Sniffing around for sext

It was almost 24 hours to the minute since I ended it with Jake and it started. Random, unsolicited messages from men I hadn’t spoken to in months began to appear in my inbox. Friend requests from men I’d chatted to for maybe a week once on Tinder. Men who I was into once upon a time who had disappeared without a trace. They all started to slide into my DMs, sniffing around for sext.

It was like I was exuding some sort of psychic pheromone they snuffed on the air that told them I was single again. Their timing was uncanny. I had posted nothing on social media to indicate a change of relationship status. Told only a few friends and family, none of whom had connections to these wannabe Casanovas. But one by one, they pinged back into my life with a casual “hey” or “morning gorgeous, what’s the story?”.

A few I ignored completely. We’d never actually met before and I couldn’t remember where we connected let alone any pertinent details about their lives. Others I consider my friends, although for some I would use that phrase loosely to describe what is effectively them using me to get their rocks off because they’re in unhappy marriages. Like a good whore or mistress, they chat to me about ordinary things, their jobs, their kids, before twisting the conversation to whatever sexual flavour they’re itching to taste that day. Sometimes, I oblige. Sometimes I don’t. Of late, I have been leaning toward the latter. Hell, I could make money spinning some of the filth that comes out of my thumbs but here I am juggling conversations like a Cirque du soleil acrobat and all I get is a feeling that is pretty lousy and lonesome while they cum into their hands in selfie mode and think I’ll be suitably sated.

One “friend” in particular had been trying to engage me in some sexual banter for months and I kept ignoring his messages. They usually came in late at night, when I knew he would be sitting up while his wife slept. He was very unhappy, and the conversations around that had been had. I’d suggested all kinds of counselling and communication techniques, encouraged him to seek solace in other things but at the end of the day, the guy just wanted a blowjob. A good, old-fashioned BJ from his wife, the kind he claimed he hadn’t had in years, but she’d been giving away during their early relationship. He felt betrayed by her, that she had changed into someone who didn’t like or want sex. He felt she had misled him. I can’t comment on her position but it ate him up every day. So, he came to me, not to give him BJs – impossible for geographical reasons among others – but to validate his feelings, to try and make sense of why she had turned away from sex.

Now, I feel sorry for him, I do. I’ve never been the type to say no to a BJ. I enjoy them, as we know. But it’s not for me to say what another woman should or shouldn’t be doing in her own marriage. However, I realised that my behaviour was enabling his. I was encouraging his misdemeanours and it was making me feel less than valued in the process.

The other day, he reached out again, and given my change in relationship status, I responded. But not to engage in our previous sexual back and forth but to tell him how he had made me feel.

I’m thinking of finally taking that weekend away I’ve been trying to take all year so I have time to think about it.

That sounds like a good idea.

Would you be OK with having a drink?

Of course, but that’s it, babe. You really need to decide what you want before you do anything else with anyone.

That will be hard to resist now flirting.

I’m serious babe. Don’t do something you’ll regret.

Maybe it’s worth testing out though. How happy does getting it make me? Sorry, I shouldn’t put you in this position. You’re right.

It’s not a good indication of anything. Everything feels good in the moment. It’s the after you have to live with.

I’ll think about it. Either way, I want to catch up.

Of course.

I might stare at your boobs a lot though (winky face)

Babe … think of it this way, do you think of me as some easy quick fuck? Am I really just that to you? Because if that’s the case, fine. We’ll fuck. But don’t contact me anymore after that because that’s not a friend.

Oh babe, no, not at all. Sorry I don’t mean to make you feel like that. It’s only because I feel we have a connection and you understand me. Not because I think you’re easy.

I understand you. That’s why I’m asking you to sort it out with (wife’s name). I’m tired of being treated like everyone’s sex toy. I’m not your whore. I’m not your mistress.

I feel like a shit head now.

He ended the conversation shortly after that saying he had to think but was back at it the next day.

Retyping the above conversation, it’s easy to see the clichés used by married and attached men to get what they want from woman. Claiming a connection like one they don’t have with their partner. Apologising and then immediately saying something inappropriate, cheapening my feelings like it’s a joke between us.

I stopped laughing a while ago. It’s easy to get drawn in when you’re alone or sad, wondering if you made the right decisions about ending relationships. I like to believe I’m far from stupid but I give in and put out far too easily. The why of it … it continues to elude me. Yes, sometimes it’s sadness, loneliness. I think many times it’s sheer and utter boredom with my own existence. I find it impossible to be still nowadays, like if I stand still too long, I’ll lose all momentum to keep going and just stop.

And that’s my so called friends I’ve just described. The other … I wouldn’t say predators, but scavengers would be an apt description. They’ve scented the wounds of the newly single and they’re closing in to tear at my insecurities. One even admitted he was bored in his own relationship, the one he coincidentally stopped talking to me five months ago for. He was trying to renew his relationship with me as his fall back position so he could safely extricate himself from his “mundane” one. I was to be the interim sext that would tide him over until he found a more suitable match.

But again, the timing of Alister (his porn name by his own admission) was scary. It had literally been months since we last spoke and that conversation didn’t end well for either of us. For him to re-enter my life earlier this week with the most casual “hey missy, how are you?” was like sighting a ghost. Where the fuck did you come from and how the fuck did you know to contact me now? The universe can and does work in mysterious ways but this shit, it feels like I’m being watched.

When I mentioned all this to him, he told me that it was the universe’s way of trying to tell me something, probably that there were plenty of other fish in the sea – look, here they all are with their dick pics in your inbox.

I disagree. The universe has thrown up at me almost every mistake I’ve made in the past six months and more. I hope what she’s actually telling me is more like “for fuck’s sake, stop settling for being treated like a sex worker and start demanding the respect you deserve”. Unfortunately, it seems my ego still needs to cash in that imaginary $4.99 a minute.