This is a story that needs to be adjusted for reasons of privacy.

Therefore, I’m about to change some details (names, places and dates) without compromising the heart of the narrative. 

She is Jane (as in Jane Eyre, a novel by Charlotte Bronté).

I, you know, am Marcello.

If you’ve never been in a long-distance or casual relationship, I’m here to tell you one that’s completely out of the ordinary.

Before I take you inside this tormented and spicy narrative, I would like to make a request.

I am going to answer the most curious and absurd questions you can think of (like how come plants secrete sugar to drive ants crazy, or what was the first English word invented, etc.). So, if you have a strange question or curiosity that you have never fed, post below in the comments and I will answer it. Also, the newsletter is useful to keep up with the releases.

Back to my story.

In 2018 I had just landed in the UK. I abused drugs and alcohol the first three months. Perhaps the word abused sounds excessive, but from someone who had never used up to that point (and I was already well into my 30s), it seemed like such a striking excess that it led me to a quick conclusion. My experience, as said, was reduced to a few months, a fact that allowed me to explore some sides of human psychic nature that I later deployed in my science fiction and romance novel The Mushroom Effect. 

In one of the evening outings with my new friends, I met Jane. As already written, my English was bad, but I was beginning to strike up conversations with strangers. That evening, I had drunk enough to feel tipsy. I was at the bar, alone. It often happened that I’d end up alone for ten or twenty minutes, the girls would go to the bathroom and stay there indefinitely, the guys would leave the bar to smoke or stop to talk to someone they knew.

So, I wait.

I’ll change the narrative register, don’t take it wrongly. It will be better that way, trust me.

She sees me.

I, on the other hand, observe a thousand eyes. I get the impression that the glances are fleeting, that they fall on each other regardless of interest. She, Jane, however, looks at me with interest. 

She asks me if I have a cigarette.

Surprised, I say no, I don’t smoke. Sorry. 

She askes me where I come from.

I see that she sits in the empty seat next to mine. She has a beautiful smile. Her hair is dark blonde, and I immediately notice the heavy, cold red on her lips.

Italy.

She has been there, goes skiing with her friends every year.

The Dolomites?

She shakes her head, she doesn’t know what I’m talking about. She pulls out her phone and shows me some pictures.

Never been in that place.

It’s beautiful, my favourite place, she admits.

I don’t believe her.

She puts a gum in her mouth and stares at me. She has clear eyes, quite common around here.

I ask her if she’s from the area, she denies this, looking away she tells me she’s from London.

I’m here for a couple of days and then I’ll leave.

I’m here to stay, I confess.

Do you want to go downstairs?

Downstairs means there are stairs leading to another room. We move there, in an enclosed and noisy overcrowded space. I can’t believe I’m with this girl. We only say each other’s names while having two cocktails at the bar.

My treat.

Jane, nice to meet you.

Marcello, nice to meet you.

I won’t bore you with the whole conversation. It was short-lived. We took two shots and consumed them quickly, just a sip.

She looks around again, searching for something, and those gestures of hers confuse me. I think that maybe she is not sincere, that I will get in trouble.

Instead, as our knees touch and she keeps touching my arms as she speaks, Jane admits she wants to suck my D off.

But she doesn’t know where.

I know where.

Honestly, I think she’s joking. I don’t understand English very well, and the music doesn’t make my understanding any easier.

My friend’s car. I have the key. He gave it to me in trust.

She says it’s OK.

So we get out. We get in the car and she gets right into it. There’s no kiss, no hint of foreplay. Nothing. I recline my back backward, almost laying completely flat on the backseat, and let her play with my attributes.

I am more amazed than aroused.

Jane’s performance is dazzling. Had I been more lucid, I would have savoured the moment better.

Then Jane tells me that this has never happened to her before. She says I mustn’t think badly of her, that it was really the first time.

Jane says other things, but I don’t understand them all. What I do get is her sorrow.

I encourage her saying that she doesn’t have to worry, that I won’t tell anyone, and as I lie to her I think that my friends will never believe me.

Never.

I didn’t even tell my friends afterwards. I wouldn’t have been able to explain it to them.

I leave her my number, but Jane apologises by saying she can’t give me her social networks. Then she reconsiders stating that she doesn’t have them. I know she’s lying.

I’ll give you a ring tomorrow, Jane finished to say.

Tomorrow, though, she doesn’t text or ring me.

