Looking for Real

Astrology.com said that I would be rubbing up against sandpaper today
So I felt duly warned when I met him at six, in the lobby of the grand hotel.
He ordered two martinis and showed me the (not-so-secret)
Secrets of the seventh floor, uninhabited even by us.

He parked the Porsche underneath the BMW in his toy-filled garage
Wanting to play his latest composition on his newest grand piano
Before calling it a night. He wasn’t done with me yet, he said.
I placed my body against the polished ebony hoping I could feel him while he played.

My heart skipped a beat when he showed me his latest acquisition
Sand-papered acrylic is the latest, he said. I rubbed the distorted tree with my fingers
But I couldn’t feel it either, the painted tree protected by plastic
So I reached for his five o’clock shadow, now desperate to feel anything at all.

Do you ever wear make-up? he asked. I know he wants me polished also
Because I might stand out amongst the waxed cars that could feed a small village
And the lacquered sandpaper acquisition, and the shiny people he will want me to meet.
I see you dancing in a field of daisies, he says. I say nothing to the man who doesn’t see.

I am in their midst, in the Botox ballroom of bosomed blonde women.
They have all come, the beautiful people and for a moment I am infected by fairytale lives
Filled with fairytale stories. But my heart sinks at the sadness they are unable to cover with
Their costly new immortal skins. I hold him tight as I would a child.

Then I leave the museum he calls home where we had hoped for respite from our lonely lives
And I know that he will sleep well in his perfect bed near the fireplace by the Klimt.
He will wake up early to his perfect life so he can rush about living his perfect dreams with the perfect women that
Belong to him. And soon he will forget the song he played for me or the seventh floor of the grand hotel.

He will not dream of daisies or of dancing French girls. He will forget how to pronounce my name
Then he will forget my name, and soon he will forget me. We will bump into each other in the lobby
Of some grand hotel one day. He will be with some forged woman avec martini on his way to the seventeenth
Floor to show her a secret. And in the flash of my smile he will wonder if he is required to remember me.