Others, They Speak of Solitude (Ha!)

They tell us not to write of dreams, don’t they? as though we all had friends, and lovers and enemies; as though I had an elaborate kit of oil colours, tubes squished and squeezed, some neglected entirely awaiting acknowledgement. Oh, the privilege to have connections.

But I lack even the primary colours. If anything, I’ve got a lead pencil, an eraser, and a sharpener that bites too hard. Snaps the lead off if I’m not careful. What I mean to say, dear reader (with all this nonsense!) is that I will write about my damned dreams for they’re all I’ve got.

And my dream, this morning – well, I imbue him with myself like a water silhouette injected with ink. His invisibility finds form now, an outline, and he sits on the edge of my bed. Weight. The squeak of springs. I haven’t slept. Can’t!

“Are you alright?” he asks, removing White Nights from my white-knuckled grip.

“If only you knew how empty my existence is!” I say. “I’m a ghost city, only emptier. I’m opulence and oblivion.” The words climb out my mouth like a contortionist from a box, laughter bursts from my lips like the air from a balloon tittering across the ceiling. Blue, we’ll say it’s blue just because.

“You’ve been reading Dostoevsky,” he says.

I avert my eyes because he’s right, but I’ve got the dawn giggles, manic with solitude, with this ripe existence and its juice running down my chin. Everything’s real at purple-eyed, insomniac daybreak, and I swear birdsong alone could make me weep! Yes, weep! And unironically. Is that not evidence enough, dear reader? The world vibrates here, within this parenthesis, buzzing like a hive of bees. A cicada’s trill. Can’t you feel it?

“It’s somewhat melodramatic,” says my shadow.

“Dostoevsky, you mean?” (Me, melodramatic? Never!).

“A bit naïve,” he says, nodding.

“Naïve, perhaps, but universal.”

“Universal,” he agrees.

Because he’s an extension of me, I needn’t explain what that means. Universal: melodrama, naïveté, that innocent faith in life, in its promise to bear fruit – quintessential of the human condition. Until World-weariness and Disillusionment bite into our ripe flesh as though into an apple, devour us and leave only cores in our place. Compost. Sustenance for someone else’s dreams.

“Or gnaw our flesh from the bone and lick their grubby fingers clean.” He reads my mind.

“As though we were a plate of ribs,” I say. “And they, some piggish oligarchs whose burps resound through spotless marble rooms.”

“Well then cheers to melodrama and naïveté,” he says, “the remnants of humanity.” Hasn’t got a glass. Nothing to cheers with.

“I’d have said dregs if it weren’t for the negative connotations,” I say. “The very last sip, perhaps?”

He nods, lifting the duvet and sliding in beside me. His weight rocks the bed, teases the springs some more – so much so, I almost think he’s real. Sweet, glorious sweat blossoms in my nose. A sourness, acrid. Mine, perhaps. My own odour flourishes with my body heat like the reeking pits of an improperly washed blouse (it’s too late – you’ve already left the house). But at least it echoes the presence of something, of someone, even if it’s just grimy ol’ me.

“I’ve been more or less alone for a decade,” I whisper, as he burrows his face in my hair.

“Weren’t there moments of respite?” Warm breath against my neck, the brush of his lips (or my very own fingertips – don’t pinch me! Please don’t pinch me!).

“Days, weeks, months,” I mutter. Drawl. “Months that made me lonelier, still.”

“Nobody there when you needed them?”

“Nobody.”

He pulls me into his arms which glitter golden in the morning sun. My face buried in his chest. His hands in my hair. Combing, untangling, cradling. But why the kindness? What’s the catch? His absence. Always is. I don’t know why I even ask. He stretches out this space like a T-shirt, and when he leaves, not even my voluptuous sorrow and her heaving chest will fill the gaping sleeves and neckline. His absence will hang off me like hand-me-downs.

“What’s wrong?” he presses.

“I wish I were a scrawny man with scruffy hair. A voracious reader, a guitarist. A Bob Dylan-like character or Dean Moriarty! I might be loved, then. And I’d scoff at all who loved me.”

“What’s wrong being you?”

“It warrants no love,” I say. “And connection is a fundamental need. Like food or shelter. I don’t ask for much, just someone with whom I can share these earthly pleasures – coffee, books, sunlight. Someone with whom to laugh and enjoy mundanity.”

“I’m here, aren’t I?” he says.

“You’re not always at the surface,” I say. “You’re buried so deep you might as well be dead. No, I mean, sometimes I can barely feel your pulse, can barely hear you. Others, they speak of solitude, but they don’t know it. They don’t know his distant gaze, his blue lips, his cold and compliant touch. To know him is to hold a corpse tight each night, to grasp at a shadow.”

He brushes my cheek, twiddles a strand of my hair between his fingers.

“I know you transform the transient,” I say. “I know it’s you who immortalises what would otherwise be fleeting, that you’re the magic in my life, really. But I need more than this phantom self who visits me thus. I need love. Real, palpable love. Not the illusion, not my own warmth radiating within me.”

“Someone with a mind of their own?”

“Someone with a mind of their own.”

“To share your ideas, your clothing, your books, your bedroom, your single bed?”

“And theirs,” I say. “Nobody was ever meant to be this lonely. So lonely as to graft their soul, like skin, onto this cloud of empty space, onto these twinkling motes of dust, and animate them with life! Even your voice is mine.”

He reaches for my teacup. The tea’s long cold.

“Have you ever revisited a place from the past?” I say.

He raises a brow. “Wherever you go, I go.”

“I’d give anything,” I continue, “to be unmet, unknown, unhad. To be had is to disappear… I’m an empty bottle, a dish licked clean. Nobody wants to experience me twice.”

He clears his throat. Sits up against the headboard. “Maybe that’s why you pay so little attention to me. I’m already yours.”

Somersaults in my stomach, in my throat. “I take you for granted because I cannot hold you. Because you look like solitude and his blue lips. Feel like him, too. I cannot cling to a chimera.”

“Just summon me as you’ve done today. Externalise me. See me in orange sunrise, in gleaming specks of dust. Taste me on the lips of others, feel me in their hands. Perceive me where I am and where I am not, and I will meet you there.”

“That makes no sense.”

“Doesn’t it?”