Jane exits my life as she entered: fleeting and sorry.

I don’t remember anything else about that evening; if it hadn’t been for Jane, it would have been another one of those late-night outings to get drunk and dance until the crack of dawn.

I didn’t think about Jane again for months, but in January 2019 I get a message, and it’s her.

J writes to me that she’s coming to Bournemouth for a couple of days because a friend of hers is getting married, and she’d like to see me.

No one needs to know, though.

I let you know when and you let me know where you live.

And so it happens. She comes and we meet at my place. There is nobody here because the people I live with have gone out.

This time, Jane is more relaxed, not in a hurry.

I, on the other hand, am in a hurry, but I go along with it.

She is even prettier than I remember. She is dressed well, I can’t describe the dress, but she must have been at some important ceremony or meeting.

I have some wine at home, it’s not mine but I don’t care now, I’ll buy another one after.

Red wine.

We sit on the sofa and talk. Jane tells me about London, that she envies me because the pace of life where I live is slower and calmer.

We kiss. This time I taste her lips. Those are cold because of the wine.

We end up naked. Embraced. We make love in a hurry, because apparently we live in a different space-time. We accelerate as particles and explode like supernovas.

Jane demands to be taken from behind. She only wants that, not anything else.

I execute.

Then, Jane has to leave. She gives me a hasty kiss and then disappears from my life.

At least, I think, I now know a little more about her.

And yes, I learnt that she is in a romantic relationship.

It breaks my heart, because it doesn’t feel right. I wish she would come back or disappear forever. The truth is, I feel like I’ve hurt someone.

Jane doesn’t reply to my message. She looks at it and goes silent.

I understand. I let her go.

There has been an on-and-off between us for almost two years. A story never confessed for fear of damaging the relationship that Jane herself said was dear to her. I believed her, which is why I kept silent.

Between 2019 and one last occasion in 2020, before Covid, we saw each other three more times. 

How did it end?

Always the same way, with haste and love. The rush to get out of the slump, and the transgression with sex.

Jane would confess me that she loved her boyfriend. But she also told me that with me she felt free.

However, even though our complicity was alive and exciting, though always shaped by haste and fleetingness, she chose him.

The last time, I think it was late January 2020, she kissed me for long and held me tight. There was less haste that day. I thought maybe she would stay with me.

I was wrong.

Just before the lockdown began, with Covid tearing the world apart and scaring it away, Jane wrote to me that we would never see each other again, that she no longer wanted to betray her fiancé. She believed it was possible to love someone else, but that it was also right to choose one.

And she had chosen a safe zone.

A little bit I felt liberated. A little bit I felt betrayed.

As Osho says, in such cases it is better to send goodbye letters.

I never asked Jane why she had suddenly decided to cheat on her boyfriend and suck my cock. It seemed to me that if I did that I would break the sort of magic that had been hanging over us. Because free we really were. No personal questions, just light thoughts and nothing too introspective. As with sex, she also led conversations. She would tell me about the goldfish her cat ate by catching it from above the tank, or that she would like to live abroad for a few months, maybe stay there if she enjoyed. She would tell of dreams and stories to which she yielded with candour, but without ever really getting into them, like a seagull flying above the surface of the water watching the fish yet never daring to put its head underneath to see what might possibly happen. 

I don’t think Jane was the right person for me. She was sweet and dreamy, but sometimes frivolous and fearful. She wanted something that we often deny ourselves.

She only desired to make love in one position. Or maybe she just wanted to take my DK in her mouth. Sometimes she would tell me if I could squeeze her chest harder, or if I could pull her hair longer. She would make love on her own terms. Then, the rush would come and she would run away with an excuse, leaving a mantle of coldness around me.

I owe Jane a lot actually. I think there are many women like Jane out there, as well as men. However, without falling into too many ideologies or prohibitions, some of you will not dare for fear of losing. The comfort zone is only good for the fearful.

This is not an invitation to cheat, but I have sailed in lust for long enough, and I have studied and observed the human psyche, so much so that I understand how very often we let someone go only for fear of losing what we already have, but losing so much more: an opportunity.

We complain that we can’t find the right person, but the truth is that we will never find one in our comfort zone.

One thing I would like to know about you Jane: how are you now?

I’m guessing you’re married. If I push my imagination further, I think you are also already a mother. Maybe I’ll never find out, but I know this was one of your dreams, so I wish you fulfilled it.