BJs and DJs

Even up until now, I have hard time believing in that but it is a fact. My North African boyfriend (he is way more than my boyfriend) and I decided to open our relationship. I never thought that such an arrangement would be my thing but here we are... La grande ouverture! I do not feel like explaining here how we got there now but I thought it was worth sharing how my newly acquired freedom was utilized for the first time.

It was an important day to me. The second one of my 2 big exams took place in the morning (3 hours and 15 minutes of my morning to be exact) and after 3 months of studying while working full-time I already smelt the wind of my upcoming liberation. By that, I meant not having to study every night after work. But as it later turned out the winds of freedom would blow much stronger than expected.

One of my friends told me that I should absolutely have a dinner and drinks with him to celebrate the end of my exam session. Despite feeling tired, I was more than up for such a festive, Wednesday night scenario. This friend of mine is the type that you are hardly able to see on his own. He is always surrounded by a bunch of crazy partying people and even though they are all fun you sometimes crave for some one-on-one quality time. I was lucky to get almost 2 hours of the evening with him only.

But such things cannot last forever. At some point, I went to the boys' room and when I returned I noticed that a stranger was sitting at our table and talking to my friend. I sat down and got introduced to him. He was a young and a cute DJ. I had never met him before but when he later added me on Facebook I realized I had seen his name before. Not to mention quite a few friends in common. In the beginning, I was getting a bit bored after his arrival. Then even more people came so the magic and the aura of a one-on-one dinner with a great friend seemed to have vanished.

I was really getting bored until the DJ sat next to me and put his arm around me. Suddenly, it started getting interesting. Mostly of the people at the table did not know my relationship had recently become open so I did not want to create too much fuss about it. Luckily, they simply decided to ignore the affection between him and me not asking any questions. Later the DJ started cuddling towards me and he put his hand under my t-shirt. He gave me some more or less innocent kisses. Then he started whispering to my ears and he asked whether I would be interested in going to his place that night. I said I was not sure. In fact, I wanted to but I had not decided whether I was ready or not. He said he did not want to pressure me in case I was tired or wanted to go back home to be with my boyfriend. It seemed the DJ took my hesitation as a 'no' since upon leaving he did not ask me again and he just left home. I felt like going after him and precising the situation aka saying 'Yes, let's go to your place' but all of the people were leaving together with me so I did not want to follow the DJ in too an explicit manner. I almost felt like the crowd at the table was my parents since I didn't want to make them realize that I was about to do something inappropriate in their eyes. Luckily to me, we all went to the metro pretty fast and then separated. The DJ was the first to leave the crowd and went back on foot since he was living in the neighborhood. When I was finally alone I messaged him on Facebook (he had added me while in the restaurant). Facebook said the DJ was online 3 minutes ago so I was expecting a quick reply. But his message was not coming unlike the metro train that arrived and was going to take me back home. I decided to deliberately miss it and give the DJ some time to reply. It was quite late so the trains would pass every 10 minutes. The count down seemed to be going too fast while I still had no reply from him. The moment the second train entered the station I finally got my reply. The DJ said that I was more than welcome to pay him a visit. I underlined that it would be a quick visit (aka quickie) since it was late and I didn't want to miss the last metro. He gave me his address and off I went.

After less than 10 minutes I was at his door. He was wearing a nice pair of white shorts and I could instantly see that no other piece of clothing was underneath. He was living in a shared apartment with a few people and had a rather ascetic bedroom with not too much in it which reminded me of my apartment in the Southern Hemisphere. Soon we started kissing and we laid down on his bed. And off we went. It felt quite nice. Even though he was not quite my type physically I enjoyed it a lot. Probably, because there was something very sexual about him. The kind of chemistry that I fall for even if the guy is not entirely my fantasy.

The whole experience lasted probably less than 20 minutes. It was late and we both needed to wake up very early. I did not want to miss the last metro either so I left. I kissed him good night and said 'see you next time'. Once I was out and on the street I just realized that it was the first time in my current relationship that I slept with some else. It did feel a bit strange or at least unusual. I do have to admit that a little head fuck (a sort of 'moral' hangover) was present in my mind but then I said to myself that too much reflection was not necessary. My boyfriend and I took a conscious decision to open our relationship and there was no need to feel bad about what had just happened. I thought that I could either feel awkward or simply embrace the fact that I could now keep the cookie and eat it at the same time. While walking towards the metro station I turned on the iTunes on my iPhone and played the music. The first song on my playlist turned out to be 'The World is Mine'. And I did feel as if a little bit more than usual of the world had become mine on that night.

