"Dreams are My Reality...the only kind of reality..."

I am back there. It is the only acronym that causes me pain with just three curvy letters... I am back there, and nothing has changed, not even the secretary whose appetite for gossip parallels her appetite for unhealthy foods. Her body has given up all hope on decently representing what might be a soul. Underneath all the bitter gossip and fascination with the death of celebrities lies a lonely fifty-year-old. Her short curls are sheeplike in texture and mousy in color. Her behind is so flat one can bounce tennis balls off of it. Her body is untouched by a man, at least for the last 20 years; do not ask me how I know, I just do. There is a certain fluidity to a body that is caressed, loved or even merely desired. She seems burdened by her own presense too, at least she is terrified to be alone with her thoughts, and is constantly occupying herself with other people's business. Hence the formidable result: she will bad-mouth you the second you walk out the door (she desperately wants to be the center of attention) and yet, when you are there, she will offer you help even if you do not ask.
As it has imprinted on my subconscious, she is ever-present, good and evil, wanted and not wanted. Hello Kiddo, she would say for the first couples of months, sometimes I almost convince myself that she liked me. It is only after the winter break that there was no more "kiddo"...
In my dream she watches me audition for a man, a day with whom I have spend a long time ago. All that exists as a proof of that day is a photograph, but a photograph I have only heard of and have never seen. I know that what is frozen, what is immortalized on that photo is the moment he is about to kiss me. I must have been very young when the photo was taken, because he keeps on telling me that I was very young. The protagonist of my dream is in his late fifties. He is not particularly attractive, but he is warm and all his attention is on me. There are only four people auditioning for him, making his intense concentration on me, anything but surprising. I am pretty interesting, aren't I?
I do not know what we are auditioning for. Perhaps for a read at a conference, since in my dream I am back in graduate school. But he asks me to play the guitar, and I do not play the guitar, I only play with men, play with their minds and their level of attachment to me. It is now, just me and him, as though the camera shifts, and I, a slumbering voyerist, am observing a different mis-en-scene. The wonderful, exquisitely luxurious element of dreams is that you are both the audience and the lead.
His face is close to mine, but contrary to my day self, I am not concerned that he is not at all attractive; he is undeniably charming and intelligent, and I do not care about that either. He says that I was nineteen when we were together last and shows me that aforementioned photograph. My bangs are cut too short and my face is in the shadow of his face...on the photo he is barely touching my upper lip with his. He is the same age as he is now infront of me.
He seems baffled and embarrased to have been so intimate with a teenager. 'What an old fool I was,' he exclaims. I do not answer. I am mesmerized with myself on the photo. Was I really ever that young? I am looking straight at the camera when a dizzyingly talented man lowers his face to mine and succumbs, or rather allows himself to momentarily descend (no, plummet!) to my airheaded-unconcerned-self-absorbed-gawky-insecure-waste-time-23-hours-out-of-24-self. I, however, was looking for a camera to play with, to bond with...I was waiting for the lightning of a flash when all I had with him was that moment. And now there is a photograph. And his aging. And I no longer young, but just as self-absorbed, still looking for a camera to bond with, while those I love look at me, barely touching my upper lip.