Memories are made of this...

It seems to be part of the human condition: tell someone they can't have or shouldn't do something (or someone) and you've presented them with a prospect impossible to refuse, and in no sphere of life is this more the case than that ever-present microcosm of human behaviour: sex.

"Huh, that is so true," mused Best Mate as we sat in the flat a few weeks ago watching Carrie relive steamy moments from her illicit romp with Mr. Big, despite the fact that her utterly devoted boyfriend, Aidan, was in her apartment, sanding her floors. "It's funny, isn't it: when you've had a night you shouldn't have had, where the sex was as great as it was, with someone you shouldn't have had it with, it's the same moments that come back to you again and again." She gave a slight sigh and stared wistfully back to the screen where Carrie continued to picture Big's tongue running downwards from her belly button.

And, as is so often the case with distracted musings, she was right. Illicit sex lives on in the memory in a way that permitted sex doesn't. Months after the event, choice scenes that the brain has opted to retain will return sporadically, with such alarming potency that one has to sit down and have a cup of tea before carrying on with the day. And there's a shiver-inducing sum greater than the relative parts of nagging guilt and overwhelming passion that lends a rosy-tinted glow to the memories (and the cheeks, whilst remembering...) - memories that don't lose their clarity, regardless of the amount of time that has passed.

Even though my indiscretion with Married Rob was almost two years ago, the thrill that shoots through me when I'm suddenly treated by some recess of my brain to a lucid snapshot of his fingertip trailing along my lower lip is enough to make me consider repeating the lapse in conscience should we ever be in the same hemispheres again.

And maybe it's this knowledge that reliving moments of hot, not-entirely-wholesome sex can provide thrills for years to come that prompted The Yank to call whilst I was at home last week. "Hey, Hannah," came the languid drawl that increasingly turns me on. Dispensing with pleasantries (there's a lot to be said for American directness), he wasted no time in suggesting - none too politely - a few activities with which we could amuse ourselves.

And, now back in Edinburgh, there are already choice images flooding my brain. Whether it's because The Yank's a lecturer and I'm a student (albeit at different institutions, but currently that's only because he decided not to apply for a job here in Edinburgh); whether it was being surrounded by wood panels in a suite that has seen thousands of lofty ideas over hundreds of years or whether it was because he was due to hold a champagne reception for his graduating students merely an hour after I left in rooms that were probably still ringing with the sound of some decidedly unlofty sentiments that's had the greatest effect on the potent and indecent images, I wouldn't like to hazard a guess.

But maybe it was merely that, on a Monday afternoon, whilst the rest of the world (and also the college) was going about its business, I was having good and casual sex with an older American, with whom I have no intention of embarking on a relationship other than the literature-and-sex-based one that we currently enjoy.

Huh. Time, I think, for a cup of tea...

Tags: Illicit sex, memories