Fantasy

• Lori Palminteri
• Uncategorized
• May 3, 2024

One time, I was dating this younger guy and I asked him if he had any sex fantasies. He paused for a moment, thought about it and said, “um, no.”

Aghast, but trying to keep my face from showing disappointment in this ho-hum answer, I pressed further. Perhaps he was being coy… “no fantasies whatsoever, nothing you’ve seen on film or thought up or toys, costumes, drugs…”

“Not really, no.”

My god. All these years I’ve been complaining about attracting weirdos in New York, and I get a normal guy and I know for sure I’m not with someone I belong. This relationship didn’t last, but this is not about this relationship, or about sex fantasies (sorry, but this is a free blog).

Life, as a whole, will never be a fantasy or fairy tale. Life, likely, will disappoint you more than it will blow your mind. But if you’re a dreamer, you don’t have to despair— despair will come as naturally as ants trying to invade a house in search for food as the weather warms. With willpower, some blind bravery, and luck, you can exist in these moments of fantasy, if only for a little while.

Sure, you can be a full time comedian, sidelined by a pandemic that almost makes you homeless, and then you land not one, but two writing jobs, and you’re like, “hey, I’m not a failure! I’m doing it!” And then you’re in Hawaii, writing and surfing, living your actual best life, only to be replaced by artificial intelligence, and then you have darkness on your mind.

And sure, I’m not without my little wins that bring me moments of, if not hope, fun. Like when I get checks from Sirius XM for playing my comedy album. Or I get to go on the road and open for people I admire like Jim Norton, Colin Quinn and Adam Ferrara. Dip back into the fantasy for a while.

It’s all going to work out (you believe only when you’re half drunk).

When life isn’t manufacturing enough of a utopian mirage, gobble psychedelics like Hunter S. Thompson to see the rainbows that are always there, just hiding from us. But they’re always there. Just like the loaded gun in your hand, a different kind of fantasy.

I remember what it’s like to be in love, but like when you don’t surf for a while or if you don’t go on stage for some time, you start to believe it was only ever a fantasy that you could drop in on a wave, or make hundreds of people laugh at once, and not a reality. Anyone not terrified of falling in love has never been in love proper. Fantasies, like adventure, are filled with some sort of peril, inevitable heartbreak.

When I’m with my nephews and niece, I’m living in their imagination. Of ninjas, mermaids, and… trains.

Mostly, these days, I fantasize about running. Sometimes while I am literally running, which I do a lot of these days (I look so good naked, I still can’t believe that guy didn’t have any fantasies when a naked Lori asked him). Almost every voice in my head is telling me to run. More out of boredom than fear. I dream about opening a book store in Hawaii, which, I’m reminded by my own brain, is a stupid idea. “Are you actually retarded?” This is how I talk to myself. “A book store?! Why don’t you open a Radioshack. You have a better chance selling one of your screenplays than profiting off a bookstore, especially in a place like Hawaii where people can scarcely read to begin with. How many people did you meet in Hawaii who were bibliophiles. How many people did you meet that even know what that word means?”

I make a good point to myself. Hawaii isn’t the most literary of places… “But it would also have a little cafe and sell surf stuff.”

“This fantasy is asinine.”

“All the best fantasies are, are they not?”

Since I was a kid, I’d spend the whole school year fantasizing about summer. Not too much has changed there. The waves washing away all the bullshit between me and my supreme happiness. Where all the animals I dreamt would swim with me, do indeed visit me… dolphins, turtles, whales, seals, stingrays.

How many people barely get to lick their fantasies and I’ve bitten them off and chewed them. Tasting sweeter than a Tate’s chocolate chip cookie. Can you be grateful and long for more? Can you gracefully accept that fantasies are like eating an ice cream cone under a fire work show: Temporary. Can you have the courage to go on. The resistance to the demon’s fantasies.

But I’m old enough to know, that dreams and nightmares are made of the same thing. Can you stand it one more day. You don’t have to stay here and listen to anyone anymore. You don’t have to listen to yourself either. That’s some dream.