Transparent

After reading about lucid dreaming and taking .25mg alprazolam (old tricks), I had an optimistic dream of my future, which I greedily wrote down, as if transcription might encourage the flesh. The artist’s colony element comes straight from Wake Up, Sir!, which I finished last night, and there’s a little sex, which I have placed in the extended entry, in case there are precocious children reading. Away with you, precocious children!

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My novel is finished, and has been sold. I have a little money—not like my dreams at the outset, but enough to pay my debts, bills, and embolden me. It’s ten months until my book comes out and I have to start giving readings.

I have found an artist’s colony by the seashore in a state I’d never considered. I apply, sort of forget about it, and then am accepted. I regretfully give notice on my apartment, say goodbye to Andreaa and my family, and set off, with stuff in a backpack and clothes in my rolling bag. It’s frightening to take this step, but I feel like it will work, so I do.

I arrive at the colony and meet the people there. Most are older than me, but there are a few my age, and we form a club that meets at night. I become good friends with the boys and intimate with one of the girls—the most talented and beautiful of the bunch. We sleep together at night.

I stay for three months. After the first month, I am working every day, producing my second novel. The characters live, are like people I know. I figure out the ending, and it makes me sick, at first, until I reconcile myself to it.

I go back to Los Angeles, leaving the beautiful girl behind, and move to a new place. It’s high up, with wood floors and a balcony. I finish my novel and take two weeks off. I sit on the sofa, listen to a lot of music, and allow the cool breeze to blow in through my windows. I also smear on sunscreen and go to the beach every other day. I meet a girl there, a girl who is different from me. She is confident, kind. We start seeing each other. When we do things together I feel protected by her warmth instead of weakened by her strength. She likes to come over to my apartment and listen to music with me, especially the Velvet Underground. Sometimes we walk to the movies, or go out to eat. My ball rolls and I start getting more work. She too is doing well, and we have time together.

We decide to go on a two week trip to the east coast. I take her to meet friends and relations, and back to the Main Line. We rent a car, and I show her where I grew up, exactly the important places. She loves it. I tell her I want to move back, and she knows why. The trip is anxiety-free. “You’re cured!” she says, teasingly, when I bring this up back at home, but I actually feel so. “The last four years of my life were not so good,” I tell her. My head is in her lap. She strokes my hair and scratches my scalp. “Poor old lover-boy,” she says. Those words and others pour over my face like syrup and shellac my eyelids shut. When I wake up in the morning I feel wildly alive, like a man saved from the firing squad. She’s sitting down, reading the paper, and looks up at me with her big, unworried eyes. I see a house, parties, friends, children playing under the tables and in the garden at night, being old and shopping for records with my teenagers. “You’ve saved me,” I say.

We go to the bedroom and lie down. Bite down on my finger, I tell her, and rip the patch off her shoulder. Then we take our clothes off and spoon. The only movement is the deliberate, metronomic contraction of her muscles. It takes me about ten minutes to come, but when I do, it’s incredible, the liquid volume. She stuffs a bunch of tissues between her scissor-locked legs, and rolls over to look in my eyes. She has me pinned like a butterfly in a scrapbook. “I Think You’re Just What I Needed,” she suggests, and in a dehydrated voice, I begin to sing.