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We would have unbelievable rows. The passion I felt for him was something I didn’t know how to handle. It felt too intense and slippery for me, liquid mercury pouring out of my hands. We made it up in the bedroom, of course. Or on his kitchen table. Or his desk at work, after his boss had gone. In an elevator. In a university post office.

And we did it every way we could imagine, from the exotic (double penetration, restraints, golden showers) to the embarrassingly prosaic-missionary while he watched a football match on telly. I’ve done more and dirtier with other people since then, but never felt such a sense of stretching my own boundaries.

He was the first person to take a paddle to my behind; in return, I administered a doubled leather belt to his bottom while he bent over a sofa, holding his genitals away from the strikes. His impressively varied collection of pornography was the first hard-core I’d ever seen, and we acquired new magazines and sorted them into categories with glee. The things he did like-watersports, anal, women with frogspawnish come dripping off their faces-took their place; even things he didn’t like such as bestiality and lesbian sex had their place, because he was a collector. The explicit permission to just look at someone’s body, as opposed to a surreptitious glance in the gym or a furtive peek before the covers came up and the lights went out, was delightful.

I started seeing A2 several years after A1 and I split. He was a sensitive lover. Not gentle as such, but strong and slow. He seemed to me to make no unnecessary movements, and I was enthralled by his long, measured steps. Sometimes, with his pale skin and fair hair, he still looked like a teenager. Or even younger-an overgrown boy. From the beginning of our affair to the end, no body and no touch ever felt so right every time as his did. No fingers and no tongue ever came so close to being what I imagined the perfect lover was like. His body was spare but muscular. Tall but not excessively so. Not an ounce wasted.

He had a washing machine at home; I didn’t. I went round one day with laundry and found a pair of my own knickers in the otherwise empty drum. “What are these doing in here?” I asked.

“I missed you when you went home last weekend, so I wore them,” he said.

I examined the elastic. His hips were so narrow it didn’t seem to have torn the underwear. “Maybe we should get you some for you,” I kidded.

“Maybe we should,” he said, not joking.

I had his key. After waking and breakfasting (poached eggs on toast if hungry, cappuccino and a slice of challah if not), I would cycle to A2’s house. He usually rose late and was showering when I arrived. The bedroom door would be open and I went to the bureau drawer containing almost two dozen pairs of knickers. Choosing one, I would leave it in the drawer of the bedside stand and return to the front room. He would come out and dress. No comment on the knickers, which were for later.

We spent most of each day together. He worked from home; I had odd hours in a bookshop nearby. While I was working, he’d take a break from his, bringing me takeaway cups of coffee and tea. We read the literary supplements; I gave him bound proofs of upcoming books from the back room. My workmates were a mad, absinthe-drinking middle-aged woman and the often-absent, never-happy boss. Almost every week I ended up covering half of their hours but didn’t mind. There were books and plenty of them. And it was exciting the few times an author of note came in the shop. I noticed, though, that most of them breezed in the door and went to check for their titles on the shelves before coming back to the front to greet me.

After work A2 would be waiting at home. No words, just through the door and straight to his sofa. He sat, arms thrown over the back, as I opened his jeans with my teeth. Always a harder trick to pull off than I remembered. Then the first flash of silk or lace, and his hard cock distorting the fabric. I put my face in his crotch and smelled the odor of a day’s worth of sweat, piss, and pre-come through the knickers. I nibbled him, licked the underwear until it stuck to him.

A2 loved to pull at me, turn me over on his hands. He stripped me bare but kept the girly pants on. When he entered me-almost always anally-it was with the knickers pushed to one side, constricting the base of his penis, clinging to his balls.

After a few months the knickers weren’t enough. I bought a summer dress, short, brightly colored. He tried it on. I laughed and fucked him in the dress and was only slightly depressed that A2 had thinner hips and better legs than mine.

“Let’s go to the sales,” he said one weekend. I didn’t have to ask if the purchases were going to be for him or for me. Soon several short, pretty dresses joined the knickers in the drawer.

I knew there was another woman. He’d told me before we ever slept together. I probably fooled myself into believing it was almost over, for she lived hours away, and from what I knew had always treated him badly. But one week he went to see friends in the city where she lived. While I tried for a few days to ignore the itching weight of his key in my pocket, in the end I could not resist. I tore his house apart looking for evidence of her: e-mail, pictures. There was one in particular that broke my heart: her gorgeous face cracked in a smile and pink satin pajamas open to the waist. I found her name, her number, and rang her. There was no answer. I left a message on the answerphone: this is a friend of A2’s, I just wanted to talk to you-don’t worry, it’s not an emergency.

She rang back. “Hello,” she said, sounding tired.

It was hard to keep from screaming. The pulse in my neck was throbbing. “Do you know who I am?” I asked.

“I’ve heard your name,” she said. I told her about me and A2. She was very quiet. “Thank you,” she said at the end. The day after he came back, I used his key to go in but he wasn’t in the shower.

He was waiting for me. I’d upset her, he said. What right did I have to do that?

There was no answer. I was shaking with anger. What right does anyone have to feel jealousy?

One of the teachers at school gave a talk to the girls in our year about his marriage. Love is a decision, he declared to a room of hormonally charged teenagers. We scoffed. Love isn’t a decision; the films and songs tell us otherwise. It’s a force, it’s a virtue, we were at the charmed age when you can suck off your brother’s best friend in your bedroom and still believe in a one true love.

Then I fell for someone who hurt me. Gradually I came around to the teacher’s point of view. You have to open the door before someone can come in. That was no guarantee of control once they got there, of course, but it was something that was comprehensible, if not entirely logical.

In control, that’s what I thought. But first-time jealousy tore me to pieces the same way first love had. We argued and fucked, and fucked and argued, then we argued more and fucked less.

And when we did have sex, it had changed. Once he used to put knickers on and bend over the edge of his sofa. Laughing, I would apply a riding crop to his behind. After a few minutes we’d run to his bathroom where he’d excitedly pull down the panties and look in the mirror. If I hadn’t yet imprinted the pattern of the fabric on his skin, we’d go back and try again.

After, I just whipped him and whipped him until his skin was raw and spotted with blood. Until he told me to stop.

The times we shared a bed, A2 slept with his arms tangled around me. I kick and struggle against sheets and blankets in the night; he held me in. I rub my legs together like a cricket; he warmed my cold feet between his. Whenever his hand rested on my belly, I would wake, wondering not only at his stillness-he was only slightly less animated asleep than awake-but also at his lack of self-consciousness. The body is so unarmored: our species’ success is dependent on what is inside our skin, not a thousand spikes mounted on it. I might have hurt him any time he was asleep. If he turned over, exposed his spine, I might have attacked him right then.