The Truth About Us

“You knew they weren’t dolphins,” she sobbed, “I fucking hate you!”   

Despite being fiercely unsentimental in almost every way, she believed in the magic of dolphins. She really wanted to see dolphins.

So we’d left the city for a holiday at the beach town where I grew up. 

I told her there were dolphins there. We’d see them.

But during long coastal walks we saw nothing and I worried about her disappointment, which made me fear for our future.

So without telling her where we were going, I took her to a headland where many lonely sailors had been shipwrecked  because from a distance the rocks that surfaced through the waves looked like frolicking dolphins inviting men to share their joy.

And sure enough, it wasn’t long before she gasped: “they’re here!”.

She pointed at black humps surfacing in the distant whitewater. 

We walked back to town as in love as two people have ever been. We stopped at tourist shops and bought souvenirs: a china dolphin and a dolphin oven glove. 

Then we went to the old wharf pub and drank to our love and to dolphins. We even started talking in dolphin language, laughing at how we could actually understand each other. 

But she wasn’t laughing when she came back from the bathroom.

She’d seen the old map on the wall, she’d read the legend of Dolphin Rocks and she knew she still hadn’t seen dolphins.

Fear of not being loved had wrecked us, like so many before.

Analogue social post: bus stop, Redfern.