I don’t dream about anyone, except myself.

I’m led into the confessional booth and sit in the small chair. There are candles and incense burning and the whole tent smells overly sweet. A man sits across from me, in another little chair, and when he speaks he puts on a phony Southern accent. He cleanses my palms with a wet cloth. 

Jus’ saaay whatever ya need ta saaaay, he says.

I swear I can hear his east London accent seeping through on the hard consonants. 

See, this is why performance art never works. It’s almost always impossible to forget the performance part.

I giggle and wait, finally mumbling, I don’t know.

He encourages me to speak; to confess. He keeps rubbing my palms and I think of the line of people to get in here. I had better confess, and I better do it soon.

Finally, I spit out the words:

I hate this country. I never should have moved here.

Oooookkkkkaaaaay, he says slowly. Whyyyyy?

I pause, try to think of a reason. What comes out is this:

I hate…I hate everything.

(It’s the best I can do under pressure.)

He looks surprised, and he ties a tag to my wrist. I look at it in the light when I exit. 

It reads: Wrath.

I’ve been marked.

I’m led to another dark booth and handed a sign. Immediately, I turn it around and read what it says.

Flashbulbs go off. One, two, three. When I exit, I’m handed a polaroid. It develops slowly, tigerstripes of color melting into solid shapes. The picture is of me, reading the sign. I know that I was supposed to hold it like a placard, like a badge. But there I am, face obscured, reading the sign I was supposed to be showing. My impatience having gotten the best of me. My curiosity having won out. As always.

The sign worth reading and not showing, it said:

It’s all in your head. Seek professional help.

I think that’s always something worth keeping to yourself.

–

He orders for us both, and he does it in Italian. He and the waiter go back and forth in a language I don’t yet know, doing what I assume is a light debate over menu items – what is best, what is fresh, what not to order. I sit there, all American and not caring, and eagerly await the food and wine to come, ordered by a real Italy Italian and not a fake New Jersey Italian…you know, like you.

Have you ever just known that someone was for you? he asks me.

Sure, I reply, completely devoid of desire to get into this.

Because, if I were to answer honestly, I might have said something like, I knew he was for me the moment I saw him. The first time we kissed. The next time I saw him and every time after that. Yesterday. Today. RIght now. Despite it all, still, right this second. Watching you eat all the colors of the Italian flag, I think mostly of him and how he’s for me.

But I say nothing, instead asking, What about you?

Yes, he says. One time, I had this girlfriend. We sat in her kitchen one night, talking, and out of nowhere she stood up and asked if she could make me a sandwich.

 

I wait for him to go on. He doesn’t. Instead, he refills my wine glass. 

That’s it? I ask.

That’s it, he says.

A sandwich.

Yes.

Don’t all women do those sorts of things? 

No.

They don’t…bake you a coffee cake on Sundays? Hem your trousers? Leave you a love note in the pocket of your overcoat?

No. For those things, I would need an Italian girlfriend, he says casually. And even then…I’d have to be incredibly lucky.

The clarity is overwhelming. I feel like I’ve had the wind knocked out of me. Oh my God. I’m an Italian girlfriend. And you never appreciated it.

–

He spoonfeeds me dessert. I feel ridiculous and free.

He pays the check. I feel grateful.

He gives me his jumper and his arm as we walk. I feel warm and silly.

He sees me home. I feel comfortable.

–

Look, I say as we near my building. I know you have a girlfriend; I met her.

Did you shake her hand, he asks.

Actually, I think I did shake her hand. Not that it matters if I did or if I didn’t. I won’t do this. 

Do what?

I won’t be the one who causes problems, I say.

You’re not.

I’m not what – the one or causing problems?

Neither. Both. Do you want to talk about this all night, he asks.

No.

–

 

You stand here, he said, putting me against the arched doorway of the kitchen. 

He stands opposite me and says, Now I’m going to kiss you.

It has been twenty months since I’ve kissed another man. His mouth feels square in mine. He is not you and I remember how I woke up this morning, sad, back in that place. It happens sometimes – every four days or so, I wake up melancholy and wistful. Typically, it arrives overnight, in dreams, and I just can’t shake it when I open my eyes. That’s all; that’s all it has to do with. Nothing else.

–

Before he leaves, he asks when he’ll be able to read some of my writing.

Four hours. It took him four hours.

It’s taken you a year, nine months, one week, two hours, ten minutes, forty-three seconds. Fourty-four seconds. Fourty-five.

You would probably never ask. After I was your dutiful Italian girlfriend. After I left you love notes, hemmed your trousers, baked you all variety of edibles, charmed your mother, helped you with your taxes, redid your resume, organized your closet, bought you special soap that wouldn’t irritate your face…

After all that, you never fucking asked. 

–

He left his jumper hanging over my kitchen chair. It’s still there, a beacon of things (not) to come.