Manoukian, Author at The Pure Life of Dreams

April 11, 2025July 26, 2025

Argentinian Alice with the Thick Hair

Siobhan and I stood in the center of the room and looked around. Behind us there was a woman in a yellow dress. She was a local, an Argentine, and when I looked back at her again, I saw that her pubic area was naked and was covered with thick black cotton balls that hid her vagina. The shape of that cotton ball hair was a little off from a regular isosceles triangle because the right side was slightly longer than the left.

Through the door and along one side of the next room, up on bleacher steps, in a corner, sat two couples, one couple on the next step up from the other. The women were pressed against the wall by their men who sat facing them. The couples were naked, and obese, and their blanched flesh hung loose around them, while the man of each couple buried his head in the folds of flesh on the chest of his partner.

(At first I thought the two people against the wall were women but so obese they were I could not be sure – fat pasty white skin dripped from all four people and disguised the shape of each person’s sex.)

When the man on the top step pulled away from his mate I saw a necklace with a thin gold strap and green pendant hung around her neck. He must have been sucking on the pendant, I thought.

Of course Siobhan wasn’t having any of this.

She wandered off into the next room and I would follow soon after. The woman in the yellow dress, would follow with me. I learnt that her name was Alice.

It became clear to me that we should indulge these locals, pay them a few pesos but with Siobhan around, payment would be unlikely. I lost track of her after the next room and had to use the locator app on my iPhone to find out where she’d gone.

The next area was outdoors, but it seemed that Siobhan had disappeared to the main enclosure where there lay a circle of prehistoric stones. I hurried through to find her but was sidetracked once more by a room off to one side, where there were gathered more prostitutes.

As I walked in I thought that we should be offering money to them too, for their nakedness.

This time I wanted to broach one of the women. I walked along the corridor, and it was lined with bamboo walls and bamboo benches on either side. Couples sat on the benches and wrapped their arms around each others’ naked bodies – men indulging in local women this time, for sure.

I returned to the main room and stepped into the enclosure where the stone circle lay, but Siobhan had already moved along. I hurried under a stone arch at the far end of the enclosure, and went through to the next area, where there were trees covered with black monkeys who sat on the branches and looked mischievously down at me.

At first I wondered whether to put away my phone in case the monkeys would steal it, but instead I took a picture.

To one side of a tree was Siobhan, in a grove to the left of the entrance. She was surrounded by the monkeys. I raised my camera and took a picture which perfectly framed her, and the monkeys around her, and the tree with its snaking branches.

As I turned away from Siobhan, she cried out, “Take a picture of me!”

“I already did.” I replied. “A perfect one.”

Picture by Modigliani uploaded by Benoît Prieur to WikiMedia Commons.

March 30, 2025April 25, 2025

Dark Room Reunion in New York City

We sit in a darkened hotel room in New York City, curtains drawn, Siobhan and I, and I’m in my undershirt and blue boxers.

We are waiting for the arrival of Ruth and FG from the UK.

I haven’t seen them since way back when, and I’m excited to see them again after all this time. When I hear their voices in the corridor I wonder whether to put on trousers because I have a slight erection from the anticipation.

It’s too late. The door swings opens and Ruth comes in first followed closely by John who at first I think is FG’s husband but, up close, I realize that he is Ruth’s husband.

As Ruth walks towards me, I come round the side of the bed, squeezing between the bed and the TV sideboard. I must lean forwards to greet her, I realize, to keep my boxers away from our hug, so that she won’t detect my arousal.

We have a delicious hug, my arms wrapped around the curve of her shoulders, and she kisses me on the cheek. Her dark curly hair is still black despite our ages. It brings back cozy memories of the past, though we never had a thing. It was the writing that was our bond. And suddenly, it doesn’t seem to matter that I’m in my boxers.

Then John, a big burly man, comes up to me and we have a big handshake and a brief hug. It’s good to see him too though we’ve never met before.

Behind John is FG. The cold light of the hotel corridor is behind her and I have fully circled the bed. I am now closer to the door when she and I hug.

FG and I have an even tighter embrace, for she was my first girlfriend, and the memories there are even stronger. Her soft curls are darker than the ginger I remember of her hair then. She smells of Pears soap and fields of sunflowers.

FG and I kiss on the cheeks but in our tight embrace, we fall onto the bed and her crow like black eyes look at me, as if she can see into my memories, or worse, she sees the picture I don’t want seen, developing in the orange light of her photographer’s tray. Her soft curls feel like a down pillow on my cheeks.

We roll across the bed and accidentally, roll off the other side, the side closest to the window. I push out a leg to break the fall as we hold onto each other, and with my ~~right~~ left leg planted on the prickly carpet I stop us from falling to the floor.

Instead, with our bodies hugging in a friendly way, the way of old friends but with a hint of what could have been – only a hint mind – everything seems alright.

Photo by Danny Birchall via Flickr.

October 3, 2024June 9, 2025

True Face of Thai Dancer is Reflected in the Books

Now I have my tickets I head towards the big top tent of the circus. The tent has a maroon covered canvas and in one corner and on a platform there is a group of Thai dancers in long maroon tunics, colors matching the tent. There are both boys and girls there and they dance in a steadily rotating circle and wave their arms above their heads.

The platform is surrounded by a red and brown painted picket fence which protects them from falling and a ladder leads up to their platform. At the top of the ladder two stacks of hardback books guard the entrance either side.

I am standing on a separate platform the same height as them but a few yards away, and decide to take a picture.

I step down to ground level and walk over to the ladder going up to their platform and from the bottom, I hold up my iPhone and aim it between the two stacks of books.

The face of a Thai dancer comes into view in the entrance as she circles the platform and though my iPhone is almost out of charge I take the picture and it captures the partial profile of the dancer’s face between the books.

Another woman with same maroon tunic sees me capturing the picturing.

“Hey!” she calls out accusingly as I look down at the picture on my camera.

I need to escape to the canteen.

Although only the front of the dancer’s face and her nose was visible through the entrance (her hair and the back of her head being hidden behind the left hand column of books), and although the ledge of the platform hid her body, her face is visible in its entirety, visible square on, in the reflection from the books.

Her face is lit in a silvery light. It is flat and slightly square and is framed with short straight black hair. It’s as if the books were acting as a mirror.

I am standing at the doorway leading into the food hall when the woman who called me out catches up with me.

I show her the photo, show her dancer’s face fully visible in the reflection from the books and the woman holds up her phone.

“Air transfer it!” She says but my phone’s battery charge shows red.

The woman is taller than the dancer whose photo I took and I suspect she is the leader of the group.

I hold the phone up and at first the transfer will not go through. I check my bluetooth and try again.

But this time the woman brings her phone flat against mine so that they are face to face and touching. This time the photo transfers.

The woman turns away from the doorway and the food hall tables and calls back to the dancers, “Hey, I got a picture from Bethesda!”

Did I reflect the real picture of Anyamanee in my story about her?
Blossom photo by Brett Sayles via Pexels, saturated for effect.
Thai dancer photo by Neo Siam via Pexels.

September 25, 2024July 21, 2025

The Meet Up and the Rats

We sat at the top of a brownstone, a windowless attic given over to one of the weekly meetups for writing. The room had rows of brown varnished stiff-backed chairs that faced the lectern at the front. And the lectern was mostly used by the organizers so I didn’t read that night but some others did.

September 19, 2024October 3, 2024

Perseverance in French

I dreamt that I signed up to teach an algebra class in French. But I struggled with the language, mangling the tenses as I practiced, recalling the words with difficulty. But I did persevere.