I should begin by explaining myself. Steven and Melissa used to date but don’t anymore. They were together for just under eight months and were happy with one another, for the most part, throughout their relationship. However, they weren’t head-over-heels in love, and, as a result, they decided to end their romance one month ago yesterday. One of the most memorable things about their relationship (if not the most memorable thing), one of the things that kept them together in the absence of a true and deep and abiding love for one another, the thing the two of them miss most right now, and the primary reason they want to call each other though they know they shouldn’t, was the sex they used to have. I am that sex.

I anticipate that there might be objections to reading the story of a couple, albeit together only briefly and not bound by true and deep and abiding love, narrated by that couple’s sex. Let me make my case. I am the best qualified to narrate the story of Steven and Melissa because I am at the same time intimately familiar with their relationship and a third party to it. If you asked Steven or Melissa to narrate this story, you might get a more intimate portrait, but it would be glaringly one-sided in spots. Knowing Steven and Melissa as well as I do, I know they would try to be fair, but they wouldn’t be able to help sentimentalizing or demonizing those areas or times in the relationship that they found particularly wonderful or regrettable. I, on the other hand, was always between them, and though I might have been closer to Steven at certain times and closer to Melissa at others, I can look back on both, as I did when they were together, with equal insight and critical distance. If, alternatively, you asked one of Steven’s or Melissa’s friends – say Jim from Steven’s office or Rachel, Melissa’s best friend and roommate – to narrate this story, it might have the critical distance of a third party, but it would lack the intimacy and interior details that I can provide. Also, Jim always wanted to have sex with Melissa, and Rachel could never understand how Melissa could actually have sex with Steven, whereas I am the sex that Melissa and Steven actually had with one another. In conclusion, I am both Steven and Melissa and neither of them at the same time and I am therefore uniquely qualified to tell you the story of their relationship.

I was a force in Steven and Melissa’s relationship even before they had a relationship. They were both attending a New Year’s Eve party thrown by the aforementioned Jim, Steven’s friend from the office. Jim invited Steven because, as I mentioned above, they worked together. Jim invited Melissa because, as I mentioned above, he wanted to have sex with her. Jim met Melissa through the aforementioned Rachel, Melissa’s best friend and roommate, who also happened to be a friend of Jim’s from a past job. If you’re confused, read this paragraph over again slowly. Or don’t. The connections that brought Steven and Melissa together aren’t nearly as important as the connections they made together after they met. I’ll continue then.

Melissa was already at the party when Steven arrived. She was standing at the hors d’oeuvre table, surveying the assorted cheese cubes and immaculately sliced vegetables with remarkable intensity so as to avoid facing Jim’s advances and powerful beer breath. Steven was making his way to Jim’s bedroom to drop off his coat, surveying the assorted coworkers and unfamiliar faces with remarkable purpose so as to avoid those people he didn’t like talking to and to decide which new characters he’d try to get to know. Melissa saw Steven out of the corner of her eye as he moved across the room. Steven saw Melissa out of the corner of his eye as he waved to Jim. All this I know from what Steven and Melissa told others about how they met. I wasn’t actually there until the moment Steven and Melissa made eye contact. When they saw each other, however, I was immediately and electrically present.

Jim introduced Steven and Melissa when Steven returned from the bedroom. Shortly thereafter, Jim could see he was no longer needed and Steven and Melissa retired to a couch. They talked excitedly for hours and shared a short but quietly passionate kiss at midnight. Afterward, Jim confronted Steven in a moment of uncomfortably loud and drunken jealousy but Steven was able to calm him down. Melissa added a few kind words and a kiss on the cheek to diffuse the situation and to reassure Jim that he would always, but only, be a good friend to her. Jim spent the next two hours recovering with the aid of a tremendous amount of alcohol and the friends who could stand listening to him slur the story of his feelings for Melissa. Fortunately for all involved, Jim came to terms with the situation and enjoyed the rest of the party. Meanwhile, Steven and Melissa spent the rest of the night talking and sharing several more kisses.

I would not play a truly active role in Steven and Melissa’s relationship until the New Year was a month old. Since Jim’s party, Steven and Melissa had gone out three times. First, Melissa invited Steven to a gallery opening in SoHo that she and her friends had been invited to by a friend of the artist with whom Rachel worked. They had a nice time, went to a bar afterward, and Melissa’s friends approved of Steven, though Rachel wasn’t impressed. Melissa took Steven back to her apartment for coffee and they spent a little over an hour kissing and rolling around on her couch. When Rachel came home, Melissa asked Steven to leave, warmly but definitively. Steven felt the night had gone well but resented the fact that Melissa’s friends had been as involved as they had.

One week later, Steven asked Melissa to dinner and a movie, just the two of them. They went for Indian food on Sixth Street, which Melissa found rather unromantic on account of the bright and blinking lights and the pushy waiters, and then to an excellent French movie, which Steven hoped would resurrect the evening’s intimacy. Back at Steven’s apartment, Melissa allowed him to take her into his bedroom but stopped him when they were both in their underwear. She told him she wanted to wait but with a smile that made it clear that the wait would not be long.

The following week, Steven bought tickets for the two of them to see a ballet at Lincoln Center. Melissa wore a beautiful black strapless dress, Steven smelled fantastic, and the two held hands from intermission until the end of the performance. After the show, they got coffee and desert at a café on the Upper West Side but Melissa declined Steven’s invitation for her to spend the night. She told him she was very tired with true regret in her eyes and he believed her. She gave him a long kiss goodnight, put her hand in his back pocket, pulled him to her, and told him to make plans for Valentine’s Day.

Believe it or not, Steven and Melissa both considered their relationship to be moving slowly at this point, though they never mentioned this to one another. Neither of them was fundamentally opposed to sleeping with someone on the first date and both had done so on a number of occasions, some marking the beginning of a romance, others its end. With one another, however, neither Steven nor Melissa was sure if sex would begin or end their relationship and they were equally unsure which outcome they would prefer. So, though they enjoyed each other’s company and were powerfully attracted to one another, Melissa decided to wait and Steven decided not to be bothered by that. On Valentine’s Day, however, there would be no more waiting. The occasion and the evening served as my red carpet and open door.

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