I despise it when confusions arise and unplanned things happen in what is supposed to be my personal fantasy. I usually escape them by going into the next level of daydream, by closing my eyes and imagining I am Hugo Lobes, a private eye with ears so large that a couple of pygmy midgets can hide behind each one, both armed with blowpipes.

I am sitting on the top deck of a tram and reading the newspaper and the front page headline screams at me that a terrible gangster is sitting downstairs on the same tram at this very moment, so I get up to make my way down the curving set of metal steps, but my way is blocked by a woman who is coming up. To my dismay I recognise her...

The dame! She followed me into this fantasy!

"This is most unfair!" I roar.

"I go wherever I please," she retorts.

"But I thought you didn't have a choice. It said earlier in this story that you were a dame without choice."

"Precisely. I have no choice but to go where I please."

"You mean that your free will is-"

"Predetermined," she says.

So I vanish into the third level of daydream, the level where I am Bogie Clubs, a private eye with such a big mouth that gibbons could bake pizzas in there without anyone getting suspicious, and I am on the deck of a cruise ship that is heading to the Bermuda Shorts, a pair of islands where a gangster has taken refuge in one of the deep pockets.

A steward approaches. "Would monsieur care for a drink?""

"Gin," I answer languidly.

"What kind?" he asks in a high voice.

"The kind that begins with the letter V," I reply.

"Vodka, you mean?"

"No thanks. Vermouth please."

But he doesn't go to fetch me my beverage. Instead he pulls off his cap and unbuttons his jacket to reveal-

The dame! It's the dame again! That damned dame!

I vanish into the next level.

Now I am Griswald Jerkins, the private eye with a chin dimple so deep that a tram driver with a halberd could conceal himself and pop out and swing it most effectively at the drop of a hat, especially one of those very heavy hats that make a clanging noise when it lands. I am furiously pedalling a unicycle up a mountain path in pursuit of a gangster.

Another unicycle catches up with me, draws level.

The rider is the dame again!

I escape into the next level. I am Morton Punchbowl and-

The dame, the dame, the dame!

Through all the daydreams she follows me and each subsequent fantasy has slightly less detail in it, is less fleshed out, sparser, bleaker, less real then the one that preceded it, and each private eye is less convincing, because I've spent less time working on their identities and environments than I might have done. But fleeing this way is my only hope.

Here's a short list of some of the private eyes I become:

        Mickey Stains.
        Hercule Pompbustus.
        Heston Furball.
        Flippy Masters.
        Duckbreath Chumptaster.
        Ratleg Smashy.
        Occidental Brushtooth.
        Ajax van Scruba.
        Chickpea Bunkerlove.
        Zippy Buttons.
        Gusty Nuts.
        Lemontoe Thumbrag.

And then I run out of daydreams and run out of names and run out of big body parts and run out of time, energy and space, and I find myself, as I'm sure you have already anticipated, completing the circle, closing the loop and becoming myself again, a colossal eyeball inside a pyramid and I glance down and see her climbing the hill towards me.

"Leave me alone!" I scream.

"I will now," she says. "I just wanted to go on a journey, that's all, out of this story and around the world. I wanted to go abroad. I was a dame but a stay-at-home dame. And now I've been abroad, so I'm a dame abroad and a broad at home, and it feels just fine. I climbed up here to thank you but also to ask your advice. I really need to know."

"What is it?" I am frantic to get rid of her. I'll say anything to make her go away, answer any question. And then it comes, she hits me with it, and I'm more acutely aware than ever before that she's a dame, that she has the soul of a dame, the heart of a dame, the plot of a dame, the metaphors of a dame, the grammar of a dame, the power of a dame.

"How do you curl your lashes?"