Sex for a single girl, as I have said before, is more complicated than we’d all like to believe. Having sex for the first time after you’ve become single is trickier still.
It’s like “getting back on skis when you’ve had a wipe out,” “running into a freezing ocean on the first day of your vacation,” “eating oysters again after getting food poisoning,” various friends have said.
Indeed, it’s tough to go from regularly falling into bed with someone so familiar you know every twist and turn of their body to taking the plunge and doing that same act with someone new.
Not that this subject was particularly on my mind when I went to a party in a TriBeCa last weekend with my friend Tom.
But then sex often turns up when you least expect it.
This party was full of film types, and everyone seemed to know each other. I knew no one.
When Tom found some mates, I felt a bit lost.
I looked around at everyone laughing and talking, and at that moment I would have given anything for my ex to walk through the door and still be my boyfriend.
Absorbed in this thought, I stared down into my cup of vodka and tonic. I wondered if I should head home.
“Bridge, Bridget! Hey, I thought it was you!” came a voice through the crowd.
I looked up to see a guy who had been a friend of my first New York roommate.
Bright, creative and boyishly cute, he was some kind of screenwriter, I remembered.
We’d flirted with each other two years ago, then he’d moved to L.A.
“Wow! I can’t believe you’re here!” he said, giving me a massive hug.
It was as if the god of the broken-hearted had sent me salvation.
Nick and I began catching up. He was as funny and charming as I had remembered him to be. I quickly forgot my blues.
An hour later, Nick had his arm around me.
Half an hour after that, I was inspecting the mini bar in his hotel.
We’d gone there promising each other we’d just have an innocent nightcap, but like most innocent nightcaps in nice hotels, it wasn’t long before we were rolling around on his big white bed.
Strangely, I felt guilty, then I told myself that the good thing about being single was that it didn’t matter if one thing led to another – and that no-strings sex was what I needed.
But the problem with no-strings sex is working out where you stand the next morning.
Nick and I woke up on opposite sides of the bed.
I noticed he avoided all physical contact with me (a true sign of a regretted one-night stand). We lay in bed pretending to be hung over.
I took a very long shower. He was almost dressed when I came out.
“Er, I was thinking of ordering room service for breakfast,” he said. “Do you want anything?”
“No thanks,” I chirped, sure he was just being polite. “I should go.”
“Um, OK,” he replied. I pecked him on the cheek and left.
Back on the street, I cursed myself for taking the plunge because it hadn’t made me feel any better.
In fact, I now missed my ex more than I had in weeks.
All the previous night had done was remind me of how much nicer it was to go to bed with someone you know intimately.
Nick was in town for one more day, but I decided to forget all about him, and assumed he would do the same.
Instead, he called me twice that day, but I told him I was busy.
That evening I planned a nice, safe night in. I read the papers, ate sushi and went to bed at 10 p.m.
At 11 p.m., Nick called again and begged me to see him.
He said he refused to return to L.A. after the parting we’d had.
He threatened to come round in a taxi to carry me from my bed back to his hotel.
Half asleep, I pulled my jeans on over my nightie and caught a cab myself.
We hugged at his hotel room door, got into bed, talked for ages and didn’t even kiss. I fell asleep with his arm around my tummy.
Then, at dawn, when we were both warm and cozy and entangled, one thing lead to another again.
And there I re-discovered the excitement of finding something new.
Much like skiing after a fall, swimming in cold oceans and eating oysters after food poisoning, the gain is worth the initial pain.
