Toast.
The reality of being single is gonna be different for everyone but for me, it sucks. Hard. I keep a pretty hectic schedule in part because it gives me somewhere to pour the energy I would much rather have under the hand of an owner. Until such time as that happens, we will just keep swimming, just keep swimming, just keep swimming swimming swimming…what do we do? We swim, swim…
Some of the techniques of my youth resurface, barging their way out of long-buried bunkers and shallow graves to stagger, blearily, to the fore. Yesterday morning, sometime after 4 AM (midday for this night-owl) I poached the keys to the car belonging to The Evil Jewish Lesbian Landladies and went out to run errands and get a bite to eat.
New York  Motherfucking City. You are a lover like no other and can satisfy most any need at most any time and for that, I praise you, like I do. Some things never change…the radio pipes up WCBS eff-emm…Noooooo Yooooooork…croons the radio as I glide across Flushing, a song I’ve not heard in decades smirkily aligns with my thoughts. Songchronicity.
Imaginary lovers
Never turn you down
When all the others turn you away
They’re around
The streets, empty save trash trucks, ConEd vehicles and hornety cabs peppering the black pathways and the radio washed up an old treasure upon my rather lonely beach. Hot night’s half moon sleazed with dark streaky haze and the Atlanta Rhythm Section explained to me that my fanciful meanderings were entirely all right…
Someone to share my
Wildest dreams with me
Imaginary lover
You’re mine anytime
I thought of my own low whispers, the love letters inscribed in my heart, written in murmurs and thoughts, and burned away by the cold flame of reality. I talk to him quite frequently, my owner. He’s somewhere, even if we don’t have access now. it helps me to pretend somewhere he can hear my perpetual susurrational monologue, the moments of emotional breakthroughs, the vortices of doubt, the trudging dancing meanderings of my quotidian magical adventuresome shambolic trips. I want to remember how to tell my stories, to share my reality and how to trust someone is listening.
When ordinary lovers
Don’t feel what you feel
And real-life situations lose their thrill
Imagination’s unreal
Imaginary lover, imaginary lover
You’re mine anytime
It is a hot night and so the tears that make a break for it sluice down slightly sweaty cheeks. I don’t mind so much. I am not heartsick. I am lonely. And despite feeling foolish, I take inventory of my emotional state, my work, my desires and accomplishments and where I am working to improve myself and my world and I tell them to The-Owner-Not-Here. I imagine their approval, their counsel, their comfort. I fancy them being pleased, I envision them offering a focus, a presence, an ear, a place for me at their feet. I am somewhat ashamed by what seems a patently childish refuge from life’s journeys, but I trust myself enough to know that sometimes…what seems silliest and most out-and-outrageous is precisely what the soul needs.
Imaginary lovers never disagree
They always care
They’re always there when you need
Satisfaction guaranteed
Arriving back at home, I look around my room, newly painted with new-to-me furnishings and some small adjustments that make me proud to have done the past month of work. I envisage myself dedicating these efforts to my owner, the one who understands that it is a struggle for me to give a fuck about keeping things tidy but is so very proud when I do, even if it is simply to please him. What I won’t do for me I’ll do for you. Even though I don’t know who you are.
My imaginary lover
You’re mine anytime
My thoughts so occupied with my quiet heart’s song as I ponder futures, I stolidly stand guard over the sleek and aerodynamic red toaster and watch as two slices of bread go far past the doneness I prefer and blacken a bit. I slowly eat two slices of slightly burned, buttered toast as I laugh at myself, pretending that I can hear the laugh of someone who knows that my stream of conscious runs so deep and so quickly as to take me out of the task before me sometimes, but they love me for that despite the strangeness.
My dear and magical friend, slave Namaste, says that the things we long for are all within the realm of potentiality…that we cannot have desires but that the fulfillment of them is absolutely possible. Whatever can be longed for can be achieved. I take the edge off of my own hunger by feeding on that certainty. The pain subsides, swallowed by the surety of that which will come when it is meant to come.
Maybe burnt toast and daydreams are just what the doctor ordered.
