AKA the fastest way to destroy a friendship

I wanted to get a cab.

I told you she would lead me a merry dance.  We two friends had been out to a restaurant, upscale Thai place in West London. Then back to her sister's flat, she's away for the weekend.

Cold sparkling white wine on top of the lager, the cocktails and the chilli crab.

Reminiscing.  Who fancied who again.  Stole some of her sister's weed, stuff was way strong and neither of us used to it.  Then she DROPS the fucking tin and we're laughing, picking that shit out the carpet her sister's SO GONNA KNOW and-

The flat gets warmer.  CDs keep ending and the sofa is swallowing us.  Then-

I mention the cab.  The non-cab.  The never-really cab.

Well um look OE.... too late for the tube...  might as well um, stay here yeah...

Up from my seat and the corridor is at every angle but the bed is cool-clean delicious.

But won't your arm go numb?

No, not if I put my other arm round you like this.

Belly warm through her T-shirt.  You don't want the details.  Irony is, I don't really know.  Not sex but something like it.  All I remember is saying to her afterwards, before our body-temperatures matched and our arms and legs melted together:

Why did you make me wait so long?

I wake up asthmatic.  Strange bedmites and her dust dried onto my face.  Join her next door, clutching comfort-coffee and shit morning television instead of conversation.  The afterweed makes everything slow-fuzzy-careful-brittle, like driving through thick fog.

Still sore from her fingernails.  But seems my blunt-bitten fingers have scratched her deeper, with their stupid, sculpting strokes.  Her girls-guilt.  She pushes me, half-heartedly, for commitment. 

I mean I would never normally... only did because I thought you wanted a long-term relationship-

But I can't lie.  You need all the parts of your brain firing properly to lie.  I say I don't know.  I say I can't give a promise, not honestly or forever, not after one night.  Not never but not yet.  So we leave it hanging horribly.  Two guilty survivors, stumbling in shock through the smoking wreckage of a friendship.

Three weeks later she calls me.  Tells me that since then, things have developed.

She'd decided to wash the sheets.  Sister wanted to know what was going on, but she couldn't lie.  You need all the parts of your brain firing properly to lie.  She told her sister what happened in her spare bed.   

Sister deeply unimpressed, tells their depressed and even more Catholic mother, and throws her out the flat, just as her job's moved on contract to London and she's no other place to stay. 

Amid the screaming she retaliates, escalates, tells mother about sister's drug abuse.  Mother can't cope, nor stand to see her twins arguing.  She's been on sleeping pills anyway, but next morning they struggle to wake her up.  Not a deliberate attempt, just a miscalculation, apparently.  But enough to make daughter decide to move in for the foreseeable, and leave sister more time to spend with her habit.

So to recap:  ill-judged sexual encounter.  Consequences for her:  Loss of flat, threat to job, sister off the rails, mother on suicide watch and all three of them estranged.  Consequences for me:  Nil.  No feeling.

She recounts all this over the phone.  Wants an answer. 

Well, I say. If I'd known all THAT was going to happen...

...I'd have got a fucking cab.

Comments

[Stray]

You're up early ;)

Blimey. Yeah, taxis all the way from now on!

Sx

[Callisto]

Or the slowest...it took me eleven years.

[Cheerful One]

Ouch

[pocketpunk]

fucking hell you dont want to reproduce with this gene pool......(ignores my own situation completely)

[peach]

is this what you mean by the reverse midas touch? should I be saying something about stones in ponds and ripples?

Crazy story. But I don't believe for a minute that while there were no consequences for you, you felt nothing...

[Timbo]

I laughed at that.

That's the wrong reaction, isn't it?

[An Unreliable Witness]

"Ill-judged sexual encounter ... Loss of flat, threat to job, sister off the rails, mother on suicide watch and all three of them estranged."

Maybe not those specific elements, true. But this just sounds like another average week chez Unreliable Witness.

[edvard moonke]

sex for its own sake does seem to always come with a hefty price tag attached, doesn't it...

[An Unreliable Witness]

Depends who you go to, Edvard.

[That was a tasteless comment the likes of which I don't normally let pass my saintly lips. But it's been a trying day and I felt the need to behave recklessly. And it's always good to behave recklessly in Overnight Editor's box. As it were. Missus.]

[TSP]

Ha, ha. I hate to say it, but that made me laugh. God, I must have a heart like an anvil.

[Beth]

I laughed too - mostly because I'm at a stage in my life where I'd honestly expect a man to have no real feeling about something like that.

I know some wonderful men, genuine, sweet, funny guys - but I can imagine that you fuck them and its like a switch turning that off.

Its a fabulous story though...thanks OE

[peach]

don't be fooled with this take care/I felt nothing stuff...it's a triple bluff... underneath he feels, under that he doesn't, under that he does...

he loves, he loves not

[oe]

Bugger, I just responded to all your comments and typepad has eaten it.

Too tired now, tomorrow.

[oe]

...but it IS quite funny.

[quick]

Made me laugh too, mainly because I'm at that stage in my life where I laugh at funny stuff.

[Angelalala]

I've re-read a few times to try and connect to the underlying feelings in this post but still the laughter takes over.

I think it's relief at such a narrow escape.

[clarissa]

I chuckled.

[Miles Away]

nothing can seemingly ever be simple!

[Mr Angry]

So.

Twins you say...?

[irishflirtysomething]

Ah yeah, but you can never get a cab when you need one.

[David]

Wow...look at all the trouble you caused! It's not your fault, you're such a stud...

[emma]

I don't believe that you felt nothing for her....or have you just
become comfortably numb to any and all emotions....tell us the truth, ah go on now.

In any case I wouldn't blame yourself for getting the girl you shagged kicked out of her sister's place, the sister is obviously highly strung or cuckoo. I mean, what kind of a person would care if someone else had fucked in their bed as long as they washed the sheets afterwards? Not me, that's for sure...but then I don't have a sister, maybe it's a creepy incestuous feeling or summat?? Beats me.

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