Daydreams I’ve Had About Life With My Boyfriend Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson
Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson can cook a perfect risotto. This requires no further explanation.
It’s recently come to my attention that I am in love with Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, wrestling pro-turned-acting legend. I think about it a lot — specifically about a life in which myself and Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson are together and very happy.
I’ve collated these snapshots for you in a style inspired by legendary website The Toast. The Toast unfortunately shut down before they could get around to romantic fan fic about The Rock. It’s about time this was rectified.
I meet Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson at an on-set visit for the film Baywatch. All the other journos are crowded around Zac Efron, who is shirtless. I’m not saying I have no interest in Zac Efron, but I need to find a toilet, so I leave the group to search for a facility. I turn the corner and — SMACK — right into Dwanye ‘The Rock’ Johnson’s bulging bicep.
I hit the floor, jarring my hips, and look up wildly, for who I should blame. He is dressed down, cap pulled over his flawless forehead. Incognito.
“Sorry about that!” he picks me up off the floor. He is strong; I’m smitten.
“Ahhhhhhhhhh,” I reply. He laughs, all traces of worry fading from his eyes.
“Can I help you there?” He has a booming voice, and a broad smile. He smiles down at me, and I see his eyebrows lift a little as he takes me in — pleasantly surprised.
“I’m, er… ” I really don’t want to say the word “toilet” in front of Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson. He gives me a piercing look, then laughs again. It’s a deep, rich chuckle, like if Santa Claus was sexy.
“Come on,” he says. He takes my hand; his palms are warm, not hot, and his huge hand encloses mine protectively in his. He leads me to the bathrooms. “Here you go.”
“How did you know?”
The Rock shrugs. “I just did.”
We stare at each other for a moment, startled. I wonder, can he feel the pulse of electricity passing between our hands, which are still entwined?
“Hold on!” he cries.
He drops my hand and I can breathe again as I watch him dig around in his pockets. He pulls out a pen and grabs my palm again, pulling my arm toward him. He scribbles something on my forearm. Each time the pen touches my skin is an exquisite pinprick. He returns my arm and I look down. It’s a mobile number.
“Mine,” he says, grinning sheepishly. “Use it. You know, if you want.” He’s blushing; Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson is blushing — at me.
“Maybe I will,” I reply coolly.
He chuckles again, and then he’s gone. I look down at the phone number scrawled on my arm, and I know I will use it.
Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson reads all my work before I submit it to my editors. Did you know he is a grammar whiz? Well, he is. He reads it with his tongue poking adorably out the side of his mouth. He furrows his brow, and I know he’s at a part he really likes.
He looks up at me, frowns, and says, “How do you do it, baby? It’s so good.” I let him pull me in for a cuddle.
My mother calls him “Dwayne”, but my dad calls him ‘The Rock’, because he’s a father, and fathers make those kinds of jokes. Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson lets my dad get away with it, but every time he says, “Stuart, please!”
Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson gets embarrassed easily. He tries to hide it, but I know he does because I can see the blush rise in his perfect, chiselled cheeks.
In those moments, I slip my small hand into his massive one, to let him know I’m there.
Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson is an early riser. He wakes up with the sun. Then he shakes me, gently, where I’m lying beside him. “Baby, wake up. Let’s go for a run!”
I bury my face in my pillow. “I. Am. Sleeping.” He’s like a labrador. I feel him shivering with excitement and pent-up energy beside me.
“Baby, please. I want to run, with you!”
Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson runs a lot faster than me. He knows this. We both know it. I shake my head into my pillow. “Go without me,” I mumble into the sheets, “I’ll slow you down anyway.”
I feel his arms slip around my shoulders. “You will never slow me down,” he whispers, lips against my neck.
Then he gathers me into his arms, sheet trailing, and gets me up and out of bed in a fireman’s lift. I squeal, slapping his arm ineffectually because it’s solid like a stone cliff. He carries me into the shower with him, sheet and all.
I forgive him because I know he’ll clean up later. Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson is a bit of a neat freak.
He is learning the vocals to ‘You’re Welcome’, the song he sings as the demi-god Maui in the film Moana. He won’t let me in the room at first, because he’s too embarrassed. I stand on the other side of the door, knocking gently. “Dwayne, let me in,” I coo through the door. “You know I think you sound amazing.”
Eventually he lets me in, and I play along with him on the piano, slowly, carefully, while he practices. When he sings, he gets this adorable wrinkle between his eyes, and I want to kiss it smooth again.
Later I hear him on the phone with Lin Manuel Miranda. “Lin,” he moans, “I can’t sing. Why’d you guys even pick me?”
I hear Lin laughing, “Buddy, you’re The Rock! Have a little faith in yourself”.
Privately I agree with Lin Manuel Miranda.
I know that Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson is much older than me. In fact, he’s 44 and I’m just (almost!) 27. Younger, even, than Alexandra Daddario, who played his daughter in the film San Andreas. I know it makes him uncomfortable, and sometimes I tease him — “Babe, you’re so old! Is that a grey chest hair?”
But mostly I don’t care, because he is a young spirit.
My favourite movie to watch with him is San Andreas, which he hates, of course. I’ll put it on the big TV and I’ll hear him moan from the kitchen, where he’s mixing us a drink. “Turn it off, sweetheart. You know I can’t watch myself!” I turn the volume right up, and hear him grizzling in the other room.
Then I turn it down and we put on an episode of Please Like Me, which he loves. He thinks it’s super clever, and you know what? He’s right.
Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson can cook a perfect risotto. This requires no further explanation.
Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson is such a dorky dancer. Some nights, when he wants to blow off steam after a long day on set, or a gruelling press junket, he’ll put on ‘Love Shack’ by the B-52s (his favourite song), and he’ll dance around the room.
Sometimes, if I’m sitting at our island bench, working on an essay, he’ll take my hands in his huge, surprisingly soft hands, and he’ll lift me gently out of my chair to dance. And we’ll dance together, dorkily, until we’re both out of breath and sweating.
He dances a little like my parents, actually, but I’d never tell him that.
I know that Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson wants to marry me, but he respects the fact that I’m ambivalent about marriage in general.
When he gets a little tipsy, he tells me he would ask me every day, but he knows that would make me uncomfortable. And it does, because I love Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson with all my heart, and I want to say yes when he asks me, drunk and only semi-joking, to finally let him be my husband.
But each time I just take his large, square face in my hands. I kiss both his cheeks gently. And I say, “Dwayne, one day I will marry you. I promise”. And I will, one day.
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All images: @therock/Instagram.
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Matilda Dixon-Smith is a freelance writer, editor and theatre-maker, and a card-carrying feminist. You can find more of her ramblings about women and the arts on her website. She also tweets intermittently and with very little skill from @mdixonsmith.