When I arrive at the door, we kiss and hug and make all the noises you make during plague time: it’s so good to see you. I’m so glad you came. I’ve been looking forward to this all week. There’s wine in my bag, something smells delicious in the kitchen and earlier this week I texted him ‘pls can you tie me up?’ and he replied with ‘yes, yes I can’ so I’m fizzing. But somewhere in the back of my mind there’s a nagging girl who reminds me that ‘support bubbles‘ can impact the speed and intensity with which you embark on new relationships.
I pour wine, stretch out and watch him cook. I like to watch him cook – the curve of his back and his bum as he stands at the stove, and the skilful, speedy way he measures out ingredients and chucks them in. It’s a miracle of which I will never tire – watching a man cook for me.
We chat over dinner, pouring out the woes of the week, and in the back of my mind there’s that girl flashing warning signs about intimacy and connection and the fact that the plague’s making all of this happen faster. When your support bubble has to be limited, whoever’s inside it will inevitably take on more significance than they might in normal times. You spend more time with them. One-on-one time. Close time. Perhaps your only social time. It turns up the ‘intensity’ dial on getting to know someone far more quickly than you might be ready for.
I ignore the warning-sign girl.
Later that evening he binds my wrists and ankles with rope, shoves me around the bed and fucks me – deep and brutal and hard. Afterwards we admire the rope marks on my wrists, and I squirm.
Support bubbles and intoductions
The next day he cooks me breakfast and we go for a ride. We cycle across London and I pretend to be embarrassed that I keep riding too far ahead. Secretly I’m hoping that he’s impressed by the power in my well-worked thighs, and is checking out the view of my arse as I pull away.
On the journey, we stop to say a distanced hello to someone I love, and I like that I get to show him off to her, and her to him. That girl flashes warning signs again. When you hardly see anyone, meetings and introductions become more significant: that intensity dial nudges yet another notch towards ‘too much, too soon.’
She’s a killjoy.
But she’s probably right, because later that day he tells me he’s honoured to have met this person who means so much to me, implying that the introduction was more significant than I’d ever intended. So I fall over myself to explain that it was nothing: we were in the area, a ‘hello’ was polite, “it’s not like you’re meeting my parents at a formal dinner.” As his face falls I realise what I’ve done, so I scramble to remind him that meetings aren’t a benchmark, he’s important anyway.
Which he is.
Flash flash. Shut up. Flash. Sssssh.
Then he fucks me till I come round his cock. We eat takeaway and play nerd games and get drunk and then fuck some more.
The impact of Covid on new relationships
While we’re fucking the warning-sign girl leaves us to it. But afterwards, in the afterglow, she whispers into my ear that the ‘support bubble’ thing means the fucks we have are starting to dominate this blog. That if it weren’t for Covid I could temper this intensity with stories of other men and other experiences: more varied snapshots from a much fuller life.
I tell her to fuck off.
What else can I do? It’s not like I’m going to stop seeing someone I like just in case I start to like him a little bit too much. But she’s right: he’s here a lot.
A lot.
We crack open more booze and watch a film in which Jason Statham does ludicrous, impossible things. I lean into him on the sofa and he holds me and it feels good.
And because I’m getting comfy she appears again with her warnings. Tells me it’s plague year, and relationships speed up when you have limited support bubbles. Says I’m a fool for staying over two nights in a row, and it’s time to go home now – I have a life to be getting on with.
She’s right, but I ignore her because I’m having a lovely time. And yeah, it’s plague year, and relationships speed up when you have limited support bubbles, but I liked staying over two nights in a row.
And besides, what is this if not ‘life’?
5 Comments
As someone who fell in love during the plague-times, I was definitely trying to hold back on admitting it to myself, never mind saying it aloud. All the flashing warning signs, and doubt, and guilt, but fuck it. Its been a long time since I was this happy with someone, and I like making her happy.
So it’s safe to say that I’m very familiar with how this feels
Ah mate that’s really lovely to hear! I’m glad you are both happy – it’s nice to hear there can be lovely things even amongst all this horror <3
“Tomorrow is promised to no (wo)man.” Don’t deny yourself joy just because it’s not the kind of joy you think you are allowed to have!
Take the joy and happiness where you can find it, and if/when things return back to some variation of normality it doesn’t work out at least you both had someone to lean on right now.
Just don’t lose the new independence you talked about in a recent blog post.
Im all for people in these times doing whatever it is that makes them happy.
Also is there a Jason Statham film where he does not do ludicrous, impossible things?