The things people leave behind

Watches. Earrings. An assortment of necklaces.

Books. Scarves. Passport and driving licence.

Lipstick. Eyebrow powder. Underwear of every shape and colour.

It’s perhaps unsurprising that people leave things behind after sex. When we come, our brains get flooded with oxytocin, which pushes aside rational thought and leaves us to float along in the happy, drunken afterglow. After a properly good fuck I struggle to remember my own name, let alone where I left my wallet and keys.

Still, the list of unexpected souvenirs I’ve found under my bed, on the nightstand or in the bathroom would make for a moderately profitable eBay business. The discovery is often prompted by a text, hours or even days later, after their owners have retraced their movements and found themselves – mentally, at least – back at my flat, just about to get naked. If it’s a regular partner, I’ll just put the item to one side for next time, but if it’s someone I’m unlikely to see again – or who lives far away – more creative solutions are sometimes required.

Either way – and whether it ends up inconveniencing me or not – finding one of those forgotten treasures always makes me smile. It prompts a little shiver of memory; a flashback to her mouth around my cock, or her deep, ragged breaths as I thrust inside her. That’s as true of a notepad or a stray sock as it is of a cum-soaked thong – the arousal lies in the association, rather than the item’s inherent sexiness.

We do that as a matter of course though, I think. We give our sexual memories physical and mental lodestones. It’s why we hang on to small gifts from ex-lovers, and as Girl on the Net explained, it’s why some of us keep a list of the people we’ve slept with.

An hour or so later, a cold dread crept over me: I’d missed one out . . . I was devastated . . . And the devastation wasn’t because I felt ‘slutty’ or odd either. It was because – and forgive me if this makes me sound like a sentimental twat – I want to be able to remember all the people I’ve fucked. Their names, their voices, their faces. What noises they made when I brought them to climax. The way they kissed – whether it was gentle, rough, sloppy, or perfunctory. I want to be able to picture the positions in which they shagged me, and the way they smiled afterwards, and the note on which we parted – happy, sad, indifferent or angry.

Read that whole post, by the way – it’s great. My list used to exist on a scrap of paper in my wallet; as it grew I put the names into Excel instead, and it’s now saved on a memory stick because yes, I really am that nerdy.

The various tangible reminders of their presence that women have left in my room over the years perform a similar function. I only have to think of them to be taken back to whatever it was we were doing in the hours that preceded their departure…

When I think about the butterfly necklace – a simple chain with a small, silver butterfly looped onto it – I remember how I had to have her, even though we both knew we shouldn’t. I can see us kissing outside the bar, sheltered from the pouring rain that we’d soon scuttle through as we searched for a hotel. I can feel her naked body against mine, spread out on a fresh white duvet, topped off with a smile that hovered between beatific and mischievous. I can hear her soft, panting moans as she came on my tongue and around my fingers. More than anything though, the butterfly makes me think of the instant – and unexpected – connection I felt to someone I thought would be a one-night stand, and the way it didn’t feel even a little bit awkward when I handed it over outside her office the next morning. As if we both already knew we’d see each other again.

With the eyebrow powder, the first thing that comes to mind is the glee I felt when I found it. She’d left (gorgeous) underwear in my bed the previous time she’d come to see me, and had declared confidently just before leaving that on this occasion she wasn’t going to forget anything. As soon as I spotted the make-up I wished she was back there with me, so I could tease her about it…before pushing her onto her knees. I thought about that a lot over the next few days – whenever it caught my eye, in fact. Her long blonde hair, tugged and twisted around my fingers as she swallowed my cock, and the huge grin on her face each time she looked up and saw the effect her mouth had on me. When I dropped it into a jiffy bag at the Post Office, I had to turn away to prevent anyone seeing the bulge in my jeans.

I could give a dozen other examples, both recent and much less so. The expensive watch on my bathroom sink, where she’d left it before she bent me over and fucked me hard from behind with an obscenely large strap-on. The scarf that smelled of her perfume for days afterwards, driving me crazy as I tried not to fall in love – and failed. The battered old paperback I retrieved from my kitchen table and flicked through casually, only to find myself lost in it till 4.00 the following morning; the way she clutched it to her naked chest the next time I saw her, as if she’d feared that it was lost forever.

Memory is a funny thing, and there’s often little logic to how we store – and recall – the people we’ve known and loved. In most cases they only form a small part of that mental picture, but I’m still profoundly grateful for all those discarded knickers and misplaced earrings. Without them, a lot of those hot, horny images would be somehow much less sharp.