Part-Time Lover

undercover passion on the run

strangers by day, lovers by night

Mysteriously chic. The scent of freedom and lingering kisses.

A part-time lover holds the elements of air and fire within - blazing passion cooled by the breeze.

I never held many part-time roles at university, but I used to consider myself an excellent part-time lover. The exotic mix of something dappled in love with the air of “nothing more”. The adrenaline and the tension was anxiety dressed up in nothing but heels and an overcoat.

A part-time lover has to know her script right. Which one she’s seeing tonight has different preferences from the other. Inside jokes, a sprinkle of a made-up backstory, turn-ons, and favorite gimmicks - confusion of what is with who, breaks the careful game.

A part-time lover is an actress, a fantasy, a moment of escape, while having the laughter of a close friend. Out of the “situationship”, the “sexfriend” and the many other variations, I find the “part-time lover” to be the most elegant term. It defines the role, the game, and the ambiguity without being condescending. A situationship is a clumsy, failed attempt at excusing a one-sided love. A sexfriend is terribly dull, and completely overlooks the tenderness that can occur between part-time lovers.

I once wrote:

I love like how I smoke cigarettes. I let the taste play on my lips. Watching the blue smoke curl sensuously in the air. The fire teases my lungs, and I hold my breath. Out of fear and excitement - the killing or the pleasure... then it hits, the delicious, sharp giddinness.  I submit to the feeling whole - the twitching pain of regret, the lightness of being consumed… and then it leaves. Like I always do.

How Poetic Of Me.

A part-time lover often accepts the pain of being discarded, simply because they don’t believe they are worthy enough for entire love. So just a taste is fine. Only on weekends. Micro-dosing a sense of fulfilment, balanced with the adrenaline of uncertainty.

To look someone in the eye with a blank face, having felt them tremble beneath you only days before, is the crulest form of torture. And yet it feels powerful, in a psycho-analytical way. What is the next move? Is it to kiss passionately behind closed doors or to never talk again?

The air and fire of part-time lovers has no substance to it. Much like a cigarette’s pleasure, it simply doesn’t exist.