The Challenge of Three Wishes

George Miller’s 2022 film Three Thousand Years of Longing revisits the tale of the genie granting any three wishes, which apparently can only lead to ruin and was food for thought on my recent hikes.

I started with the obvious…1. Wealthiest person in the world 2. Power of Invisibility 3. Crazy fun sex with a multitude of gorgeous women. (Which would be good for at least 10 years. Maybe even more?)

I reconsidered and focused on more of who I am. 1. Publish several novels to critical acclaim 2. Produce several films to popular acclaim 3. Lots of crazy fun sex, etc.

And then I realized that maybe I had fallen into the trap of this game and tried to dig deeper…1. Rediscover the wide-eyed rapture of life 2. Not feel like I always need something else to be happy 3. Help society in a more fulfilling and less self-destructive direction.

The satisfaction with the last set lasted all of a minute and I returned to my first try. Being invisible with lots of cash, and, yeah, you know the rest, that sounded good to me.

Finding My Sex

I made the commitment. It seemed the right thing to do. He loved me and I knew he was a decent person. The fact that he had been married for thirty years and was leaving her, coming out now, demonstrated all that I needed to know. I had taught his daughter in high school. That was how we met. But then I realized that I wasn’t a woman – after assuming I was – and was still pining for the idea of my college sweetheart’s breasts.

I told him I couldn’t go through with it. It’s true that I had waited until after the ceremony was over, which both his daughter and wife had attended. They were devastated. They had accepted his decision to be with me and now I had humiliated him. I apologized profusely. I had made a terrible mistake and couldn’t go through with it now. The daughter would not see me and I left the wife in tears

A Return to Innocence

We agreed to marry in Florida in a small place by the beach. She was everything for me. We had loved each other many years before, my first love, but that had been broken by betrayal and selfishness. The intervening years had only proved what we had missed. It was such an obvious thing, but she reverted to old ways, unsure and scared of coming too close again. She couldn’t go through with it, in spite of my prostrations and cajoling. And then it was back to the old ways, making stands, walking out, calling again, trying to reach across that torturous gap.

It didn’t work. There seemed to be hope and she was still there, but all conversations were through others, attempts at sex were in vain. I confessed that I saw nothing in free love. She insisted that bodies were only that. I comforted myself with games of exploding balloon Frisbee, jujubes and singing along with The Grateful Dead. And it almost worked. A beautiful young woman came to me, undressed to her wonderful glory, and I was into that.

But then she had other things to do and so I entertained a whole retinue, played the role of sage with drinks in the fridge. There were so many, and I never had time to think, even if I did, not able to get the thought of her out of my head, the wonder of what we had, like flying into an unknown land and never waking up from that.