Yesterday never dies

They say that a best friend should always be courageous enough to tell us not to sleep with our ex. But the same best friend will instantly understand us when we sleep with the ex anyway. It seems like we will never learn that the right part of our body to use while deciding whether to sleep with our ex or not is the brain - not the heart or any other part of our system. The widespread word of wisdom sung by the 1990s German Euro-pop band of the song ‘Max don’t have sex with your ex’ will never be implemented by us. The song later goes ‘It will make your life complex’ but this appears to be no danger or threat to us either.

Needless to add, I am no exception here. However, the fact that most of my relationships were long-distance ones and the break-up happened while geographically away from my ex decreased the impact and the drawbacks of the post-break-up sex with an ex. I often hardly stay in touch with my ex’es or simply never see them again (although an occasional email every now or simply not deleting them from my Facebook friends list is a common practice). But sometimes there are exceptions to exceptions too and the best example of it here would be James.

James is my ex with whom I was together for almost a year while I was living in the tiny Western European kingdom and he was in the big city on the Euro-Asian border. He broke up with me in 2009. Just before that he booked his tickets to come and see me after the breakup. Obviously when he was making the reservation he could not know that we would no longer be together during that trip - or at least he told me so... He did not cancel his trip after having consulted that issue with me. I guess I did want him to come anyway. Of course things did happen between us. I do not even recall not wanting them to happen. I think I was completely aware of how unreasonable and silly that was but I consciously did nothing to stop it. At that time, a lot of changes were happening in my life so I didn't feel that would disturb me and it turned out to be right.

Exactly 2 years later, I was about to finish my work contract in the Southern Hemisphere and freshly single (again) I was getting ready to leave and return to the North. I decided to take some time off, travel a bit and visit some old friends. Since a lot of them are spread all over the world we decided to organize a reunion on a 'neutral ground'. The neutral ground turned out to be not so neutral since it was where James lived (and he is still there). In an [unwise] move to avoid some nasty hostels and save up some money I asked James whether I could stay at his place. Of course he agreed instantly after which I underlined that there would be no sex between us. I just wanted to avoid drama on my side but also on his since he was in a gray area with his ex.

A few weeks later the big travel approached and I took off to the city on the border between Europe and Asia. Some of James' friends were visiting from his side of the Atlantic. They were staying in a hotel but they all came to his place for drinks. We were all drinking in the living room and sitting on the couch on which I was supposed to sleep afterwards. James offered me to sleep in his double bed but I wanted to avoid any sexual encounters so I declined. I was happy he did not insist.

Then the things took a different turn. His friends left and we were by ourselves talking and continuing to drink red wine. It was quite late and we were both tired. Suddenly James just passed out in a very uncomfortable position on the couch where I was supposed to sleep. After a few unsuccessful attempts to wake him up and make him to go to his own bedroom, I capitulated and went to sleep in his bedroom. I was not happy as I knew he would eventually wake up in the middle of the night and go back to his own bed and we would end up sleeping together. Guess what - this is exactly what happened. Of course around the dawn it just happened. He started touching my hair, my face, then kissing and we were on a slippery slope! You know the rest of the story.

So yes, you can blame and judge me - I had sex with my ex... But more than 2 years after our breakup, some things were different. His gay worldview seemed to have evolved. He was no longer confused, he was much more self-confident and knew what he wanted. He told me he wanted to settle down and even have kids... It came as a shock to me and I think that at some point I even said it out loud: 'Oh my God, so people do change sometimes!' Another thing that change was my feelings. So did his most probably. Of course, we still have warm feelings for each other but it is not a 'relationship love' anymore. We respect each other, want to keep our friendship going but I think we both realized that the past is in the past and that was where it should remain. However, on that particular night (and the few ones to follow) our friendship involved some benefits too. But it did feel great because it was completely drama-free. So my past did not die. Yesterday is still today. However, today's yesterday is much better than yesterday's yesterday.