it was a beautiful afternoon, the golden hour sunlight streaming through the shades and sparkling across the backglass before me. there was a standard friday-after-five vibe all around and old friends kept stepping up to cycle through endless rounds of pinball with me, keeping the silver ball alive and taking down drop targets everywhere. it almost started to feel a bit like old times, pre-pandemic, if only my ex-best friend hadn’t walked through the door holding onto all the weird energy he’s cultivated around me since i finally quit drinking earlier this year.

an ex-lover swung by with his main squeeze on his arm and we smoked a few joints together before racking up even more points. we were just a few games deep on a favorite table of mine, eight ball deluxe, when my phone went off - it was an old flame, a man who always rolls the most perfect joints, someone i spent way too many hours with in the past... staying up from dusk to dawn caught up in a white line fever dream. it’s honestly painful to think about the hundreds (thousands?) of dollars we had, collectively, sniffed straight up our noses in the past.

we hadn’t seen each other in ages but he had hit me up a few months ago while he was busy doing some blow with a friend and the idea of a threesome was starting to sound very enticing to them. i was fucking pissed that he was messaging me at all in that moment back in may, and i thoroughly reamed him out at the time, telling him to kindly fuck off and lose my phone number. he was well aware that not only had i gotten sober, but that i was also 5150’d in january and after being released from the psychiatric hospital, had started drawing very clear boundaries to protect both my sobriety and my peace.

but it goes against my nature to hold onto anger for any length of time, my life is much simpler in certain ways because i have never found any value in blame and forgiveness always comes easy for me. i have walked a dark, convoluted, and twisted path my entire life... i’ve made so many mistakes, hurt so many people. i’ve lost everything at various points while drowning in my mental illness and/or addictions. i am a fucking flawed human being but it’s all that hurt, the pain that i have endured, the lessons that i have learned being burned in the fire, that makes me beautifully fragile yet shot through with threads of strength beyond even my own understanding.

another text arrived: “me and my boy fittin to play some pinball tonight.”

fuck. i knew exactly what he was saying in those words, what he wanted... what they wanted. and there was no stopping my physical response once i fully understood the question he was silently asking. i felt that tingle of anticipation, a flush coursing through my entire body, knowing that he was thinking about my mouth, my lips wrapped around his dick, his hands firmly holding my head down on his cock as he forced it further down my throat. maybe while watching his friend fuck me from behind. christ, of course i wanted that, there’s no denying that i always want it all - that’s why i have gotten into so much fucking trouble in the past.

a photo came through next, him and his friend hanging out with a tiny pup, big sexy smiles on their faces. it was the ultimate manipulation - trying to reel me in with a cute chihuahua on his arm and a hottt silver fox at his side. he knows that i have a weakness for older, silver-haired intelligent men. it was a moment in which i found myself angry for always being so goddamn transparent, it makes me easy to manipulate and men definitely take advantage of me because of that.

of course i wanted to meet his friend and i absolutely wanted to fuck him too. and so they walked into my pinball parlour twenty minutes later to join me on a round of eight ball deluxe and to discuss all the sexy possibilities. after all, the night was still young.

but the conversation quickly started to turn as the silver fox and i began to get down to some serious flipperwork - special when lit, if you know what i mean. the sexual tension these two men walked into the room with, meeting and matching my smoldering hypersexuality... those hottt flames tamped down a bit as the silver fox and i quickly nerded out over all things pinball and it became obvious that there was a different kind of spark between us. my ex-flame sorta steadily burned away in the background as i leaned into the silver fox’s words, enjoying the subtle glow of a connection being forged in the moment.

i found myself thinking... who the fuck is this guy who loves all the same pinball games i do and also whips out esoteric pinball trivia, unprompted? and it was obvious that we were both immediately fascinated by each other.

it’s a difficult situation for me - what had started out as a friendly game to facilitate discussion about how, specifically, we all wanted to fuck each other was suddenly veering wildly into different territory. perhaps even being steered into matters of the heart, and as quickly as i was talked into entertaining the possibility of a threesome last night, the idea evaporated. i didn’t want to make hasty decisions that i would come to regret so i excused myself from the evening, staying sober and holding strong to my control.

as we traded friendly hugs goodbye, the silver fox asked if he could find me on instagram and i saw his face fall a little as i told him i was on a hiatus from social media. but i knew what he really wanted, so i offered him my digits and felt tiny butterflies in my stomach when his smile lit up at my words.

i don’t know what will happen next, i remain hyper vigilant of any possible harm i might bring into anyone’s life and will continue to do the difficult inner work so that no one becomes the collateral damage to my trauma. but maybe i have a tiny bit of new hope this afternoon, i can see a light at the end of the tunnel that hasn’t shined quite so brightly before.

and it all brought me back to a bukowski quote that frequently slips into my mind whenever difficult decisions need to be made...

“what matters most is how well you walk through the fire.”