I once went out with a girl for many years who had replaced sex with drugs. So effectively indeed, that talking about sex was akin to a straight married couple with two children in primary school and jobs in marketing and advertising, suddenly talking about drugs.
Mentioning that I hadn't been laid for nigh on seven years would get the same reaction that Mr Straight would expect to receive from Mrs Straight if he had asked her over dinner:
"Darling, I think we should try some of that new crack cocaine...Steve from work says it's marvellous and really quite good quality at the. moment"
The usual response I received on a query as to the future of us fucking was silence. And being the shy retiring type I would usually drop things there, the topic of sex not being one I usually loved to expand upon.
However, if I was in an expansive mood, I might have followed up with a suggestion of some act, to which the usual response would have been:
"Well how, about I shove a carrot up your ass, see if you like that?". Or similar. Basically, take what I say,
flip it around 180 degrees (literally and physically) and apply the act to me instead of her. I don't recall if my bravery ever allowed me to go past this point. I don't think so.
Now as I said, dope and sex were swapped in this relationship. And so effectively, that cheating became a sin based upon drug usage rather than intimacy.
I remember one night I returned home after a stressful afternoon chasing metro scripts from doctors, and I think I'd gotten to the chemist less than a minute before it closed, and had it closed I would have had no dose that day nor any takeaways for the weekend. It would have been a long stretch of sickness coming up. And I knew of no reliable metro-resellers that I could have sourced more from. Although being a Friday I would have had the cash, which was an unusual event for me.
Anyway, after sorting out the metro, all I wanted to do was score. I'd had a minor car accident two days prior and had been keen to use ever since then. I had had a shot a couple of hours earlier whilst at work, but as with many first-in-days shots, it had barely scratched the surface. So I rang (let's call her) N, and lo and behold she was in my area. Just a few streets from my chemist where I was picking up takeaways. I took this as a sign and scurried over an grabbed a packet and shot it. Not thinking of my current partner of the time. Just a junkie using gear, which if you're a junkie, you'll know is the most natural thing you can do.
So I returned home to prepare for a Halloween visit. My then partner picked up on my extra level of stoned-ness fairly soon, and the razor-sharp questioning skills that are usually used to interrogate a derailed spouse, were applied to me.
I admitted fairly soon that I'd had some more gear, and this is when I remembered that in this relationship:
"Using alone" had replaced "fucking another woman" as the capital crime.
The crime was mitigated if there was gear on hand to share, but in this case I really couldn't give a damn, and stated that there was none and no more would be forthcoming. Icy silence ensued, she stormed off for an hour, then we re hooked up and she stated that she'd not be sleeping with me that night and tomorrow she'd need me to see N to get her some gear. I stated again that I had no cash save maybe twenty bucks, and she could borrow that and see N herself if she wanted...
"Are you serious?".
I affirmed and she said we could argue about this tomorrow. I said nothing would change by tomorrow, and she left. Despite gear having replaced sex, she knew that she could still punish me by sleeping apart...after all, the swapping of sex for gear was entirely her choice, and it was a tool she wasn't above using for leverage when it suited her.
The punchline of this whole sorry tale? There is no ex, the ex is now. And the whole event happened tonight, the same event that has happened a dozen times before with the same sorry steps repeating and repeating and repeating.
I will try tomorrow to break the cycle with some "street moves". Bust some wack shit. Do the unexpected, agree with the enemy and use their strength against them. Way of the samurai and art of war shit, dude.