Another dream.
Triggered by me writing an email, him actually replying. A brief, polite, correct reply of someone who is overloaded with work but knows survival is dependent on mechanically churning out universal good manners. It reminded me that I am a tiny blip on the fringes of his consciousness, that nagging voice that needs to be zipped up with a salesman's smile.
The only thing that matters is what all this real life stuff does to me in my sleep.
So, to the dream. I looked absolutely flawless. I remember capturing glimpses of myself in mirrors and windows as I moved through elegant restaurants and hotel terraces. I had perfect cheekbones, simple makeup; my hair was pulled back into a slick chignon, my lipstick was deep red and perfectly applied. I was paler skinned than I really am. I looked and felt wealthy, full, but above all, feminine.
Even though all the above is meant to be superficial and vain, I remember feeling strong and joyous from top to toe as I walked from room to room.
I suppose you could say I was the best version of myself.
When I walked towards him already seated at our table for dinner, I would feel a wide berth of emotion rush over my whole body. Or when I accompanied him side by side to an event, I felt like the necessary half of an incredible whole. Just by standing next to him, I could feel his masculinity, so much stronger and pronounced than any man I have ever known. It was magnetic and brought out the feeling of being a woman in me. It naturally made me prettier, more angular in my face and curvaceous in my frame.
The dream wasn't all great. Cut to scenes of him dodging my dinner invite and having dinner with another woman, someone equally as beautiful. Because of that equality in appearance and charm, I didn't get jealous. I remember shrugging it off, not taking it to heart, and instead stripping down to a beautiful white swimming costume and taking a dip in the hotel pool. The only person who was losing out was him. Not me.
Totally unlike in real life, where I would quiver with shock, bitterness and obsess about how awful I and my predicament was, in the dream I felt mostly calm about what seemed to be an open betrayal. If there was any emotion at all - it was feeling slightly sorry for him having made a poor choice. Of any humiliation, I was immune.
I felt loved. But funnily enough, not uniquely by him. It was a satellite love, slightly outside my own body, but it shrouded me in a protective haze. If I were more religious, I'd say it was like being loved by a higher power. It would never change, nor disappear. I could count on it. But somehow, it had been triggered by Rodolfo's gaze. And perhaps his masculinity.
Why was he more masculine than anyone I had ever known?
It's hard to put my finger on it.
I am not such an oddball, a rarity, as I used to think.
What I am drawn to draws many, after all.
But I wonder if they see what I see? The forest wind that never seems to stop blowing across and around him.
The face of a kind boy that can sometimes assume the darkness of the difficulties he has known.
The shy, retiring and yet gently mocking figure of the Petit Prince.
The solemnity of a priest.
Someone who is unable to be honest most of the time, because he needs to control what you think about him and know about him.
A demanding gaze that looks at you with curiosity, as if you are something rare and precious.
Yes, maybe that's it. Who has ever looked at me like I was powerful, precious, with something to give?
Hardly anyone looks at hardly anyone like that.
When someone meets another's gaze in most situations, there's indifference (we don't know each other, there's nothing here, move on), and then when the gaze is repeated through work obligations or other, there might be a mixed bag of awkward sensations: mild but almost indifferent pleasure; misunderstanding; fear; jealousy; derision and maybe somewhere in there - in tiny hints - a mild desire to use you for some purpose.
But in my life, people have only ever looked at me mildly. I can count the number of times of one hand that another person's gaze has bored a hole through me. Maybe there were one or two fleeting looks of lust. A couple of instances of hatred. But that's about it in 34 years.
So maybe that's all it takes then for me to start an obsession with someone: a look, a curious, demanding look of an artist that pierces things to try and to get the heart of them.
And if this look comes from a man who's beauty and unusualness is plain to see, and he stops and takes the time to look at you in a way nobody else probably ever has, it unlocks an incredible sense of value. As it did in me.
I've never truly felt such a feeling before. Once I was looked at, by him, was as if great things, great achievements were in my grasp. I could access what it feels like to be myself, a woman, with instincts. I could feel like a woman who was being looked at by an incredible man.
