Talk By Roche Monologue

I saw her as the cloud of smoke cleared. The air was rich with the smell of intoxicants, but I could’ve smelt her from a mile away. She didn’t smell of anything extravagant or dreamy or clichéd or romantic. She just smelt of fresh laundry – that crisp smell that makes you think of something new and exciting. It’s hard to say much about love-at-first-sight and be taken seriously. But I fell in love within a few minutes of meeting Rochelle… Not the kind of love that compels you to cross seven seas… just the kind of love you can’t help but feel when you see a gorgeous woman whom you could never dream of having, the kind that sends a dagger through your heart and makes it flutter at the same time, a kind of hopeless love that’s preparing itself
Inhale. Talk. Inhale. Talk. We did everything else perfunctorily. The French came off her tongue mellifluously; my own, crude and half-forgotten… She talked of the life she had led for the past several years. She talked of how she had sold all her possessions and given up her relentlessly secure life to become a nomad. She was the sound of the Seine in France, the warmth of the deserts in Chile, the radiance of the snow in Sweden, the aroma of the Greek islands… It was all too good to be
In that moment, she felt too sacred to touch. I relished the tacit longing between us. Physical contact, after all, is overrated. Intimacy is all-important; intelligent conversation – doubly so. You cannot appreciate the pleasures of the flesh without experiencing a powerful yearning that drives you mad… We were living in the moment; we were drinking in each other…

Surely this is a dream, I thought. I dared not take my eyes off of her. Here I am, in this serene and wonderful hamlet, and I am a beautiful stranger’s captive, I thought. The Germans have a word for this kind of situation, I thought. I wondered what it was. I tried to recall, but I was distracted by a stray lock of her hair dancing ever so tantalisingly against her porcelain cheek. I thought, I thought, I thought… Is this sonorous ache what they call love?

Our travels were both quests in their own ways. We had crucial things to ponder: the nadir and zenith of human consciousness, the questions of life that came to us as we sat underneath the stars that night. We were both trying to find answers, to gain clarity, to put things into perspective. Rochelle called it the road to self-discovery; I called it the road to self-invention. She was trying to find out who she is; I was trying to find out who I wanted to be… We were so alike and so completely