Could It Be That Sex Got In The Way?

We keep in touch. For a long time now we have been friends. But I wonder: how did that happen?

I don’t remember the last time we had sex, or even kissed. If I had known that I was closing that chapter of my life, I would have been sure to memorise the details, the way I remember so much else.
I remember the first time we met, outside a nightclub – both of us far too young to be there. You were a slightly geeky schoolboy, far too smart to be cool. You liked bad metal and played classical guitar. I was trying to act nonchalant despite my teenage pimples and social awkwardness.
I remember the first time we kissed, much later, at a party in the suburbs. You lay with your head on my lap, stroking my hand, then my leg. You sat up, ran your hands through my hair, and the world stood still in those magical few seconds before your lips touched mine.
We got older; your hair grew longer; you joined a band. You were beautiful and popular, you had lots of friends, but by then, so did I.
I remember meeting you on another night, at another club, months after I’d stopped seeing you. I was there with my new friends, smoking cigarettes, accepting drinks and admiration from strangers and thinking it was no less than I deserved. “When did you become such a bitch?” you asked me and although I rolled my eyes at you, I knew you were right.
I remember an argument with you, sitting on a bench in the shopping centre. You had told your friends you had been sleeping with me. I was angry, not so much at the lie, but by the crude term you’d used to describe it.
I remember a party in a condemned building. You were stoned or drunk, probably both, and you grabbed my hand.
“Can you handle pain?” you asked me.
I nodded and pulled up my sleeve and you poured hot wax along my arm.
“I’m not like your other friends,” you said. “I won’t be around all the time, but if you ever need me I’ll be there.”
I remember the first night I had sex with you. We went to an all night garage to buy condoms and in the harshly lit interior while the bored night staff waited, you asked me which ones I wanted. “I don’t know,” I hissed. “The coloured ones?”
Back in your room we listened to Pink Floyd and had sex on the foldout couch. I felt awkward, as if my body and brain were disconnected, and embarrassed by my inexperience. It wasn’t your fault, but I blamed you and I wouldn’t have sex with you again, not for a long time. I still saw you – at parties and pubs and nights out. After all, we were friends.
I remember you calling round late several times a week for months to keep me company when I was suffering from insomnia. At one or two in the morning, you’d knock on the door of my tiny apartment and we’d drink coffee and talk.
I remember parties and gigs, and long nights of not sleeping in the small flat at the back of your parents’ garden. In the morning I would sneak past your father’s study window, out the front gate and ring the bell as if I’d arrived unexpectedly, wearing far more smudged mascara than one would expect at Sunday morning breakfast.
Time passed, a year perhaps, maybe more. I phoned your house to wish you a happy birthday. “He moved out months ago,” your brother said. “He’s misses you. You should phone him.”
I called you up and you collected me from university.
“Where have you been?” you asked.
“My boyfriend doesn’t trust you,” I said.
“But we’re friends,” you said.
“I know. Jealousy, huh? Stupid.”
Time passed; people came in and out of my life; but you were a constant presence.
One afternoon I went out with you and your friends. I remember my surprise that you were flirting with me again after all that time, and I remember my surprise at being pleased about it. You dropped me home and we kissed at the garden gate.
On a warm summer night we sat together in a dark nightclub. “Let’s go on holiday,” you suggested. “Just you and me.”
A truck driver picked us up as we hitched our way down to the coast. He bought us dinner and gave us a joint, and that night we slept at a truck stop. In the brightly lit bar, the drivers sang along to the radio while bored prostitutes chewed gum and waited. In the back of the truck, we found a mountain of plastic wrapped cushions – the delivery – and lay down. As we tried to get close, the cushions shifted under our weight and sent us crashing and we laughed and laughed.
I remember having sex with you on holidays and afterwards, in my house, in your house, in my bed, in your bed, next to your desk. I remember the afternoon we skipped classes and went back to my room. We listened to Frank Zappa, and rolling around on the bed, you grabbed the curtains and they came tumbling down on top of us. I remember the warmth of your body and the long scar on your leg, the way you purse your lips whenever you play guitar. I remember that your eyes are the colour of toast.
We broke up and it was awkward, but not for long – we had been friends for too many years. Months later we were at a party. You had too much to drink to drive me home, so we stayed over, sleeping on the floor. It was winter and we cuddled together for warmth. The next day you left on holiday with friends and crashed in the middle of the African bush.
Your mother called me up.
“I don’t know how badly hurt he is,” she said. You had been taken to a rural hospital; the phone connection was erratic; the doctors didn’t speak English. “All I know is that three people from the other car are dead.”
But you had the luck of the devil. You were asleep in the back, and although you had flown out the rear window, you had nothing more than cuts and bruises and a sprained neck.
The day you came back, I had to see you, had to have sex with you. It was the strangest feeling, not lust, but a primal survival instinct – a deep-seated need to grab on to life.
Time passed. “We’re just friends,” I would say whenever people asked, and while it was the truth it was also a lie.
We were always better as friends than as a couple. There was just one problem – sex got in the way. Until one day it didn’t. I fell in love with someone else and you did too and we became the friends we always pretended to be. Maybe it is because we got older; or maybe it’s because we got a little wiser.
Whenever I see you, I am aware of an absence, like an empty space in the pit of my stomach, where my desire for you used to be. I love you and always will, but I wonder: where did all the lust go?