A Casual Love Letter to My Casual Lovers

I don’t love you, I’m certainly not in love with you, but we approach our time together with fondness, care, and – yes – love.

When I ask you to touch me a certain way, you do it – which is no small thing. When I want you to touch me a certain way, I feel comfortable asking for it – which is no small thing.

When someone else breaks my heart, it isn’t your responsibility to put it back together. But sometimes you do, a little bit. Maybe without even knowing that’s what you’re doing. Sometimes your touch heals me and it’s always a surprise, because it’s never something I expect to want or expect to get.

When my body feels broken and ugly and wrong, you remind me that it isn’t. You play me like a xylophone until we both can hear my nerve endings sing. I feel whole and gorgeous under your hands.

Beaten down by love’s little twists, I sink into the fiction that maybe no one will ever want me again and maybe I’ll deserve that. You break the spell and show me what I always know is the real truth: that I am wanted and wantable, loved and loveable.

You are both training ground and sacred soil. I try out new tricks without shame because the stakes are low and the payoff is high. I find my footing in your company. When I fuck up, you laugh, but with mirth and not malice.

Without the tangles of dashed hopes and unmet expectations hanging like cobwebs, I’m free to enjoy pleasure without heartache. I pull you closer without fearing I’ll scare you away. I hold on tight while we’re together, softening my heart and soaking you up, and when we’re apart I let you go. No effort, no struggle. It’s practically Zen.

For days or weeks, we forget each other, wrapped up in our respective adventures. And then a text or two. “I saw something that reminded me of you…” “Remember that time when we…” “I hope to see you again soon.”

You’re like a lucid dream within my waking world. A quiet burst of glee untethered to anything else I know. We show up, make each other laugh, make each other come, and part ways. An equable bargain, a cloudless reverie.

On the streetcar ride home from the sex club, I sit all chlorine-damp and fuck-drunk, smiling like the luckiest girl in the world. Because every time I see you, I am.