sometimes i think about my exes.
i regularly think about them just after splitting up with someone significant.
i think about them when someone i’m dating isn’t or is doing something that reminds me of someone who came before. i have a prodigious capacity to remember detail which is kind of a problem when you’ve had a few relationships that lasted a year or more and long bouts of celibacy in between.
kind of a problem because you can’t be comparing your current to your ex. well you can in a ‘i didn’t take this shit then and i sure as hell won’t take it now’ kind of way but you can’t be all “X used to make me breakfast in bed and clearly current doesn’t love me or he would too” cause that’s like, not reasonable okay?
but i remember things. i remember that when we started dating he would always make sure there was a glass of water by my bedside and i tried not to love it since i knew he would stop. and he did.
i remember the lover that i could say ‘can we lie around and read for a while and then shag?’ and he’d be like “yeah” and would jump up and grab something off my shelves. such were some of the most pleasant afternoons of my life.
i recall the first man that kissed my shoulder good night when he didn’t know how to say i love you… others have kissed my shoulder as we drifted into intertwined sleep before, others have kissed but none has left one there forever like he did. and no i don’t have a tattoo.
i remember being able to stir him into round five when no one should have been able to reach for a glass of water let alone fuck.
i remember shaving our privates together, as an experiment.
i think of the one who never knew how hard i fell for him. or cared, and i try to remember the second part.
i wonder where and how they all are. especially the really distant ones.
i smile that bittersweet smile and think of his boundless good cheer and optimism.
i smile a much dirtier one when i think of my first orgasm… among other things.
i look for the common threads that bind these men together and that tear me apart from them later. i look and i wonder and i try to figure it out.
what is it that i’m looking for? what is it that makes me insane? what do i love without realising?
i think about the ones that got away and i wonder about one or two of them. something feels unfinished somehow when you poke. the scab still has life in it and you have to figure out why. this is always made more difficult if the scab has a new girlfriend and easier if he’s married.
yes that’s absolutely true. men are half expected to break up with girlfriends and much less expected to break up with wives. [originally typed husbands which cracked me up but doesn't fit.] and let’s face it, letting a husband know that you’re twinkling at him is just rude; seeing an ex boyfriend act weird around you in front of his girlfriend? kinda priceless.
what?
oh please like you don’t love it when you can make them squirm a little… especially if you want them back.
you know wanting them back, the thing that happens when it wasn’t done when it ended… well in your own head. sometimes it wasn’t over in anybody’s head but that usually involves getting back together pretty fast.
regardless, there is something about discomfiting an ex you secretly want to boink that is strangely satisfying. for me i really wouldn’t push beyond that because i don’t want a man who cheats on his ladies. so you know, i might twinkle but there’s a limit. still makes the cat inside the girl smile that particular smile.
i wonder if it’s fall or breaking up or some combination of both. i wonder if it’s worse because i’m alone and a treasured friend recently passed away. i wonder how i ended up thirty seven years old and alone.
i wonder if it’s me.
