Perfect Union


Last night something incredible happened. I got home late. I had to eat quickly to catch up, which removes the pleasure. To save time I hadn't boiled the potatoes for as long as usual which meant they were hard. I think next time it'll pay to boil the potatoes for the usual time. I think thirty minutes works best. After I ate I felt compelled to go straight to sleep. I don't know why, so I can't explain. Possibly eating all that starch so quickly. As I slept I had what felt like a reoccurring dream. But I'm sure it only felt like a reoccurring dream. I don't think I've ever dreamt it before. There was a man in a large worn coat slouched ungracefully on a bed. The room was drab, so very drab. I knew it to be the cheapest room in a very cheap hotel, somewhere in the outskirts. Miles from a cinema. He was a dark man, dark hair. The word overcast comes to mind. Very much so, the anticipation of rain. He was drinking from a clear bottle. Grey sloshing spirit. I remember the smell, which is unusual for me. An acidic seething that crawled right into my brain and settled in some dark corner spreading false secrets about me. He drank from this bottle, quick and hard, with disdain. His face, what I could see of it, would appear from behind the bottle with a chiseled snarl of skin and muscle. As though he were frozen in perpetual disgust. But mostly I couldn't see his face from behind his monstrous scraggly dog hair. At this point I knew exactly what would happen. The window would open and a wind would enter, which would steal away the dead airs. It was a warm wind. Instead of the dead air, the wind replaced the emptiness with a woman. She was indescribable. I won't try. She shone like a diamond, she had no colour to her. It occurs to me now...she was no woman. She went to the man, who had not noticed, and loved him. I use that word as I say it, not as a metaphor. She simply loved him. She went to him and sat beside him and put her arms around him in an action that was half way between drunken aimlessness and the disciplined precision of a ballet dancer. She clung to him and just loved him. I wanted her to kiss him, I remember that desire; I wanted them to kiss. I suppose as some form of union. But here's the thing, I also wanted him to continue drinking. And that's what happened. With his free hand he pushed her away. Without much force, but with definite intention, and with the other hand he drank. It became obvious to me in this gesture that he was immensely drunk and that I was seeing what he was feeling. He was sitting with his angel and he could either hold her and let her disappear or keep on drinking and maintain her presence. At this point of recognition...Firstly I must say the last time I cried was at my mother's funeral seventeen years ago...In my dream I began to gush a warm kind of misery. As I walked forwards with my palms outstretched and my arms open they both looked aghast at me. She evaporated as his bottle crumpled against the floor. A wind poured through the walls and I fell upon my back. My eyes rested on a small detail of the falling ceiling, a black smudge in a corner. I woke staring at the smudge in the corner of my bedroom. As I watched it dropped to the floor and crawled under my bed.