Ben

By the time I met Ben, he could have been 58 and had a gaggle of former wives buried underneath his basement flat- I didn’t give a shit. That’s not to say that he wasn’t nice- he made me laugh, he was clever and crucially he thought absolutely nothing of drinking white wine from the corner shop and smoking Marlboro Reds at 10.30 on a Tuesday morning- but my only real criteria for sleeping with Ben was that he wasn’t you.

  

He fulfilled my one criteria quite brilliantly and so, after meeting at a nice pub about three seconds from his house called The Bird in Hand near Kensington station, I proceeded to drink until I had reached a point of drunkenness that I like to think of as essentially disabled. It was two months since I had last slept with you and I needed to erase you from my skin. 

I staggered up to his flat and fell onto a large, loose IKEA sofa covered in a green throw and which smelt of weed. We kissed for a while and then I suggested we take it to the bedroom, which was to my mind very French indeed. I had never initiated anything, you'd always lead the way. 

We fucked for a bit and it was absolutely fine. I didn't feel sad then. I didn't come but I couldn't have, I was swimming in wine, I was medically numb. 

An hour later Ben was asleep and I was sobbing on a strangers bathroom floor. I realised sometime after that I couldn't remember the sound of your voice or the way that the blue and the green of your eyes blended together like the colours in my childhood water colour set, and I had never been so sad. I had started to erase you. You were starting to be rubbed out.