I took her cheque and closed the door.

That was yesterday. Since closing the door on R. I've swam the length of my worst selves.

First, I smoked half a pipe of O. Having lost my tolerance, I felt the thrumming in seconds and the whirl of warmth went right to my fingers. I wanted to explore the impasse that was opening up. It went like this. R. had seemed so impeccably and charmingly unaware of my lust, that I was absolutely certain she knew of it. And as the O drew me further into my chair, I pondered the finesse and subtle working of what is, undoubtedly, her seduction of me. Pleased with my reasoning, I took a cab into town.

There were two desires at work here. The first was to see George and to sit at his kitchen table while he fussed around me. The second desire, looming closer every minute, was the certain knowledge that I would not be returning home without having resolved my feelings for R. in some deep and anonymous sex. It may appear a curiosity that George and sex are twin motivations and, certainly, there is history. (We met at a particular club at a time when we were both enduring our divorces and, in the spirit of the place, we managed to bond).

I was welcomed with lemon cake and tea. But, even for George, arrival without warning requires an explanation. I'm regressing, I said. George was preparing something Thai and nodded a few times as if refusing to allow this to come between him and his cooking. I was glad of the indifference. I knew that in referring to deeper issues I was, as always, refusing actual intimacies. However, as the question of regression was a real and current concern, I felt momentarily sad for myself in selling it so easily. The sadness passed.

George spoke of guilt and his elderly sister and the distance between them but the O was holding it at bay and I wasn't certain if the distance referred to was emotional, or geographic. Within minutes I was in another cab and, as if to confirm the regression, was heading towards the club where I first met George and in which I hadn't set foot for five years. I had neither my membership card nor any of the required paraphernalia.

The Liverpudlian owner (AM) knew me and I was allowed a drink at the bar. I may have remembered a few old faces or pretended so. But it was probably my nonchalant and non-committal chat with AM, along with the quiet of the night, that convinced him to allow me join the games. In short, I spent twenty minutes or so working a dildo into the rotund backside of a woman who could have been thirty, or fifty. I don't know. It was considerably later that I got, very likely, what I came for: hot wax all over my screaming bollocks.

All my fears, my certainties, ebbed.

Eventually I slept. I slept like a baby.

How could R. ever hurt me?