Morning found us intertwined in arms, legs and sheets.

We sat there together for an hour, almost completely motionless, save the occasional kiss or grope. Quiet, relaxed and throbbing.

We listened carefully to the sounds of my mother leaving the house, her car pulling out of the driveway and up the street, leaving us alone. Free to do all the naughty, noisy things our bodies are yearning for.

Indulgence.

When chemistry is real, it is intense to a degree that must be experienced to be understood. Only with perspective can you understand how good or bad something is, and Gretchen only shows me what a cold fish the ex was.

It might be mean to say that she was a cold fish in bed, and I think I've got every right to be mean to that awful person, but perhaps "cold fish" isn't the right concept. Our sex wasn't lifeless, it was just awful, which is a difficult contrast to understand. It was a tool, a reward, a weapon. But her grenade had no bang, it was just fizzle and smoke.

I regret every inch of skin I touched.

I regret every writhing, gyrating moment of pleasure I gave her.

I regret her existence, and most of all, I regret regretting.

Bitterness is the most insidious sexually transmitted disease.

Gretchen represents nearly perfect sexual compatibility. Forgiving the obviously crass connotation, we are round peg/round hole, and it's so refreshing to be with someone and know that they're enjoying you. Enjoying things without ulterior motives, without games and punishments planned. Simple, pure, pleasure.

I prey that I will never have to suffer the scourge of emotional deception and intellectual indifference. I'm only sorry that she lives on to enslave others in her emotional filth.

Gretchen and I spent the next two hours enjoying each other until my mother finally returned home with a new lawn mower stuffed in her trunk.

Rather then continue our scientific experiment in bed sturdiness, we decided to finish things another time. I washed up a bit, dressed myself, and went down to see if I could lend my mother a hand, but every word from her mouth was a short, staccato response.

"Yes." "No." "I don't know."

Each word spit out to imply an obvious disinterest in conversation, an unspoken "fuck you" that was anything but subtle. I feigned ignorance of her mood and offered to make her breakfast. She tossed a quick "No thanks" in my direction, then dragged her black cloud outside to attend to the shaggy grass.

Gretchen appeared shortly after. I made us two delicious omelets and began to offer preemptive apologies for my mother's foul mood. Gretchen was already touchy about the whole weekend, so I didn't need the additional stress of my mother being a hag, but it seemed to be unavoidable at this point. Either way, it was time for us to be leaving.

We'd wasted half the day doing naughty things in the bedroom, and it was time to pack.

I called Nick and coordinated our departure, and after the bags were loaded in the car, we attempted a goodbye with my mother.

My parting words were brushed off with all the politeness of a streetsweeper. Gretchen, already timid and shy, scrounged up the courage to say "Thank you for letting me stay here, Ms. Barnes".

Or that's what she would have said, but my mother cut her off mid-sentence by saying "goodbye", then turning around and going into another room.

There I stood, stunned and ashamed of my own mother, and all I could do was put my bags in the car and begin to apologize. And I continued to apologize as we were getting Nick, and as we were getting ice cream, and all the way up the BW Parkway.

I apologized as many ways as I knew how, but the damage was done. In her entire memory, no one's parents have ever disliked Gretchen, ever. All she could do was sit there and analyze every moment of the weekend, trying to figure out what she did wrong. And all I could do was sit there and feel like a shithead after her parents had been so nice to me.

I gave her a few extra hugs when I dropped her off at her house, then whisked myself away in efforts to get into the city before one in the morning.

The road to New York was long, but the first thing I did when I got there was call Gretchen to apologize a few more times.

She brushed it off, and she was obviously handling it better then I would have. I just couldn't express to her how embarrassing it was to have to apologize for your own parent.

I told her that I loved her, that I'd talk to her tomorrow, and we said goodnight.

My phone rang a few moments later.

"Did you make it up there?"

"Yes"

"Okay" [click...dialtone]

Sometimes it's hard to remember which one of us is the child in this relationship.