Two Seven Two: Threads 7

This passage came to me in April of 2018. My friend in the Land of the Long White Cloud sent it to me with neither backstory nor context. She told me that it was something she'd found on her  XHD where she keeps all the secret memories of her past. There's no date on it,  and no names. I wish she'd told me more, and of course I wish I could see more things that she has hidden away on that XHD:

Back then I wasn't good at asking for what I wanted. I wanted to ask him to make just a little bit of room in his life for me. His wasn't a life you could slide into without thought or care. His kid was very sick. I didn't want much. I wanted us to walk our dogs together and go for drives up the coast. We fucked for a while and he just made me feel so good. I lived alone then, and he would turn up at random times. I would cook us dinner and we would watch TV, my head in his lap.

And now...his boy is all grown up and cancer free. His wife left him. He isn't too subtle about looking at my tits. Maybe he is remembering the nights he came on them and the mornings he squeezed my nipples while he fucked me from behind. He is still loud, and funny, and a bit of a goof brain. He wears glasses now. I never thought we were going to end up together; it was a moment in time. But I remember how good he could make me feel and how hungry I always was for him.

It's a melancholy story, isn't it? A married man (her weakness, back in her early and mid-twenties), the sick child, the knowledge that it was all hopeless from the start.  I do wish I knew more about it all. She says that even post-affair, he's someplace where he can see her. Did they try to rekindle the affair? Did they sleep together again? Whatever was the conclusion to all this? I hate it when there are stories that I see that have no context and no conclusion. That's the quondam academic in me.

In September of 2018 I asked her about the life she imagined for herself. She wrote me this about the daydreams she had for her imagined life:

i work at the local arthouse cinema. it's generally pretty quiet. between selling tickets and making coffee and showing people to their seats, i do crossword puzzles and read. i watch a film everyday. i walk to work. i wear skinny jeans and graphic tees, and a cardigan in the winter. i have an older lover who takes me out for dinner and is fond of me. i live with a grumpy old cat called tom. i never really made friends in the city, and i spend most nights with my books. i am content.

I replied to her that same evening, with my own daydream:

I love this idea. I can imagine being in a small town on the coast near a little liberal arts school. I work at a small bookstore, selling books to students and sitting by the coffee machine and reading. Once in a while I teach a History course at the little uni. On weekends I kayak around little coastal inlets and picnic with you on the beach. We have a garden and a small verandah where we read. Our little beagle Frederick sits with us, happy to be loved. We listen to Cigarettes After Sex. I wear slim jeans and oxford-cloth button-downs and black tees. We cook for each other and sit in the evenings and watch the sky and sea darken. Our lives are quiet and simple.

I miss sharing daydreams with her, and I miss the lives for the two of us that we constructed in our heads. I miss the idea that one could be content.