Girl on the Net

When we first got together, I was excited about dating you. I remember the outfit I wore on one afternoon of peak excitement, when we had nothing planned but a long day of drinking and then fucking on the carpet in your flat. I wore boots, shorts, and a semi-transparent top. Badly applied make-up and a giant grin. I was excited, in a horny way. And in a general way too: you excited me as if we were on our way to Alton Towers and not just the pub up the road.

Later, I got excited about meeting your friends. Curiosity about what you were like without me transformed into delight when I got to see this or that new side of your personality. My private excitement turned to public pride, as I watched you from across the room, and hugged myself inside when I saw you making people laugh.

I was excited when I saw you in a suit for the first time.

Excited when I met your parents. Excited each time you texted me, because back then we never texted each other with mundanities like ‘get milk.’

And yet still, although your texts might not set my heart aflutter the way they used to in the old days, that excitement is still remarkably present. I get jolts of it every day.

You excite me.

You excite me more now than you ever could have when we first met. What those first- or third-date butterflies had in physical impact they lacked in breadth.

You used to excite me with plans and promises – emails that offered cock and texts that teased surprises. Now, though, the excitement is a broad and powerful thing. I am excited about the whole of you. The way your body changes, the things you do behind my back to make me happy, the stuff we build together. The big fights, even: the way they let me a tiny way into your head, even if what I see there is frightening.

It’s wrong to say you still excite me. This isn’t an excitement that has bubbled since the beginning: it’s the latest model. Excitement 3.0. It’s not the same in texture or tone as the buzzes and tingles of years ago.

I sound like someone’s Mum, assuring them that married life isn’t dull. Offering weak excuses for the fact that the initial excitement is dead in the water. There’ll be people reading this and thinking ‘ah, but I bet you don’t fuck like you used to.’ You’d be right, to a degree: we don’t fuck like we used to. Our sex is less frequent, though infinitely more filthy when we put our minds to it. I don’t get wet with excitement because I’m touching his dick for the first time, I get wet with excitement because he knows exactly which of my buttons to press, and has just discovered a slightly new way in which to press them. He gets excited because the girl who used to suck his dick like it dispensed neat vodka can now do the same in the house they share, and afterwards she won’t leave to catch the night bus but will curl up next to him in bed, so he can run his hands over her skin while she sleeps.

And no, it’s not the same as the excitement that I used to get about you when we first started dating. But that excitement never died: it just evolved.

And I’m telling you this now because tomorrow looks quite boring. You’ll get up late, shower, get dressed, and run out of the door. You’ll send me tidbits from Reddit at lunchtime, and text me about dinner on the way home from work.

We will sit on the sofa and watch Game of Thrones and be in bed by around about midnight, and the whole thing will seem as mundane as that one time we spent New Years’ Eve counting coins from your penny jar.

But somewhere inside me there will be a flutter of excitement. Like this sofa is a rollercoaster. Game of Thrones a firework show put on especially for us.

I get to do this with you every day, if I want to. And nothing could excite me more.