And here concludes my visit to a sex club.

I …have struggled to write this post. I guess I’ve struggled with my feelings about what happened. I don’t really do that well with uncertainty and with confusion and that’s kind of what I was left with afterwards.

I don’t know if I mentioned it, but I got invited to this same sex club by a woman friend. We were going to go together as a girl’s night sort of thing. She’d asked if I’d been to the club before and I said I had, with an ex. She said ‘oh dear, we’ll need to make better, happier memories then’ and I said no, no, no it’s nothing like that, I had great memories with him. And she said then we’ll have to make sexier memories then. And I wasn’t sure if that was just something nice to say or innuendo. Either way, that trip was cancelled.

And I didn’t really think about it again. I didn’t even really think about my past memories at this sex club with him until it happened. Even though I’d talked to my new friend who drove me there about the last time I drove to the club, that I got lucky and there was a car park spot right outside. That I meant to wear a different pair of shoes but ended up not changing them before I went in. Honestly, I kept talking about my ex and I never even thought to consider my feelings about it. About him.

When I was in the porn cinema with my new friends I ended up laughing and saying that he and I had sat in the porn cinema too and that men would look hopefully in to see if we were putting on a show instead of laughing about how unsexy the actual porn was. I usually really like my memories of my ex. They make me feel happy tinged with a bit of sadness. But mostly happy that those things happened.

But when the man came in and sat down next to me and asked me if I’m playing and I said ‘no’ and walked out, in that moment I felt really overwhelmed. I looked around and I felt like everyone else had someone else. There were plenty of couples there with each other, there were clumps of people that knew each other well enough to talk and laugh together. But I wasn’t there with anyone. And in that moment I really felt that.

So I walked downstairs and I sat in this row of leather sofas. And it was only as I sank into one of them that I realised it was next to the bed inside a cage. And I remembered. He and I had sat there together. To take a moment, just for ourselves.

It’s been a really long time since I felt so with a person. Where I felt whole. And safe. And seen. After I had that feeling I started thinking about all the other things we’d done in that sex club together. I thought about him sitting and me standing between his legs at a table. I don’t remember what we talked about, did we laugh? We probably did.

I remembered us moving from place to place. We kept moving and it was almost in direct opposition of other people. It actually ended up being hilarious how antisocial we were at that club. But I never wanted or needed anyone else when I was with him.

And in that moment, the pain of missing him seared through my heart. I remembered us lying on that bed behind the bars. Talking and laughing like nobody else existed in the world. I remember looking at him and thinking how is it possible to love someone this much? And tears pricked at my eyes.

If my new friend hadn’t walked into the dungeon at that very moment I probably would have started crying there and then. Letting all that heartbreak wash over me. Letting more memories in. Letting in more sadness. In the end, I quickly swiped the tears from my eyes and she came over and sat next to me and then two other people came in and we ended up all talking and laughing together. And it was better for awhile.