You know you're Mindfucked when...

...you fantasise more or less about the same person every time you touch your pussy. (And it's not Brad Pitt.)

...you notice and delight in the charming minutiae about him. The way he spells Baby with a capital B in his texts. The way the freckles are sprinkled like party confetti over his back. The way his thighs involuntarily shudder when you run your fingers up his spine as he's sleeping. The way he pokes his head round the shower curtain to watch you pee.

...you find yourself only halfheartedly contemplating the idea that you could get laid when you’re out at Lan Kwai because sex with him is so much better than anyone else. You just have an instinctive sense of each other's bodies and are dedicated to bringing each other the most amount of pleasure. Everytime you wander elsewhere to test the market, it just validates this hypothesis.

...following on from the previous point, it takes six drinks, two Luftansa pilots and the promise of a good 'man-wich' to finally coax you into bed. And then only if your girlfriend agrees to watch.

...every time he fucks you, he bites and bruises you in places that mark you as his sexual property for the next week or so. Instead of being annoyed with this, you luxuriate in the fact that you look like a week-old apple and then cheerfully proceed to give him a long bloody scratch down the middle of his chest.

...you save all his messages and read them over periodically, especially the one that says: "Some things are strange that I want to tell you but it's hard. When I see you Baby. You're killing me. Just make sure you are ok."

...you tell your girlfriends over dim sum that you "really like this one guy" and relate the details of the relationship. They look slightly worried. You even tell your best fuckbuddy in Hong Kong about him. He looks amused and now keeps asking to be allowed to watch you fuck.

Nauseous? I don't blame you. I write this feeling a bit like a postmodern Emperor parading about in new clothes, nevertheless I can't stop myself. And please, I am already anticipating the jeering comments from you to that effect, so spare me.

Over the past few months, you have been privy to my reasonably casual take on sex and relationships. I can - and do - fuck like a man. You know this. I know this. Even my mom knows this and has pretty much given up on my marriage prospects.

In fact, I have spent 4 years earning my stripes in terms of relationship independence and invulnerability. To mentally inure myself from the situations I find myself reluctantly describing above. So I'm not sure why the system is turning all Bridget Jones on me suddenly.

I will not reveal much more of my paramour's identity than to say that he is certifiably a naughty boy. A devastating flirt. A charming alpha male. He plays my game. He flaunts his virility in front of me and tries to persuade various other women to come back with us. But he treats me well, he pleasures me in all the right ways and we have incredibly tender moments. Of course, he is unavailable in every single way except sexually.

And yes - you knew this was coming - I like him, and in a bad way. Or if one is to be technical about it, I am hopelessly mindfucked about him.

A mindfuck is a device that when applied, leaves one feeling shocked and disoriented. It’s what passes off as entertainment nowadays to us been-there-done-that types and is a curious thing. It works in an insidious way, allowing you to feel mastery over your sense of perceived reality until that pivotal 'a-ha' revelation where everything tips out of balance and you are forced to re-interpret past events with the filter of subjective enlightenment.

I'm pretty sure he started it. But in these scenarios of star-crossed inevitability, it doesn't really matter does it.

We met through mutual friends and the original pretext of the meeting was really to have a bit of fun. We had an intense sexual chemistry and within 20 minutes, I was sucking him off in a cab quite happily back to his hotel. However, since he doesn't live in Hong Kong I was quite happy in my role as a stopover fuck.

We would exchange text messages every few days, usually relating within 160 characters or less sexual scenarios to each other. And then as we built more equity into our real-life encounters, the tone of the messages become more witty banter and less horny fantasy. I hit it off with his friends, he hit it off with mine. But I pretty much led my life, and he led his, save for the incidental jealous thought (him) or sentimental text (me).

And still I thought - rather misguidedly - that things were above board except now I fancied myself as having a slightly elevated position as his favourite stopover fuckfriend.

Then somehow someone changed the reel of my life without asking. On one of his trips to Hong Kong, he casually said "I have something important to tell you but I'm going to wait till the time is right." I could feel the hairs on my arms prickle. I knew, of course. Like every intuitive woman knows these things. And I could have bugged him to tell me, but I wasn't ready to plunge into the depths of altered reality. Yet.

So I just gave him a long look, shook my head imperceptibly and dismissed it, cloaking myself as well as I could in a shroud of reasonable doubt and plausible deniability.

It would be two months later over our first aborted attempt to have a dirty weekend that he told me how I affected him. And within the 160 character limit, no less. He then delivered the same message in person last weekend. I told him I knew already. And that he had just put words to what I thought but was unwilling to say.

It goes without saying, I had a fantastic weekend with him. With truth and context held at bay, we played together with the desperate carelessness of the damned. He was a man in his element and I was the perfect aphrodisiac. For that stolen slice of time, we allowed ourselves to be as the Immortals were, masters of our universe and savouring every minute.

But now with more than a hundred hours and two countries between us, the mindfuck begins. He has become a splinter embedded in the rabbit-hole of my altered consciousness. I reminisce. I daydream. I wonder. It irritates me. And if he is to be believed with his messages in the wee hours of the night, I have infiltrated his subconscious. It scares him. And I'm glad.

The thing is, I - of all people - should know better and believe me, I smell the deja vu in this situation, as do you. You'd think that age and experience would keep me from making the same mistakes. But alas, it contends with the sheer obstinacy of the human temperament and I must be biologically hard-wired to behave in the same impulsive, foolhardy way that I have since birth.

In popular culture, the way a mindfuck ends is that it usually destroys the host (a la the film "Fight Club"). And up to that point, things are just suspended in an unpredictable tangle of red herrings and ambiguity. And so I predict it will be with this particular mindfuck. It is thrilling, stimulating, exhausting and goes against every fibre of rational thought.

Do I think it will end in disaster? Yes. Do I think I will end up hurt by all this? Yes. Do I go along with it anyway? Of course. And thus I wait patiently, alongside you, like any other obedient mindfuck victim for the plot to unfold.