M

The Dream

Call him “M.” 

He has no face.  More to the point, I've never met him face to face.  But lately, he's been haunting me: in my waking hours, during the day at work, and on the treadmill in my gym.  He hovers overhead when I'm out with my friends, or after I've fallen into a deep sleep.

Last night, he made the final move.  He became alive, vivid, and invasive.  After I had run in a 12K race during the day and feasted on sushi afterwards, I decided to turn in early, but once again, he forced his way into my dreams.

In my dream, he called me out of the blue.  He said that he had a headache and wanted to come for a visit.

I said, "Sure, I'll make you steamed fish and dumplings. Then afterwards, I'll make you wu nong tea and that will cure the headache. How about a massage too?"

He came right over.  It was 10:30.  For the first time, he stayed with me, in my bed.  I made love to him, or rather, he made love to me, and suddenly, I had him in my mouth. That's when I woke up, shaken and violated.  He had finally made his complete intrusion, without even giving me a chance to defend myself.

M is dark-haired and lean, with a deep voice.  He’s a powerful executive during the day, and at night, he’s a sensitive musician who listens to my ramblings and writes songs about them.  I have no idea who he really is, what he actually looks like, or if he actually even exists, but I've fallen in love with him.  Last night, his image became so clear that I could not fall back to sleep when I woke up at 2 a.m.  It was Monday morning, three hours before I had to catch a plane and leave for my computer consulting job in Salt Lake City.  I just laid in bed -- alert, awake, and afraid.

M knows everything about me.  He knows who I am, what I am and where I am, but he doesn't know what kind of impact he has on me.  He just casually invades my heart and sucks the living energy out of me, one breath at a time.

In the middle of the night, I lit up the room with candles and turned on my computer.  I decided that there was only one way to battle M.  I would document his presence through my writing.

Philadelphia

M came into my life about 18 months ago.  At the time, I was heartbroken, sitting in a little hotel room in Philadelphia in November.  I was staring at my computer monitor and thinking what I could do to win back an emotionally abusive boyfriend.  Like many women who enter into dysfunctional relationships, I knew the rules all too well, but I couldn't help myself.  It was like going into debt at the crap table.  I was a red-eyed gambler with nothing left in the world but some flying dice.

M took a chance and knocked on my closed door. 

“How are you?”  he said.

“Piss off,” I told him.

I was in no mood to start a conversation with M.  The truth is, I wasn’t really sure if he existed or not.  Anyway, what I really needed was concentration.  I needed all the strength I could gather to hold onto a relationship with another man who didn’t love me and who never would.

M took me by surprise.  He stuck around.  I hate being patient, but after awhile, I finally broke down and began talking with this man.  I needed a new friend, even an imaginary one.

At the time, I only had a few distant acquaintances back home in San Francisco, 3000 miles away.  I had tortured them enough with my sad and obsessive story about a man who wanted me no more than a paying client wanted a good whore.  I needed someone to deal with me emotionally.  I figured that M would listen and get scared away, and then I'd find another imaginary friend to chat with.  However, if he could listen and perhaps even help, I might still have a chance with the man in my dysfunctional life.

M didn't care how I looked, what I did, or whom I was with.  He didn’t say much, but he claimed that he was from New York City, the same place my abusive boyfriend lived.  That alone was good enough for me to start pouring out my stories.  I needed an audience, but M just laughed in my face.  He tore my story apart, one piece at a time.  He concluded that the man I was obsessed with was simply a user who liked to play games and who was great at it.  For that, I hated M.  I wanted him to tell me how to win back my abusive boyfriend, not how to forget him and move on.

I decided to ignore M.  I decided not to give a fuck about who he was.  I was fairly sure I had simply invented him, and I could make him go away just as easily.

Spring

Spring came.  The sun lit up the ground.  I returned home to San Francisco from the cold misery in Philadelphia.  The hills around my house had turned green.  I felt better.  My mother would say, "Coming home is good for your soul.  It’s a symbol of life, a source of energy."

I thought I'd left M behind, so far behind I'd never see him again, but I was wrong.  I had somehow taken him home with me.  I just didn't know it yet.

One night out of the blue, my phone rang.  It was the same deep voice I had heard a million times in my head.  I was convinced that M was actually real.

