“What’s your fantasy?” he asked from across the table. Music blared in her ear and she pretended not to hear him.
She knew the answer. She’d thought about it many nights when she looked around her home. Sometimes, when lying in bed she would look at the walls filled with books or at the paintings that she came to enjoy over the years and it would evolve in her consciousness. Her fantasy did not include exotic trips—she could and did that on her own. There were no occasional fancy of sexual partners or positions she wanted to try—she never had complaints about being boring in bed. Everything she wanted, she did. One thing however, always eluded her. It was something so simple and yet as much as she enjoyed seeing it happen to her friends she never thought it would happen to her. She kept it hidden, a seed of desire that made her sad sometimes. It was an increasingly humbling experience at holidays.
You may think the obvious answer, after that premise, is love. You’d be wrong. Love was something she did every day. How could that be a fantasy? She loved every one of her partners. The men in her life—not all of them bedfellows—she adored. Her family, from parents to nephews, and all the friends between, her heart rejoiced and ached because of the love she had for each. However, each passing year around the holidays, she noticed her fantasy growing dimmer and brighter at the same time. You see her fantasy was not simply to love someone, which seemed like such an easy thing to do; it was to share.
There was an ebb and flow she felt with time. Friends would partner off and leave the circle. And as time continued she wanted to share life with someone. A companion and friend. She wanted to share her library with that person. And eventually, share their knowledge with their child.
“What’s your fantasy?” he repeated.
She ran her finger around the top of the glass and pretended to think, as if the answer was not on the tip of her tongue.
“I haven’t really thought about it,” she said, “I guess—if pressed—it would involve intimacy.” That was all she said, if she would have expressed her true fantasy there’d be no second drink and no chance to share.
