Seven Nights in an American Bed

Supercharging my libido

I’d just come back from two weeks in New York, a week of which I spent with my situationship. You know the one. The man who slips in and out of my life like a perfectly timed orgasm. We’ve been doing this thing for a couple of years now - weekly visits, my place or his, sex as the main event, the occasional meal thrown in when we’re both hungry. We speak often enough to keep the wires from going dead, mostly to ask, whose bed tonight? But he’s not the man I call when I’m in pieces, or bored, or want to talk crap about my day. That’s not what we do. And to be fair, that’s the reason it works. Because if we ever tried to make it more than this — more entwined, more proper — it wouldn’t last a week. We’re too different, polar opposites in some ways. We have a good thing going so why ruin it by making it more official?

Still, New York was our second holiday — a bold move for something so beautifully uncommitted. The first time was early days, when he flew out to see me in Gran Canaria. We’d barely met, but the chemistry was absurd. Sun, sex, food, the perfect fantasy. So I wasn’t exactly panicing about spending a week in my home city with him. He’s easy-going, happy to follow my lead and I’m a planner. As long as I held the reins, we wouldn’t kill each other.

New York, though, bloody hell, it bleeds you dry. Even with London prices as a benchmark, it’s a shock. He’s not Mr Moneybags, and I’m not pretending to be either, so this wasn’t one of those lavish, let’s drink champagne all night type of trips. He was there partly for document signing, some boring bureaucratic necessity and my son had offered us his apartment. Free accommodation in Brooklyn? I’m not stupid; I took it. I also had people I wanted to meet — podcast guests I’d spoken to but never actually touched faces with. It all lined up neatly, at least on paper.

But then came The Problem.