The first dream I can remember having was about a girl- two girls, in fact. Twins, Basil, twins. The Twins, Wendy and her sister whose name I can’t remember, were in the year above me in primary school, and as far as I can remember treated me as a bit of a pet. The dream, however, was like this: for some reason, we were all in some kind of Greek mythological setting and in a large cave or underground chamber, with torches burning and the twins enthroned like goddesses and sentencing me, in the form of some errant hero of legend, to death or torment. If I were genuinely crackers, I might conclude that something really did happen on a psychological level at that moment- that the moment they set the Furies on me, my general sense of unhappiness with my life was born, together with the torment of perpetual rejection and disdain by the female sex. I have no idea, however, what was going through my five or six-year-old brain at that point, but one of the common causes of tension in my dealings with women has been that I tend to idolise my current favourite and allow her to torment me, because at some basic level it’s what I’m made for.

The reason why I bring this up isn’t just to be self-indulgent, but because in the last couple of months I’ve had a couple of dreams which still relate to my dealings with the ladies. The first involved being at a meal with Nicole Kidman; she had gravy on her face and I couldn’t bring myself to tell her. The second was about seeing Rose McGowan without any make-up on- not an unpleasant sight, but nothing compared to seeing her in her full glory. I think these are trying to tell me the same thing. Nicole Kidman and Rose McGowan are both women I’ve thought of, at different times and in different circumstances, as an ideal of female beauty, but the image I have of them is manufactured and manipulated. They have their flaws, as does everybody, and are as incapable of living up to my ideal as the woman in the chip shop. And so the conclusion- part of the reason why I’m on my own is that I’ve spent sixteen years chasing after an ideal that can’t exist, and even if it did, wouldn’t have anything to do with a fat, bespectacled, currently unemployed, underachiever like myself. I don’t honestly know if I’ve rejected anybody down the years who could have made me happy but didn’t fit into my ideal, but there must have been a few in sixteen years.

So where do I go from here? The fact of the matter is that at the moment I have a couple of female friends online whom I idolise like crazy and then a loose circle of acquaintances- I don’t really have any close female friends in the material world and in my current circumstances I’m unlikely to make any. What it comes down to is that I’d like to be in a relationship in the same way that I’d like a garden or I’d like to be able to get all my food at M&S- in my ideal world, it’s a trapping of existence rather than a connection with somebody else who completes you. Because that would mean spending time talking to somebody- and one of my worst characteristics is that I get bored with people very easily- and being with somebody you alternately love with all your heart and who frustrates you beyond measure. And I can’t do emotional complexity. There’s a slight chance that one of my online harem might come to be something more, but given that the friend involved came out of an abusive relationship a couple of years ago, I’m not sure that it’s right to pursue that until I’m in a place where I want to bring something more constructive and giving to a relationship. Besides, that would mean learning how to trust and let somebody get close, which I absolutely don’t do. Ever.