He began asking me questions.  "How are you, my friend?  Are you doing fine?  Are you still sad?  Are you going to be okay?”

From that point on, I was addicted to his voice and his genuine concern.  There would be no way out.  Imaginary or not, he was there to stay.

M represented karma for me.  He made me feel that someone out there, perhaps God, has a grand plan for each of us.  I could not deny what fate handed to me.  I wanted to accept whatever it happened to be with grace and learn to live with it.  I felt that M had come into my life to save me from all sins and all misery.  Despite his elusive appearance, his energy was superior and earthy. 

I knew very little about M.  He claimed that he lived close to the Empire State Building and worked in a large corporation in Manhattan.  At night, he wrote songs and played the piano. He was a man who needed nothing from me and who came without any designs on me.  His only goal was to make sure my completely lost soul would somehow return home safely.

Gradually, I learned more about M.  He was a highly successful and intense perfectionist who lived his life the way he wanted.  He was the suited image of corporate America, as well as a passionate musician.  As time went on, I also learned that the love of his life had met him at the same time I’d met my emotionally abusive boyfriend, and also left him at the same time I had been dropped too. With only that much to go on, our relationship began to develop.  We had previously fooled ourselves by singing songs of timeless love and eternity with the wrong people.

M started to see more of me than I'd allow others to see.  I think that he became convinced that I was emotionally disturbed but not hopeless.  He insisted that I lacked balance.  He felt that I had many sides but that the truest one lived far beneath the surface and that few people had ever seen it.

All my life, I’ve only wanted to be normal and to blend in.  My only wish is to be just a face in the city and to be unrecognized.  M became convinced, though, that he knew more than I did about myself.  I believe that his grand design was to make sure that my dark, depressed, and unstable sides never overwhelmed the bright, happy and stable me.  M became my guardian angel.  I simply didn't realize it at the time.

As time went on, M saw me growing into someone new, someone who's generally more optimistic.  He was not convinced, though, that my heart had healed enough to allow someone new to enter.  For that, I become furious.

"How dare you to judge me?” I said one night.  “You’re just an imaginary friend.  I don't need you.  You never helped me anyway!"

I attacked him with a vengeance.  I couldn’t stand anyone second-guessing me, especially him.  I couldn’t find the words at the time, but what I really thought was that he was blind not to have sensed how much I loved him, and how deep my emotions toward him were. 

If he really did exist only in my imagination, then he should have known he only lived inside my head and nowhere else.  He should have known that if there was anyone in this world I could fall in love with, it would have to be him.

First Encounter

One night, M appeared in my dreams for the first time.

In the dream, it was a dark winter day.  I flew to New York City.  M had invited me over to his parents' house for supper.  I sat there, feeling completely alone, my unsettled eyes examining the living room.  The home was a brownstone, very Victorian and very dark, with antique decor from the 18th century.

He was doing most of the talking.  He told his parents that I was just a friend of his.  They looked me up and down.  They tried to figure out what was behind my very calm and smiling face.  I wasn't about to give in.  I maintained my coolness, returned their glances, and passed the test.

Since then, I have had frequent meetings with M in my dreams.  Most of them are inscrutable.  There are exotic ones, sad ones, unwanted love ones, and til-death-do-us-part Titanic ones.  I simply can't decipher them all.  But I do know that M is no longer just an imaginary figure.  He has to exist somewhere. 

I became obsessed,  impulsive, super-sensitive, passionate and impossible.  I decided to take him everywhere I went: to Macy's Christian Dior counter, to Sausalito, to the Golden Gate Bridge, to the Snowbird ski slopes, to Pier 40, to Golden Gate Park, to Palamino's, to 1930 Shanghai, to the Starlight Room, to Henry Dentons', to the St. Francis Hotel Piano Bar, to the Chestnut Bar and Grill, to Union Square, to the Marina, to the 24 Hour Fitness Gym, and especially, to Angel Island, whenever I went sailing.

He was always there, so much so that that I could easily start a conversation with him.  At night, he would crawl into bed with me, kiss me goodnight and hold me tight.

“Sweet dreams, you little one,” he’d say.  I would doze off instantly.

In my dreams, he became even more animated.  He was no longer just an image I carried around.  He had taken on a form of his own.  He demanded things from me and got them.  He would guide me, and he would drug me with happiness.

