I don't really live this fantasy. Nor do I think Wales is the Erehwon Llareggub land. I know that life is painful and life is work. And I know ambivalence - oh, hideous feeling! What's worse than feeling two diametrically opposed emotions towards someone? I can think of things worse, but not many, and not many that I have experienced so closely.

But I want to lie down, lie easy, rest a while and forget about it. And I want them all to forget as well. I want them to forget about brawls and peldroed, their mother's affairs, their father's anger, the poverty, the exhaustion, the work, the drugs, the knives and the girl whose tongue was bitten off.

My bookshelves are lined with fairy tales, fantasies, magical stories, comedies. I like to read myself to sleep on the Mabinogi. I hate realist novels - I think it's the ugly product of empire and I much prefer anything that subverts it, like magic realism.

But the men I welcome into my bed are not from that world. The men I welcome need more fantasy than I can offer.

2003-03-17, Fantasy

before / after

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