and tomatoes and houmous and home-made bread and Tangfastics on the cliffs and looked down at the water smashing on the rocks as the wind rushed past us. We went around the corner and found a sheltered dell and made love on the grass.

The next day, we walked to Lamorna. It was raining when we set off and I was woefully ill-equipped in sneakers and a jacket. We walked up and down, up and down the cliff path, me skirting puddles and swamps. By the time we got to Lamorna, we were soaked and I was furious. We shared a scone and clotted cream and my jeans creaked against my legs and water dripped from my hair. We set off again, and by the time we were halfway, the path was mostly swamp and I was plunging through the mud holes I had carefully picked my way around on the way out. We got so wet that we couldn’t get any wetter and things became rather funny. When we got home, Matte ran me a bath.

The next day, we pottered and drew pictures of each other and ate blackcurrant jam and orange and ginger jam on toast. In the evening, we went to Newlyn and sat on the sea-defence rocks and ate the best fish and chips I’ve ever had: fish sliding out of the buttery batter and chips crunchy animal fat. We walked back to Mousehole holding hands and I wished we would never get there I was so happy. That was the only moment that I felt like I was centred in now and time kindly stopped.

When we got home, we made love again. Matte fucked me hard and fast from behind with one quick finger and then her knuckles bumped my clit again and again until I came and I started crying with my face in the pillow and she gathered me and held me as I sobbed into her neck.

On the last day, we went for a strange, other-people-filled time on the beach in Penzance. That night, I fisted Matte again and after she came she started crying and saying that she had felt like she was holding me. I felt so happy that she loved me so much then.

I told Matte that her name in the blog is Matte because of her otter hair and sleek otter face. I tried to find some pictures of a Matte-like otter on Google, but failed and she asked whether I was sure I wasn’t thinking of a water rat.

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.

First, there is this awful dissonance between normal, mindless being alive and abnormal mindful being alive.  Normally, a person stumbles around inside life.  Maybe, like me, you think a lot about what is going within life: politically, romantically, anthropologically, morally, physically.  Or, maybe, like I wish I did, you live without analysing.  Regardless, it is very rare to look up and go, “Good Lord, I am alive”, because that almost necessitates trying to use that incredibleness to make you use every second.

The problem is that, because I died, I am having a high number of those, “Good Lord, I am alive”, moments.  So, I rapidly switch between getting on with things and stepping outside life to see that it exists.

Second, I cannot fathom the relationship between other people and the fact that I died.  I know they were all terribly upset when I was in hospital.  In that time, I realised a lot of people cared very much about me.  However, now that I am back in real life – out of hospital, walking around, not very ill, back in London – I don’t know how they feel about it.  I sometimes worry that they’ve forgotten that I was dead.  I wonder why they don’t hug me like it’ll be the last time, or why they don’t focus on me.  I wonder why Matte had spare care to pursue another relationship when she almost lost me.  I do know how terrible this sounds.

The difficulties.

First, when she’s not with me, I can’t rely on the constancy of feeling that is assumed in a monogamous relationship because she is sometimes with someone else.

Second, when she is with me, she could be elsewhere in her head.  If that elsewhere is the trees or an action or a festival, that’s OK because those are things.  However, if the elsewhere is someone else, I feel like I’m left with vacancy.  She says that it’s only the former, but we all think about another when we’re with someone, so she probably does, too.

Third, the announcement of these new people strips away any trust I have in her, and makes it impossible for me to be vulnerable.  If she were here right now, I couldn’t imagine being anything other than friends.

Fourth, and this is very difficult for me to admit, the thought of her having sex with other people gives me a feeling of mostly sickness and stomach removal, and a tiny bit of sexual excitement.  I find this very shameful and I don’t really understand it.

Fifth, all I see ahead is occasional sharp stabs of pain when someone new comes along, followed by the slow ebb of sadness and a return to a hands-over-the-ears happiness, followed by another sharp stab of pain.

Sixth, she is considering either moving to a forest eco camp, traveling around a bit, moving to Brighton or staying in Bradford.  The first and most likely two of those four choices will favour her spending more time with this new chap.

Seventh, for her, I am the safe relationship and I am pretty sure I don’t want to be her home base from which secure preparations are made for adventures and to which she returns for rest and recuperation.

She is supposed to be visiting me in London the week after next.  We are supposed to be going to stay in a cottage in Cornwall at the end of this month.  The Moms has suggested doing these things and having a nice time and then thinking about where I stand afterwards.  However, I’m pretty sure that will be impossible for me.  I expect that, within a week, I will have decided to get on with going out with her, or say it’s finished and do that slicing gesture like Al Pacino in Serpico.

For extra bonus fun, I think The Moms and step-Dad are reaching a crisis point again.  This time, when we talked about it, I half counseled The Moms to end the relationship.

The palpitations are back, too.