The substance of reality (De la substance du Réel)

Recently, I reminded a lover who was once again raving about how flexible my body was that I really worked as a dancer, that was my real job. “I mean my job in real life”, I added after a moment of hesitation. “Real life… that is to say… my actual life… My normal life…My life… Well, you know what I mean!”
My lover looked at me with eyes that seemed to understand, but I noticed a slight blur, persistent though almost imperceptible, a discreet mist floating around his irises, which showed that in fact, he didn’t quite understand.

I was lying naked, still shivering from our embrace. My skin was damp from his kisses, my sex still throbbing with our pleasure. I wasn’t sure I understood either.
At that moment, I certainly didn’t feel like I wasn’t in reality, in the materiality of life in its most delightful form.
And yet, at that moment, my name was Anna,I mean a name chosen by me, far from the one on my birth certificate, an alias, a false name.
I stretched lasciviously, and my lover leaned toward me to kiss my lips.
I had only one desire, to snuggle up against him, overwhelmed by his kisses… We had known each other for what… a bit over two hours?
That’s one of the most spectacular benefits of The Meetings with Anna : sharing intimacy with strangers who, in the blink of an eye, become strangely familiar…
There was nothing fake about that moment… Those embraces? Nothing but authenticity…

Real life? What is it, really?
Suddenly, I had no idea what reality meant anymore.

“In this society of appearances, this Society of the Spectacle, in this age of social media where everyone stages their own life to the point of losing sight of what distinguishes truth from falsehood, to the point where falsehood contaminates and swallows up truth, what does reality even mean?” I asked myself the next morning, as I walked in the gentle morning sun, strangely cheerful, my body numb, satisfied by the night it had just spent, toward my home, my apartment, my life.

Windows open. The smell of coffee brewing. A light cool breeze lifting and lowering the curtains, almost in slow motion. My heart still swollen with happiness.
I take my sophisticated lingerie out of my bag, a gift from my lover, garments I slipped on immediately for our mutual enjoyment. I wash it by hand and hang it up to dry above the bathtub. It will then go back to its box where other fine lingerie awaits it.
Anna’s lingerie.
It’s not that I can’t wear such lingerie in my everyday life, but let’s just say it’s more seldom. In my everyday life, I might scare people, wearing suspenders and pearl harnesses, it might seem out of place, as if I were dressed up or dressed inappropriately. What excites men in Anna’s encounters can strangely turn out to be intimidating in the life of the woman  behind the mask…

But I love dressing up. It is no coincidence that I am a dancer. It is no coincidence that I love performing.
The lingerie, given to me by my lover for the night, I love it, I loved wearing it, I was turned on by wearing it.This is reality.

The pleasure shared with my lover that night was real, felt by both of us.
This is reality.
An encounter.
Encounters.
Because that is what I am looking for, through Anna as through my others, always : encounters with my fellow humans. Deep, true encounters.
And sometimes, I have learnt thanks to living life to the fullest, that in order to get a better encounter with others, you have to take detours…

Isn’t that what I’m looking for via Anna, as I do with my plays and performances, reach other lives but mine ?
A reality that I wouldn’t normally have access to?
A reality that is harder to get hold of, to catch, but all the more so dazzling?

I take a sip of my now lukewarm coffee in the sunlight rays that are still streaming the window through my apartment. The curtains seem to flutter in time with my breathing.

Far from being fake, what I experience in these encounters, as in my plays, is more like the ultra-real, in a way.
The ultra-life.
That’s why I chose to transform myself, at night (or sometimes during the day), into Anna.
Beneath the mask lies authenticity.
Anna, in a way, is freer, because she exists in the unreal.
The real unreal life.

Un jour j’irai vers l’Irréel
Un jour j’irai vers une Ombrelle
Y seras-tu ? Y seras-tu ? sings Alain Bashung, whom I love so much, in the background.

Isn’t real life those moments we snatch from the relentlessness of existence, whose the flavor of which is too often diluted in everyday life? Isn’t real life those intense interludes?
I believe so.

When Anna and the person curled up inside her, in every millimeter, become one.
Dear Lover, it is me, us, right here, very much alive, who welcome you, who discover you, who embrace you!