Love Hazard

In my waking hours, I tried not to think about M.  Late at night, when I was still wide awake, I allowed myself to be vulnerable.  If there was someone out there who had planned for M to come into my life in order to save me from misery, I wanted to know why no one could understand my yearnings for his love.

Someone must have told M, perhaps the same one who decided to send him into my life in the first place.  Someone should have at least warned him to be aware of the love hazard ahead. 

I sat in my living room and stared at my TV screen for hours at a time.  Unstoppable tears would come down.  Sometimes, M was asleep during my waking hours.  Sometimes, he didn't hear me.  Even if he did hear me, he didn’t always respond.  I felt that God had given him to someone else.  Someone else had him in her arms when I needed him the most.

I would cry my eyes out, like a child whose toy is given away to her cousins.

I would demand, "Give it back, it's mine, mine, mine."

I would beg, "Please, let me have it back.  I promise I'll take good care of it.  I promise.  I have so much to give.  Just give me a chance and let me prove it to you."

I would question, "This is so unfair, why do you give it to me and then take it away from me?  Why can't I keep it forever?  M is mine.  He’s all mine.  No one else should be entitled to him.  I know how to make him happy.  I have the ability, the drive, and the motivation.  You just wait and see.”

Of course, M didn't hear me.  He chose to come and go whenever he wanted.  He chose where to stay and whom to stay with.  He didn't always choose me.

I risked my last sense of pride by writing to him.  I declared my loyalty to him, forever.  I prayed.  I waited.  I didn't hear back.

M liked the way that things were working out.  He thought that I was a big risk.  Out of nowhere, he arrogantly threw words in my face.

"Darling, I know you more than you know yourself.  Your heart is not healed enough to love.  I cannot meet you just yet."

I was frantic.  How dare him to take my request so lightly?  How dare him to deny my visitation rights to my own imaginary friend?  He laughed at me because he thought that I was a child throwing a tantrum, and because I'm an Asian woman who was behaving tragically, like my female ancestors.  He conveniently disappeared whenever I started to need him. 

He never used to refuse to help me, but then he began to realize that I wanted him more than anything in the world.  I began to find out that M is a very human creature.  Like me, he's afraid and torn between his feelings and his intellectual obligations.  I sense intuitively that he and I would become the love of the century, if he allowed himself to join me.  I insisted to him that I'm not being dramatic.

M took a coward’s approach.  He decided to appear only in my dreams, night after night, even after I'd promise myself that I shouldn’t see him anymore.  He would start by caressing me.  Then he would become demanding and forward.

Last night, he took me into the bedroom and guided me through the most delicate erotic points.  He made me scream with pleasure, and then he forced me down on him.  I woke up just in time to complete my ecstasy.  Then I found myself shivering under the blanket, shaken by intense emotions, and feeling betrayed.

"How can you do this to me?" I asked in the darkness.  "You have no right to invade my life like this.  You coward.  You piece of shit.  You can't take me down and wear me out like this.  Come on out and show me your face.  Tell me that you want me, but don't hide there in a dark corner and wait for me to become unconscious and then attack me when I'm totally vulnerable."

He didn’t answer.  M disappeared.  I couldn’t find the right channel to tune in and speak to him.

Echo Me

I can never tell anyone this.  They'd think I was completely insane.

My few friends would tell me, "Just get over it. You need sex.."  I don't know what it all means, or perhaps I do know what it means, but I simply cannot face it in reality.  Despite how crazy this may sound, I’m convinced that M does exist.  He can't just be imaginary.  He knows me too well to be just a phantom.  He has to be real because he too has flaws like I do, but I can’t find him.

He chooses to come and go as he pleases.  He teases me, yet he seems to be too sincere to lead me on.  He obviously cares about me or he wouldn't have stuck around for eighteen long months, but I just can't locate him.  I can't see his face, hold his hand or touch his body.  But somehow, I'm also convinced that if he does really exist somewhere in this world, he would be able to feel how I feel.  He would be able to sense my volcanic passion, and he would be willing to echo my feelings for him.  I just don't know when.

From now on, I will start to look pretty every day.  You may think I'm crazy, but I swear that one day, I will meet M.

Maybe.  I wish I knew when.