Beatrice, Moana and Sgt Sparkles

This isn't a story. It's a confession.

When you marry someone with bipolar disorder, some might say you're committing yourself to two people, the high, manic person and the low, depressed person. Actually, it's three people. This is because for a few months, sometimes weeks, sometimes just days, you are with the person that's neither low nor high. Some might call this the "real" person.

We call them Beatrice, Moana and Sgt Sparkles.

I can't remember which woman I fell in love with. Twenty years ago, I wasn't too tuned into the differences between Beatrice's personas. I like to think all three caught my eye and my heart. Beatrice and I worked together, and I remember first noticing her when a birthday cake was brought to her desk, and everybody sang happy birthday. She didn't shrink or cover her face when this happened. She danced to the ridiculous tune with a kind of hip-swinging, bright-eyed, slow-motion boogie. It was the silliest, cutest thing I'd ever seen.

Beatrice has an impossibly generous demeanour. One of life's listeners. She's petite and curvaceously slim with big, bright eyes, enormous lips and a small but leonine nose. The other blokes in the office called her--to her face--" Le French Sex Kitten" and would do dumb, "ironic" wolf whistles at her. This was London in the nineties; we all thought we were post-sexism. For her part, Beatrice would refer to herself as Cat Girl or, sometimes, Mad Cat Lady.

The second time I noticed her was when she got some photos back from the chemists (!) She showed them to her sister, who cried and wrapped her arms around her. When I asked if everything was OK, her sister showed me the photos. They were different angles on a jar with what looked like a piece of Meccano and some bolts inside. They laughed at my confused face. The sister told me they were the pins just removed from Beatrice's ankle, which she'd smashed jumping from a third-floor window a couple years before. That night I dreamt of holding Beatrice tight. In the morning, I masturbated thinking about her.

The third time I paid attention to her, it was because I couldn't not. I'd just finished with my long-term girlfriend (it seemed wrong to be in bed with one person masturbating about another) and was dragged out by a colleague to a work drink. I had to pay attention to Beatrice because there was an invisible but very taut rubber band between us. We kept bumping into each other, and she would flush when we spoke, and we stumbled over our words and made dumb comments that created awkward silences, but we still stayed close. She was beside me, talking to her office friends while I talked to mine. I can't even remember exactly who I was talking to that evening. Still, I can remember every detail of Beatrice just from the corner of my eye: her tied-up hair and her long neck and the arch of her back and her figure-hugging pencil skirt and how she held her pint in two hands. She complained about some builders on her cycle route who shouted, "Lucky saddle" at her. She moaned about her non-committal boyfriend, who she'd overheard gloating to his friend: "I'm only in it for the sublime blowjobs."

This was such an unlikely thing for her to say--she's pretty reserved-- that I wondered if she'd said it for my benefit, like a kind of sideways flirt. When I bumped into her at the bar a bit later, I asked her if she'd like to go somewhere quieter.

She fiddled with her purse and bit back a grin. "Yes," she said.

A year later, we were married.

So which of those was the "real" Beatrice? The "normal" one? I can't tell, even with the benefit of hindsight. I like to tell myself I fell for all three.

If you'd like to know how good our first sex was, you can read it in my story: "You and Me." Beatrice asked me to write this for her. It was the most uninhibited and loving sex I'd ever had. I've often wondered who it was with Beatrice, Moana or Sgt Sparkles. I used to think (told myself) that the level-headed woman, Beatrice, was attracted to me, but looking at how she behaved now, I realise the morning of our first sex, maybe all during our getting together, she was depressed. It wasn't Beatrice that got together with me. It was Moana.

MOANA

Moana is the name Sgt Sparkles calls Beatrice when she's low. Moana jumped from the window that time, and Moana filled her stomach full of pills and booze, and Moana tested plastic bags on her head. It was Moana who jumped out of bed one night, flustered into her clothes and told me we needed to run because we were on the train to Dachau. This is why sometimes I have to sleep on top of her.

Moana needs me close. Every morning, just before dawn, she cuddles tight to my side and kisses my chest and neck. These cuddles always turn into her rubbing her clit on my thigh. Orgasms are like a lifeline for Moana, little puffs of joy in a cold, bleak landscape. Whilst rubbing on my thigh, as if to stave off the terrors in her head, she tells me what she'd like to do to me with startling explicitness. "I was so wet in the night, thinking about squatting on your face." "I want to wank you into my mouth, wobbling your cock between my lips." "I was thinking about licking the cum around your helmet, all lovely and warm and slick."

Or she just starts doing these things without warning when we're in the middle of something else. We were cleaning the kitchen once when she said, "Can you help me with this?" and I turned to see her with her jeans and knickers around one ankle and a knee propped on the countertop, her cunt lips dripping. Another time, she woke me up sucking me off, and after I came, she rolled onto her back and fingered herself to orgasm with my cum still dribbling from her lips. Most times, she doesn't even wait until I've cum, just orgasms while sucking or rubbing me. Sixty-nine can last less than a minute.

And Moana finds it difficult to stop having sex. After I've licked her to orgasms and fucked her to more, after I've cum on her clit, she will always try to suck me hard again. She cums so much and so easily; sometimes, I wonder if she cums at all. She seems to, but it never leaves her sated.

