He:  She had locked her dreams in a chest, buried, and guarded by wild dogs, because she knew that I would steal them from her if she just left them about on the bed. I did not have any left myself: I had lost everything in a memory I could not remember any more, but that had earned me at least a few hundred pounds.

My bed felt like a stranger tonight. A deep of the night that was not mine; a dream that was hers. How could that one have escaped her attention?

She dreamed about someone I had never been.

She: He was skinny so he was beautiful, with eyes that reflected so many souls, that I kept hoping his was not lost, but floating somewhere between those others.

“Don’t you even remember if you’ve ever kissed someone?” was the first thing I asked him. I wanted to kick myself, but of course he did not remember that was a weird question to ask at a first encounter. He did not reply, but told me about the salesman who had saved his life.

He: I did not have any memories, except of the word “I”, and that belonged to me, so I made everyone call me “I”. I could not remember why I did not have any memories, but fortunately, I had money, and money can buy you a lot if you know the right people. And if you only know yourself, it does not take long before the right people know you. They were the salesman and the girl.

She: “What have you done?”

He did not say anything, but waited for my anger to subside.

“What have you done? You mean he didn’t save your life, but that he sold you a life.”

“Who cares? What makes your memories more real than mine?”

“Mine are real.”

He: I was not a tramp but a clochard, a troubadour. I sang: “Drink my drunken dreams, let your wild dogs go, dream about me every night so that I can remember you every day. Drink from me and stay with me and stay mine. I’ll bring you back from the market every week, ok?” I was not drunk, only on Thursdays, when I threw us both a party to celebrate my past and her future. I drank a sip of wine from a paper bag, just because it fit the picture so nicely.

She: Knowing something is not real, does not make it disappear.

I was very aware that I was wasted from the moment I stumbled over my own feet, poured my wine over his feet, and cried, “It’s Thursday, you bastard!” He asked who I was and whether I felt alright. “Your hand’s bleeding,” he said. He took my arm but I pulled myself loose and fell.

“It’s nothing.”

When I regained consciousness with my face sticked to dirty tarmac, he whispered in my ear that he would have paid even more if he had known that I would be in this memory. I tried to crawl away from him, but I did not have the strength.

No, even this I did not want to forget, not even for him. I only wanted to wake up. I only wanted my dream back.

Knowing that something is real, does not make it appear.

He: She fled away from me, but I followed the sound of her fear and the scent of her blood loss. Pain in my ears made me crazy, and I did not understand what was happening. She was a memory from centuries ago, she could not be real, but I still had to try to embrace her. To tell her I was sorry. “I’m sorry, you wanted it yourself. Why do you run from me? I know you dream about me.”

Her wrist existed in my grip.

“I don’t like dreams. Either it’s a nightmare I want to wake up from, or it is a beautiful dream that when I wake up suddenly proves to be only a dream,” she whispered without looking at me.

“Why did you disappear when I kissed you?”

“You’ve never kissed me. I would never let you kiss me.”

I shrugged.

She: Do you know the feeling? That you suddenly lose your identity because you only want what he wants? My hand has stopped bleeding. I want to be the music that licks the blood from his ears.

He: “Why are you still here? You don’t even know who I am. I don’t even know who I am.” I had forgotten if I had ever known her name.

“I think I’m addicted to your addiction (she wrapped myself around me, and licked the edge of my ear). Today, you were a troubadour (she bit my neck), and tomorrow, you were maybe a dream walker (she kissed my wrist) or moon writer.”

“What have you done to your hand? It’s bleeding.”

She turned away, took my fantasy with her, and only left a scent of loss.

She: I woke up from him pricking a knitting needle in my ear. Where the hell had he found that?

“One, only one. One. Please. Just let me. One. One one one.”

I slapped away his hand. “One what?”

“A dream. One dream please. I want to stay in your memories, but can I please have one of your dreams. Just one.”

“Keep that needle away from me and kiss me, that is what I dream of.”

He: It goes faster when someone points out the incongruities, but in the end it always goes the same. Your mind becomes clear: this is the only moment you are truly yourself. An overwhelming feeling of emptiness follows. An emptiness in your head that makes you want to stuff everything you come across up your ears and nose like a two-year-old to feel filled again. It is not nice to be caught while you are trying to put a half full bottle of wine or a tin of dog food into your ears. People start to suspect things, and put you in rehab. As if all drugs are made of matter. The ultimate drugs are other people’s memories.

Emptiness starts liquid. It oozes unnoticed at blood temperature through your pores into your body with the smell of glowing iron, of burning blood. Rash. Red rash on the inside of your head. Itch. Itch itch itch. People say you should ignore it, that it is only in your head, and they are right. It is only in your head, where you cannot reach it with your nails or your teeth, or a knitting needle you are trying to stick in your ear through your eardrum, fighting against your girlfriend who is holding your arm, and noiselessly screams that all of it exists only in your head. She is wrong. My head is empty. Is anyone actually holding my arm? I have forgotten her, whoever she was. My head is empty.

This is the only memory that is worth nothing.

She: Every Thursday, he went to the market, and when he came back, he was someone else. It was Wednesday night. I could not restrain from telling him about our previous meeting in his previous past, and just like all previous times, I held him while he did his best to scratch his eyes out, and to abort his brain with a knitting needle through his ears, and bit me in my hand in a wound that was still open from the previous time.

He did not care; he was so sure I did not exist.

I did not care. I was so sure I was dreaming.

He: My head was full, my wallet was empty, and it was Thursday. I caught her scent of loss in the streets near the market. She carried her dreams with her in a necklace; one for every link, and I recognized which ones were about me by the shine I also saw in her eyes when she looked at me. Could she not see that she would choke if she sold the salesman any more links? If I was not in her dreams any more the way that she was not in my memories any more, would we still exist?

She: I had never dreamed. My nights were black, and eventually I stopped sleeping altogether to feel closer to the memory of his kiss with the scar on my hand pressed against my lips. It already started to fade. I would not sleep again as long as his kiss was still tangible in a frayed relief and a throbbing pain.

h

Story and image by Charlotte Velinga