Some Things are Never Meant to Be

I love my husband, and I loved a string of other men before him, but it's no use pretending that women don't appeal to me in the very same way. Film stars and celebrities don't do it for me. They're far too remote and idealised for me to want to know more about them, let alone kindle that initial twinge of lust. The women I daydream of are usually much closer and less perfect. They're everyday people, friends, or colleagues who know me as well as I know them and who may even be secretly amusing themselves with equally louche fantasies about me. The ones that appeal the most are those who don't quite manage to hide their thoughts, the ones whose casual glance lasts a second too long...

Hello Audrey, co-star of my filthiest dreams. She's my colleague, tall and willowy with her platinum pageboy haircut, sapphire blue eyes, and perfect features, so cool and elegant that she'd make a perfect dominatrix. I love her taste in clothes, her cold blue eyes and the subtle curves of her figure. I make fun of her pretensions and pathetic lack of guile but I like her a lot. We've been friends since soon after I began working here, and now we casually chat about the intimate details of our lives. After we've covered the usual topics of children, pets, and food, she often begins to fidget, twiddling her rings around her finger and squeezing her thighs together beneath the desk. It usually begins with an offhand remark and feigned amusement but soon becomes intense.

Sometimes we compare notes about subjects such as what passes for etiquette in our respective bedrooms and which sex toys we enjoy most, but the underlying agenda is always her hubby and their differences. She tells me the sordid details and then invites me to sympathise. The unlucky man is her second husband; she's not happy with him, and he's probably equally dissatisfied with her as she isn't playing the game at all. She says that she's already looking for someone else although I'm not too sure this isn't just fantasy. She can't bring herself to say it openly but she's definitely daydreaming of pussy rather than cock. These little chats, probably get her moist and dizzy, they do the same for me. I love the awkward tension between us and I'm tempted to whisper some prurient morsel over lunch, hot enough to send her scurrying to the ladies room on her silly D&G heels. Alas, I have to be very, very careful not to excite her too much, as nothing good would come of it, and I know her fantasy is for two while mine is for three.

I'm confident with men. I know what to say and do, to snare a man then keep him happy, but with women however many times I roll the dice, it never seems to land on six. My motive for playing the game now is pure desire, but long ago I had more complex motives. When I was in college, I had a special friend called Vangie. She was a distant cousin and came from the provinces. She didn't know many people in Manila, so she'd often stay over at my parents' apartment in Divisoria on weekends. We were inseparable and even wore each other's clothes. Due to a lack of space, we slept in the same room, so we were used to seeing each other half undressed and sometimes even showering together. Both of us had masturbated in the dark when we thought the other was asleep, and we teased one another about it. Once it was no longer a secret we began to do it together. At first, there were only muted gasps and moans, but soon we began whispering fantasies across the darkened bedroom as we fingered ourselves. It sounds like the beginning of a lesbian tryst, but we were still naïve, and the idea of fingering each other never crossed our minds.

By the second year of college, although we were still close, both of us had boyfriends, and much of our conversation was giggling about compliments we'd received from them and the things they'd done or tried to do to us. The masturbation binges grew less frequent, but when they happened, the fantasies were surreal and utterly filthy. Our night time fun ended suddenly when one afternoon as we were sitting in a Jollibee restaurant, she smirked at me and whispered,

"We did it last night; I let him fuck me."

At first, nothing seemed to change. I was jealous of her adventure, but after a while, she admitted that it hurt and hadn't lived up to her expectations. Her description of losing her virginity didn't sound like something you'd want to do again, but she was soon enjoying herself so openly that my Mama told me not to invite her to stay over again. If Vangie had still been around, I'd have fallen from my pedestal quickly, but she wasn't, so I kept my knees pressed tightly together. By the time we graduated, she'd had at least a dozen boyfriends and added a taste for anal sex to her repertoire, while I'd given a few hand jobs, and BJs but was still a virgin. She got an ordinary degree and a job in a civilian hospital. I graduated Magna Cum Laude and joined Hukbong Dagat ng Pilipinas as an ensign nurse. After I was commissioned, she applied to join as an enlisted nurse but was rejected and it seemed to further damage the already weakening bond between us. A year later, at twenty-two, I lost my virginity to an army captain and was so preoccupied by my affair with him that I rarely had time for anything else while she was busy with her own life.

Gradually, we drifted even further apart. When the decidedly unchivalrous captain jilted me and destroyed my reputation, the first person I looked to for sympathy was Vangie, but by then she was nursing in England so there was no one to hug me. On a bitterly cold day nearly two years later, I arrived in London and soon began nursing with the same health trust, so we were together again. She'd been in England for three years and was married to an English guy. It hadn't been a happy marriage and she was in the process of divorcing him so the two of us began looking for men together. We'd scan the personal ads in Time Out and go clubbing together. At first, it seemed fun but we soon realised that every date that came from these meetings was at best a sordid one night stand so we soon found other interests.

I began dating another nurse, and Vangie had met a lesbian at a party. I disliked the woman from the first time we met, and the feeling was mutual. She was pretty and quick witted, but the more you talked to her the less likeable she became. I sensed that beneath her glib sociable exterior there lurked an angry and defensive demon. She was insanely jealous of Vangie's friends, so soon I was no longer invited to their flat and could only talk to her at work. Over the next two years, we spoke less and less as Vangie became a nervous wreck. She was drinking too much and was heavily in debt. Her world fell apart after she went on a vacation to Cyprus and returned with huge, ugly breast implants. Soon afterwards, the girlfriend left and without her to pay half the rent Vangie lost the flat. She was about to be dismissed for absenteeism but was technically still employed by the health trust, so no one minded when she began living in my room just as she had in Manila.

We'd snuggle up together and talk for hours about our college days. When we reminisced about masturbating together in my darkened bedroom, we agreed that we'd only ever thought about men and never of each other sexually. Back then, we'd been lovers in the way that you might fall in love with your own reflection in a magic mirror, but now the mirror was the distorted kind you see in a house of horrors. The shadowy wraith I glimpsed through the glass was a tragic figure, but I felt a strange mixture of pity and desire for her. We were both twenty-seven, I was relatively happy and still optimistic, but she was miserable and depressed; everything in her life was ruined. Losing her flat and being in debt were minor things compared to her mental and physical deterioration.

Out of nowhere, I suddenly wanted to be her lover, and promised that I'd take care of her and help her mend her life. My arm was already around her shoulders so when a friendly kiss turned passionate, I took her to bed, but even as we licked and fingered each other, I think we both realised that too many years and lovers had separated us. In the night, she cried and said that we could never be lovers because I was too fond of men and didn't understand what she needed from another girl. I felt the same anguish then that I'd felt when my lover jilted me, and thinking of her now just twists the dagger again and hurts just as keenly. The next evening she slept on the camp bed, and that night was never mentioned again. Months passed, and eventually, her mental state improved enough for her to get another job.

Fifteen years later we talk on the Internet and phone several times a week. It's been more than five years since I last met her face to face; despite numerous invitations, she's never visited me. When I did see her, it was always somewhere public, and we'd lost that intimacy that made us so special to each other. She still has her ridiculous tits but is now celibate and religious, and I'm happily married with a family. All that remains is friendship and the idea of passion between women.