Because by default, like many people, I feel like an actor with no substance just trying to "get on with life." An empty cage that takes up space with no drive and nothing to give.
And then, to feel something definite, something like "access" to a version of myself that actually made me proud, and happy. It's the sort of moment I could have never dreamt of, nor fantasised about happening one day. But it caught me by surprise, and it made me realise just how much extraordinary and rich life can be.
Of course, this wonderful self was only activated by him looking at me. If I was being romantic, I would say that I was surprised into falling in love with him. But these feelings that rose in me, these entirely good feelings, were dependent on him continuing to look at me.
When he stopped looking at me, or stopped wanting to have anything to do with me in fact, a sense of femininity and possibility of who I could be was traded with a feeling of worthlessness beyond belief.
The only person who had ever valued me, actually didn't.
He probably underestimated just how broken I was.
So, I became obsessed with trying to get him back into my life. The only success I had was evoking his silence most of the time, and at others, clipped politeness, sarcasm, even rage.
When I saw him last in person, he had spotted me at Barcelona airport and followed me across the concourse to say hello.
Even now it seems like odd behaviour for someone who ignored my every attempt to get in touch and at times didn't even seem to know who I was. In his shoes, I would have gotten scared and hidden somewhere to guarantee I wasn't spotted by "the psycho stalker." But no, he seized the opportunity to greet me, as always, in control. Maybe that's what he enjoyed about the situation.
I was elated beyond my own recognition to see him, but there was no desire. No sense of being overwhelmed by an incredible man.
Moments after the encounter, I felt dead. I flatlined. The world literally felt more sterile, solid. The dreamy softness of everything I saw disappeared.
Rodolfo was real, but the person I had been dreaming about wasn't.
I had to admit: this whole obsession could not just be about an unrequited love for this one person.
Any resolution of this pain of being an empty, ungendered, ambitionless person was going to have to come from within me. Somehow.
I'll continue searching, living my everyday, hearing the persistent little knock that never reveals what it is.
Triggered by me writing an email, him actually replying. A brief, polite, correct reply of someone who is overloaded with work but knows survival is dependent on mechanically churning out universal good manners. It reminded me that I am a tiny blip on the fringes of his consciousness, that nagging voice that needs to be zipped up with a salesman's smile.
The only thing that matters is what all this real life stuff does to me in my sleep.
So, to the dream. I looked absolutely flawless. I remember capturing glimpses of myself in mirrors and windows as I moved through elegant restaurants and hotel terraces. I had perfect cheekbones, simple makeup; my hair was pulled back into a slick chignon, my lipstick was deep red and perfectly applied. I was paler skinned than I really am. I looked and felt wealthy, full, but above all, feminine.
Even though all the above is meant to be superficial and vain, I remember feeling strong and joyous from top to toe as I walked from room to room.
I suppose you could say I was the best version of myself.
When I walked towards him already seated at our table for dinner, I would feel a wide berth of emotion rush over my whole body. Or when I accompanied him side by side to an event, I felt like the necessary half of an incredible whole. Just by standing next to him, I could feel his masculinity, so much stronger and pronounced than any man I have ever known. It was magnetic and brought out the feeling of being a woman in me. It naturally made me prettier, more angular in my face and curvaceous in my frame.
The dream wasn't all great. Cut to scenes of him dodging my dinner invite and having dinner with another woman, someone equally as beautiful. Because of that equality in appearance and charm, I didn't get jealous. I remember shrugging it off, not taking it to heart, and instead stripping down to a beautiful white swimming costume and taking a dip in the hotel pool. The only person who was losing out was him. Not me.
Totally unlike in real life, where I would quiver with shock, bitterness and obsess about how awful I and my predicament was, in the dream I felt mostly calm about what seemed to be an open betrayal. If there was any emotion at all - it was feeling slightly sorry for him having made a poor choice. Of any humiliation, I was immune.
