Dream Boy

I dreamt that I was loved. He wasn’t perfect, not at all… rather he was a construct I made with my favorite flaws, taken from people I knew and people I enjoy watching. There was a certain something the two main sources had, my favorite narcissist and my work crush. Something about their face and hair and the arms he, my dream lover, used to hold me. In those arms, I believed I was cherished. In those arms, I believed I was safe.

I think he had their kind eyes… even as dream me knew kindness is a lie. Dream me was wiser, dream me knew it was better to enjoy it in the moment and not think about the morrow.

He said he had come for me, come looking for me at a family thing, you know the kind, where you are tired and feel exposed and raw and need all the help you can get. And it is a sort of armor to be loved in that situation, to be loved by someone your family can admire and point out. (It is a weak flank in other circumstances, I should know)

He said he couldn’t stop thinking about me. He said he’d never, no one had ever… not like me. Like Gaiman wrote about Rose Walker. No one has ever… He made me feel like there had never been another like me.

I dreamt we fucked too. And it was as sweet and tender as everything else. As I took him into my room, to lay on my bed, he admired the place I had taken so long to make my own, the place I had poured so much love and pieces of myself into… he loved it like I cannot love it now because accidents and life and fear of what I cannot achieve…

He loved my room as he loved my breasts and my skin and the body I fight so hard against. The body I try so deeply to feel neutral towards most of the time. Love it like it is, half the world says. Make it smaller, make it better, says the other half. If I change I betray the former and will never be good enough for the latter. If I don’t, I must avoid every mirror and every picture and every boy who I fear will judge me for it. There is no peace to be found in a body like mine.

But there was peace in this dream lover who smiled when I took off my clothes and held me in arms strong enough to bear my weight and made a dreary job seem not so bad and even cheerful.

He came looking for me and there was peace in being pursued for a change. In not wondering and fretting but in knowing, at least for a moment…