h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

The memories which follow are mostly too filthy to be allowed on a BBC website, but I'll do my best. I recall that the first time Stephen came down to visit me in Southampton it was a very sunny Sunday, and a Divine Comedy album was coming out the next day so I had him carry back from the train station armfuls of Sunday papers so I could collect all the reviews. It was awkward, I re member. He kissed me, and it wasn't good. He wanted to stay the night and I said no, he had to go back to Newport.

The next time he came his hopes weren't high. But I'd decided to give him a test run. What follows is one of my favourite erotic memories. He was very nervous and thought he'd not been good enough, that I would decide never to see him again. But it was a revelation for me- and made up my mind. I was seeing someone else as well (everybody knew the score, there was no cheating involved), but ended it with the other man that night. For the next year SP visited me every Thursday (when, upon his arrival, I would talk frantically for at least an hour when he arrived, desperate to tell him everything) and would stay until Saturday night, and I remember whole days- in fact, the next two years at least- in a bubble. We would just draw the curtains and put a silk sheet and some cushions on the floor and spend the entire time, up to a couple of minutes before he had to catch his bus, naked. It was a golden time, though I can't describe full days, just various moments and a general sense of the way it felt. This was contrasted with a terrible loneliness the rest of the week (even though we spoke for an hour or two every night on the phone), and I had a bit of a nervous breakdown. Finally, the day I finished my A levels, I moved up to be with him.

And all this? A reminder of how intense it all was, and why I should never have got involved with Ben. How could we have let daily life grind us down so, that we forgot what we had? And will I ever again have anything that intense? I'm doubting it, actually. From observation, nobody else's relationships seem to be like that was. I can see it was unhealthy that we had nothing and nobody else in our lives that mattered, and yet that fervour- it was like religion must be. I didn't WANT to be around anyone else.