Tara Campbell’s “Wasted Wishes” provides a unique take on a notion we’ve all dreamed about: having our own personal genie. How would you spend your wishes? What would it be like if you knew the genie well? What if, perhaps, you fell in love? Campbell’s story throws real life at an age-old tale, and the result is “Wasted Wishes.” Enjoy!
Wasted Wishes
by Tara Campbell
His eyes always look so tired now. He seems too young to have eyes that weary; but then, I have no idea how old he really is.
He tells me tales of long ago, of his life among pharaohs and kings. If this is true, I ask, then how did he wind up here, telling his stories in an apartment on the Upper East Side? Sometimes he’ll say he doesn’t know; that his bottle changed hands too many times to count. Sometimes he’ll just sigh.
We met at a party at a loft in Chelsea. I didn’t know whose. He didn’t know either. I was impulsive, a closet radical with a job in banking. He was—still is—beautiful. We spent the weekend at my place, rolling around in bed until noon, floating out into a soft-focus world for coffee, ordering dinner in before plunging back into bed.
Weekends stretched into weeks. We would part ways in the morning, and he would come to my door almost every night with a flower or some small gift. He never mentioned where he went on the few nights I didn’t see him, and I didn’t ask. A current of mystery flowed around him. It lifted and whirled like a delicate veil winding around my shoulders, an elation that moved with me through our first months together.
Read the rest of this story, here.