Mommy, will you take me on a road trip?

I cannot accept I'm human and have to sleep and eat and do the dishes and talk to other people and do the same things over and over again. That is why she keeps telling me I'm nothing more than a player, and that there's nothing wrong in that once I acknowledge it and start warning people before they get the chance to get close to me. But I'm not, really I'm not, I would love nothing more than to finally find my significant other and live happily together for the rest of our lives. It's just that I hate sharing my toothpaste, my half of the bed, my obsessive daily rituals. And not because they are sacred, but on the contrary, because I hate routine, and sharing it just makes it all the more real. Love should be magic, not another chore. Not company while I do my chores, but childish magic, yearning, head-cracking brain-muddling mystery. Or so I used to think, I don't know what I think anymore.

Daddy, will you buy me a little brother? I would ask, because the back seat was always so spacious and lonely. William was okay for a boy-doll, but I lost hope in the world when it fell from my arms and broke and my dad promised he would mend it and then left it rot away in the garage for months before we moved out and they threw all the useless old junk away.

(Picture by Jaime Martinez. (c) April 2006.)