LAST NIGHT I DREAMED OF HIPPOS ON THE BEACH

‘Why are there hippos on the beach?’ I asked the lifeguard.

He looked like an older Tadzio from Death in Venice, clad in striped concentration-camp pyjamas, conscious of his beauty. He answered my question with a question. ‘You’ve heard of liposuction?’

I nodded.

‘Well these hippos are here for hipposuction.’

Which seemed, by dream standards, a reasonable explanation to me. But I wondered what would happen to the discarded fat. I hope it wouldn’t go back into the sea.

'It will make sandwiches for the local population,’ he said. ‘It’s a delicacy.’

But my wife, a psychodynamic couples therapist and an expert on my dreams, thinks the sandwiches are an evasion technique. The hippos on the beach, she tells me, symbolise the elephant in the room.

‘What elephant in the room?’

She laughs. Ask yourself,’ she says, ‘why people walk away from you at parties.’

‘Do people walk away from me at parties?’

‘It’s worse than that. You empty rooms.’

‘What’s that got to do with hippos?’

‘The hippos stand for the dead weight of your obsessions. People are afraid to come near you.’

‘Because I carry excess fat?’

‘Don’t be literal. People flee from you because they don’t want to be harangued by you. You’ve become like the Ancient Mariner. People are frightened by your glittering eye.’

‘You know the difference between the Ancient Mariner and me?’ I ask. ‘He killed the albatross, I AM the albatross.’

‘There you go again,’ she says. ‘Hippos, elephants, albatrosses…’

‘Jews…’

She walks away from me. . .

I hope that you will be more patient. You aren’t married to me, after all. And remember that the Wedding-Guest who stayed to listen to the Ancient Mariner rose the next day a wiser man. Sadder too, but let’s skip that. Should you wish to follow, however, you will have to navigate the paywall. No one said wisdom comes cheap.