"Hi there! Any plans today? Wanna meet up tonite?" I was reading an SMS message on my cellphone from a guy I'd been fooling around with recently. After I'd broken up with my young lad, I'd thrown myself back into my usual hedonism with wild abandon. Perhaps monogamy really wasn't my thing, although my libido was probably just overcompensating. One day I'll leash it. Maybe.

Anyway, this guy. So far, we'd fucked twice. Once in a group, and once just the two of us. Both times it was great. He was cool, intelligent (also a writer), funny, not stunningly handsome but kinda cute, slim and twinkish (my major weakness), a sweet bottom, just the right age (over 25, I'm staying away from the young 'uns for now), great to talk to, and fantastic in bed. Perfect, you might think.

Unfortunately, he's also about to celebrate his tenth month with his bf. Sigh.

I've always maintained that I'm a slut, but never a mistress. I'd always been careful about getting involved with guys who were already attached. Think of the bad karma, as well as the possibility of an embarrassing hair-pulling incident in some bar somewhere.

I don't have any qualms about people in open relationships - I've done a few sessions with attached couples - but I used to stick closely to my hands-and-other-parts-of-my-anatomy-off policy with people who were supposed to be happily married. Of course there've been times when I didn't know till after we'd done the dirty, but I'd back off after that.

Until now.

We'd even talked about it during pillow talk - how he loved his bf, but needed to play the field too - albeit carefully. He thinks the bf suspects him of having extra-curricular proclivities, but just turns a blind eye, because the bf sometimes jokes about it to him. Yet, this guy knows he would freak if he found his bf cheating on him. He knows it's a double standard, he knows it's not fair, and he's truly committed to keeping the relationship going - yet he does and will continue to enjoy having sex with other guys.

Some might say that he's being selfish and deceitful. But he's actually being honest with himself. Far be it from me to take any moral position, given where I am in this tangled web, but I sort of understand his side. It's only flesh after all. His heart knows where it belongs. It makes me somewhat uneasy, but it makes odd sense. He isn't going to leave his bf for me, and neither would I want him to even consider it - I'm happier where I am. As a colleague said: "When you're single, be VERY single".

---

What is perhaps more noteworthy is how many guys in relationships are doing the same thing here. Last week, a friend of mine dated five guys. Four of them were already in relationships. They weren't in the I'm-looking-for-a-new-bf-stage; they just wanted some sausage outside of the regular menu. The fifth wasn't attached, but wasn't looking to get attached either. My friend was justifiably depressed.

Is it because we tend to get bored with the same guy after a certain period of time? Some would say that if you love the guy you'd never get tired of him. But I know a gay couple who've been together for 10 years, yet probably haven't had sex in the last five. At least not with each other. Yet they still take walks together holding hands, they share the same passions, they sleep in the same bed, their families know each other, and they are looking at adoption. Is this similar to what happens to straight marriages, when husbands cheat on their wives? Are men, of whatever gender preference, simply unable to really keep their eyes, minds and dicks from wandering?

On the other side of the coin, mea culpa as well. I have a moral choice to make; yet I don't want to, at least not yet. I'm having too much fun. I'm feeling reckless. And perhaps, in that dark inner part of me, I'm glad that someone else's relationship isn't perfect, since my own hadn't worked out. It's not a pretty admission to make, but I'm only fallibly human. When I was with my young lad some months back, I was utterly (to my friends' amazement) monogamous, yet the boy continually doubted me. I understand he felt somewhat insecure, but there was something fundamentally wrong with the situation. He kept constantly insinuating (sometimes jokingly, sometimes not) that I was having other guys on the side, and even had his friends contact me as a test. Which, in turn, made me wonder whether he was projecting his own guilty conscience onto me.

Trust is such a fragile thing, isn't it?

Maybe this situation won't last. Maybe the guilt of being a mistress will make me snap out it sometime.

But in the meantime...

"7pm at my MRT stop. Can't wait."