Flash Fiction: As Told to My Biographer
My biographer asks does your imagination get in the way of your everyday life?
Yesterday an imaginary man visited and sat for a while with my dog Bodhi and me. Bodhi, of course, became confused when hearing me talk to the air. He thought I was talking to him and paid rapt attention before falling asleep in the sunshine. Usually, my characters remain inside the pages of my books where I have placed them. This particular imaginary man must have become bored and decided to pull up a chair next to mine and chatter incessantly about my beauty.
Imaginary men tend to talk excessively about a woman’s beauty only because they think that’s what we want to hear. In fact, I don’t feel the need for all that fawning. I find it suffocating and feel foolish by the notion I am in need of false flattery. I know my beauty has faded and been replaced by a sincere smile that comes from love. But still, the imaginary man possesses a certain allure. Mine is a handsome man with grey wavy hair and a slender build clothed in expensive silk and linen. He even wears an ascot. I glance at it suspiciously as though someone else put it there.
“Did I envision you wearing an ascot?” I ask.
“No, you gave me a bow tie, but I thought it presented the wrong impression. Conservative. I’m really a carefree figment created only to make you laugh.”
“Really, so you have no other purpose. Just a whimsical character for an idle mind?”
“Not exactly. My counterpart in your story is a sad girl in need of cheering. I provide all the words she wants to hear. Lovely words. ‘You are the moon in my dark nights’ and other sentiments that pull sweetly on lonely heart strings.”
“So why have you jumped off the page and come here to sit next to me?”
“Because you need me.”
“But why?” And then, I thought of all the real men who once sat next to me and whispered sweetly in my ear. Perhaps, I miss them.
Yes, sometimes I too need cheering by a man, only a real one. Not a man yanked from the pages of my books and plunked in my everyday world of flowers and lovely musings with Bodhi who doesn’t slobber all over me because I’m beautiful. No. My dog has more reality to him than a character easing from page to page for the sole purpose of cheering up a lonely heroine. Imaginary men never stay put very long. They lack loyalty and a depth of feeling found only in our canine friends and an occasional human who understands the meaning of unconditional love. It comes from a divinity in its purest form. Without attachment. Without the need to be beautiful in order to be loved.
Yes, definitely my imaginary world does seem to overlap into my daily world and muddle my perceptions.
Bonnie Jae Dane
Author of ‘The Book of Husbands — a mostly comic memoir’