Dreamer

I am not to be allowed to enjoy my insignificant-small triumph even for a few hours. I must be cut down to size and reminded of all the things I am here to forget. I wonder who would realise if they were watching us, opposite one another on a table at the water’s edge, bathed in the milky pinks and greys of a gentle sunset, that as he leans intently towards me he is not whispering endearments but hissing bile. You have no fucking idea of what life is really about. Everything is a competition, everything is war. Not writing. Don’t fool yourself. What do you think getting published is all about? You have to be better than the others to be chosen. There are winners and losers, just like everything else.

I don’t write to be published, though. I write because it bubbles up inside me like a spring. I write because I like to. I write because I love words and their beauty and their power. You’re a fucking dreamer, he spits, as if that were a bad thing. You write because you’re a control freak and you can make everything turn out just the way you want. As if that were a bad thing too. Inside my dreamy head, I acknowledge with an ironic smile that, even in his drink, in his contempt, he is smart. How irritating.

All that writing. Why don’t you apply yourself to the long-awaited business plan? All that thinking. Why don’t you invest your time thinking of a way to get your business out of this fucking black hole? Oddly enough, I have thought about this a lot over the last couple of years. Even I am not control-freaky enough to believe I can turn around the economy single-handed. My mind turns disloyally to life insurance, to horny yet tender sex with a man who is kind and clever and funny and does not drown me in scorn.

I look at him across the table. He is confused for a moment: I’m not fighting back. I was lost for a while in my erotic reverie, vivid, sweat lightly beading my forehead, a hot pulse now between my legs. What? Nothing. His eyes are bulging angrily, a vein in his temple throbbing, his face red, his breathing fast. I wonder whether, if I delivered a few home truths, he would fall dead right in front of me? A pop behind the eyes as the vessels finally give way to hypertension? A tightening band across the chest and pain shooting down the left arm as the neglected pump packs up? I hope you’re happy in your fucking little dreamland. Oh yes, oh yes.