I felt loved. But funnily enough, not uniquely by him. It was a satellite love, slightly outside my own body, but it shrouded me in a protective haze. If I were more religious, I'd say it was like being loved by a higher power. It would never change, nor disappear. I could count on it. But somehow, it had been triggered by Rodolfo's gaze. And perhaps his masculinity.
Why was he more masculine than anyone I had ever known?
It's hard to put my finger on it.
 |
What I am drawn to draws many, after all.
But I wonder if they see what I see? The forest wind that never seems to stop blowing across and around him.
The face of a kind boy that can sometimes assume the darkness of the difficulties he has known.
The shy, retiring and yet gently mocking figure of the Petit Prince.
The solemnity of a priest.
Someone who is unable to be honest most of the time, because he needs to control what you think about him and know about him.
A demanding gaze that looks at you with curiosity, as if you are something rare and precious.
Yes, maybe that's it. Who has ever looked at me like I was powerful, precious, with something to give?
Hardly anyone looks at hardly anyone like that.
When someone meets another's gaze in most situations, there's indifference (we don't know each other, there's nothing here, move on), and then when the gaze is repeated through work obligations or other, there might be a mixed bag of awkward sensations: mild but almost indifferent pleasure; misunderstanding; fear; jealousy; derision and maybe somewhere in there - in tiny hints - a mild desire to use you for some purpose.
But in my life, people have only ever looked at me mildly. I can count the number of times of one hand that another person's gaze has bored a hole through me. Maybe there were one or two fleeting looks of lust. A couple of instances of hatred. But that's about it in 34 years.
So maybe that's all it takes then for me to start an obsession with someone: a look, a curious, demanding look of an artist that pierces things to try and to get the heart of them.
And if this look comes from a man who's beauty and unusualness is plain to see, and he stops and takes the time to look at you in a way nobody else probably ever has, it unlocks an incredible sense of value. As it did in me.
I've never truly felt such a feeling before. Once I was looked at, by him, was as if great things, great achievements were in my grasp. I could access what it feels like to be myself, a woman, with instincts. I could feel like a woman who was being looked at by an incredible man.
Because by default, like many people, I feel like an actor with no substance just trying to "get on with life." An empty cage that takes up space with no drive and nothing to give.
And then, to feel something definite, something like "access" to a version of myself that actually made me proud, and happy. It's the sort of moment I could have never dreamt of, nor fantasised about happening one day. But it caught me by surprise, and it made me realise just how much extraordinary and rich life can be.
Of course, this wonderful self was only activated by him looking at me. If I was being romantic, I would say that I was surprised into falling in love with him. But these feelings that rose in me, these entirely good feelings, were dependent on him continuing to look at me.
When he stopped looking at me, or stopped wanting to have anything to do with me in fact, a sense of femininity and possibility of who I could be was traded with a feeling of worthlessness beyond belief.
The only person who had ever valued me, actually didn't.
He probably underestimated just how broken I was.
So, I became obsessed with trying to get him back into my life. The only success I had was evoking his silence most of the time, and at others, clipped politeness, sarcasm, even rage.
When I saw him last in person, he had spotted me at Barcelona airport and followed me across the concourse to say hello.
Even now it seems like odd behaviour for someone who ignored my every attempt to get in touch and at times didn't even seem to know who I was. In his shoes, I would have gotten scared and hidden somewhere to guarantee I wasn't spotted by "the psycho stalker." But no, he seized the opportunity to greet me, as always, in control. Maybe that's what he enjoyed about the situation.
I was elated beyond my own recognition to see him, but there was no desire. No sense of being overwhelmed by an incredible man.
Moments after the encounter, I felt dead. I flatlined. The world literally felt more sterile, solid. The dreamy softness of everything I saw disappeared.
Rodolfo was real, but the person I had been dreaming about wasn't.
I had to admit: this whole obsession could not just be about an unrequited love for this one person.
Any resolution of this pain of being an empty, ungendered, ambitionless person was going to have to come from within me. Somehow.
I'll continue searching, living my everyday, hearing the persistent little knock that never reveals what it is.