Her ex-boyfriend's comments about only being in it for the blowjobs ring darkly hollow now because she's only like this when she's low. And it's disturbing for me too, her husband who loves her but loves this sex with her, even though she's motivated by hell. It seems to help her, but she's never like this any other time. What if she only does it because she's so depressed she has no self-esteem? What if I'm abusing her? I've tried saying no. She smiled--a scary expression with dark, hollowed eyes. "Sorry," she said. "I know I'm ugly and stupid. Why would you?"

So I go with it and remind her how desirable she is and how strong she is--she still keeps moving, keeps smiling, and keeps listening even though she just wants to die. I prove my love with my attentiveness--listening at the bathroom door if she's been in there too long, sleeping with an arm across her, and doing CBT courses in preparation for our dawn-lit motivation sessions. And I prove her desirability with my rigid cock, the massive orgasms she gives me, and the massive orgasms I try to give her. And six months will pass like this, in a kind of purple darkness, until one morning, I'll kiss her from lips to cunt, and she'll cover herself and look at me appalled.

SGT SPARKLES

Sgt Sparkles marches everywhere. She has this specific grin. It's like a child's drawing of a happy face, all teeth. Her eyebrows arch all the way up her forehead, and she tips her head back to look down her nose at the world even though she's only five-foot-three.

Everything's a rat-a-tat pun delivered in the rapid-fire sardonicism of a fifties b-movie. There's music everywhere, iPhone speakers whacked up until they distort. Singing at the top of her lungs on the street. A guitar strummed in the middle of the night. Dancing to a car alarm. All the lights blazing in every room, outside and inside her head.

Sgt Sparkles needs nobody yet seeks everyone's attention. She makes doe-eyes at policemen and squeezes builders' biceps. Catching the eye of a student neighbour watching porn too close to his window, she gave him a flirtatious shrug as if to say, "We've all been there", then booed when he closed his curtains. She told some female friends at the school gates once that she knew how much they fancied her arse, but they couldn't have it. Then she lifted her skirt and jiggled it for them. At our children's christening, when a group photo was taken with us all in the nave, she stooped and pressed her bottom to her brother-in-law's front. His stiff grin is caught for posterity.

Sgt Sparkles is not a cuddly person. She's up first in the morning, which is--as she likes to remind me--any time after midnight, so we rarely wake up together. But she's un-cuddly in every aspect of her soul too, which makes her impatient and quick-tempered. Sex is considered as hilarious as farts and about as desirable.

When I kiss her, she looks at me afterwards as if to say, "Aren't you lucky?" Sometimes she'll display herself for me so I can masturbate over her. This is laid on like a special treat to look forward to all day. She'll pull the gusset of her knickers aside while watching TV with the volume up, listening to music, and scrolling on her phone. She calls her cunt "The angel's angel" and wants me to worship it. Her. And to my shame, I do. There's fuck all difference between love and worship anyway, so I tell her how amazing she is, how beautiful and sexy so she might let me kiss her clit. Sometimes it's been months since I last touched it, so I cum when it touches my lips. Even though her cunt is dry. Even though she's laughing.

BEATRICE

The period between lows and highs is when people tell you the "sane" person emerges. And Beatrice indeed exhibits no archetypally "mad" behaviour in these times. She suffers from no psychoses and is focused, confident, and happy--but not too happy. She's her bright and lovely cat-girl self.

She has no need for sex at these times, and there's always a rational reason why not. "Sorry, my head's full of work stuff today." or "I've eaten too much." or "You do it, I'll watch. You'll feel better once you've cum." She doesn't masturbate. Talking about sex embarrasses her, even if it's just us. Reminding her of things we've done when she's low is like talking about a stranger or referring to an embarrassing haircut she once had. She rolls her eyes and shakes her head. Sometimes I fear she feels our sex when she's low is indistinguishable from her psychotic traumas and doesn't want to go there.

We arrange specific days or times for sex every few months, maybe go away for a weekend where we follow a set routine of lick, shag and/or suck where she appears to cum extremely quickly, then finishes me into a tissue. These are difficult times because I'm so relieved she's stable and happy that the love is almost too much to bear when we even hug, let alone cum together. However, I'm still always left physically frustrated. I write a lot of stories in these times. I get dark too. That's why she asked me to write her the story of our first sex. I hoped it'd turn her on when she read it. I hoped she might cum. Moana might have, but Beatrice patted my bottom and said we should plan a weekend away sometime.

So here is my shameful conclusion. My confession.

I'm in love with Moana. Beatrice doesn't need me. And Sgt Sparkles needs no one at all. But Moana has it hard and copes with awe-inspiring fortitude. In the morning, when that woman takes a deep breath and heaves herself out of bed to work all day for the benefit of others, it brings tears to my eyes. I've known less depressed men who laid down all day smoking weed and listening to Radiohead. Moana gets up and gets on with it. After her night of private hell on the train to Dachau, she will be the first to make everyone tea, and touch people's arms and ask, "How're you doing?"

And I love Moana's physicality, our closeness. I love holding her and how that always tips into sex. And what sex. A kind of needy curiosity, a misplaced playfulness, burning against her dark desire to just fucking do it. Just jump.

I'm writing this now while Beatrice sleeps. She croaks and smacks her lips and turns over. There's nothing more unconditionally lovable than someone you love, asleep. It's a hot night, and she's kicked off the duvet. She's naked. Damn, she still has a fabulous body. She's lying prone, and her puckered cunt lips are bristly from when Moana waxed a couple of months ago, but Beatrice doesn't.

She still takes my breath away, though.

I take out my cock, and stroke. I'll feel better once I've cum.