Nobody Tells You Where the Line Is

Jasmin never forgave me for the kiss with Tina. Hot summer afternoon, I’d ridden Jasmin’s best friend home on the back of my bike—her building was on the edge of town, one of those grey high-rises that seem to exist specifically as backdrop for bad decisions. We kissed at the entrance, small and accidental, lips barely touching, and she vanished into the stairwell. I was fifteen. By the time I got home, Jasmin already knew.

My next girlfriend Susanne and I would have killed for a moment that innocent to feel guilty about. Instead we spent a year and a half fucking our way through everyone around us—out of spite, out of boredom, out of something I still can’t quite name. School trips, tutoring sessions, hotel internships: we didn’t discriminate between friends or enemies, and we never stopped. Then we’d meet up in the evenings and swear eternal love like it was a ritual neither of us could break. I genuinely don’t remember who started it. I’m not sure it matters.

After Susanne, a string of women—Sabrina, Regina, Steffi—each with her own private definition of betrayal, which I discovered the hard way because I never thought to ask in advance. One ended it because I’d thought about someone else during an argument. Another because I’d held a girl’s hand at a party. The third because I’d gone down on someone. Three different finish lines I crossed without knowing where they were.

No wonder so many relationships collapse. Nobody negotiates the terms, and then someone enforces them retroactively, usually while crying. Susanne grinned when she won the cheating marathon. Sabrina, Regina, and Steffi haven’t spoken to me since. If I ever start something new, I know exactly what I’m asking on the first date: what is cheating to you? Not as a test, not as a warning shot—just the question I should have been asking all along.