The crush

I had a dream I was at a guy named Kyle's house. In real life, I've always had a wicked infatuation crush on him. There were men  all around drinking and laughing, all of them in jeans and tshirts. I was hanging on Kyle a lot and I couldn't stop smiling. We were looking at and adoring each other. There was no doubt about what was our minds.

He was drinking Jack Daniels. I smelled it and immediately I felt like I was going to vomit. I needed water. I grabbed a plastic cup out of the cabinet and when I tried to fill it, I noticed there were frozen green beans in it. I dumped them in the sink and didn't want anyone to know, so I pushed them into the disposal. I filled the cup while pushing the green beans down and drank some water. They were all laughing and doing shots, raising the glasses to "toast" one another.

I walked back over and said "I used to be able to drink it but now the smell makes me sick." We were all talking, I remember thinking one guy looked familiar but I couldn't remember his name. I hinted to Kyle I wanted to go to his room. He smiled, and his gorgeous face with perfect white teeth reminded me why I always had this crush. We walked up carpeted stairs. He turned on a light and this room was full of plastic partitions with blankets and no pillows. I thought" there's no privacy? You sleep with other people here? No mattresses??" He leaned in to kiss me, we smiled at one another and I said "you're a much different person since you got rid of Candi (his ex)."

He took my hand and led me to a different room that looked like a hostel. It had bunk beds and all of them were made up nicely. He said he had to pay $40 to sleep there. I said I could pay it but I only had a credit card with me, I had no cash. We started to kiss again and a crowd of people flooded into the room. I sat down on a bed and noticed a second later a girl was there behind me. I apologized and went to move, she touched my arm and said it was ok. She had a warm smile and big eyes. I told Kyle I left my purse downstairs and I was worried about leaving it there. I asked the girl if the homeless people would be offended if I went to get it, I didn't want them to think I didn't trust them. She said "oh no not at all, but they would never take anything from your purse."  Then I woke up.

Mr. Clinton's legs and Mr. Cantat's toothpick

I haven't been keeping track of my dreams for a while, but I just thought this recent pair of celebrity cameos was amusing.

In the first, I was working as a personal assistant to Bill Clinton, who was writing his memoirs [didn't he already do that?]. We were sitting and talking about something that needed to be done, and he was complaining about his legs being irritated. He hiked up his suit pants to reveal skinny, pale Old Man legs covered with weird scratches* and equipped with some kind of weird braces possibly meant to hold up his socks.

The second cameo appearance was by a French rock star [who did something terrible in real life that I won't dwell on here]. In the first part of the dream I had been getting ready with some friends for a Halloween party that would take place later that day. I'd been combing through my wardrobe, cobbling together an outfit consisting of vintage items from the 40s through the 60s to go as "an extra from Mad Men", which I saw as a cop-out, but a fun one. I didn't realize what a weird mishmash it was until I woke up; in the dream, I had much more interesting and historically accurate hair (well, historically accurate for the 40s!), and the outfit was going to be tied together with a cute little hat and coral red nail polish.

Anyway, I'd left my preparations to go to an antique store, although not with the purpose of adding to my costume. I was there just to browse, but a group of people caught my attention. There were 5-10 people gathered in a little sitting area in the middle of the store, around a table with lots of drink bottles and glasses. It took me a minute, but I realized that it was a class on cocktail mixing, with an emphasis on imaginative combinations of non-mainstream ingredients. It was being led by a few people, but the big draw was obviously this French rock star, who wasn't teaching so much as he was just mixing things up, imbibing, and commenting vaguely on people's concoctions. He seemed to be getting bored as I stood there observing, and soon just gave up the entire show to a Maggie Smith-like lady who started theorizing about why people were drawn to flavors like carrot cake (sentimental childhood-related reasons, from what I gathered).

I'd been gradually approaching the group because the whole thing was intriguing, and had even sampled one girl's drink, which just tasted like grape juice. Mr. Rock Star seemed to find me interesting for some reason. I fancied that this was because I seemed blase and unimpressed by his status. He started gesturing with his head for us to get out of there, but I stalled by commenting further on the poor girl's grape juice facsimile. I eventually followed him out to a little vestibule that led to the restrooms, where I commented on his large, elaborately carved ivory toothpick (really! and no, I don't think that was some kind of phallic symbol). I restrained myself from commenting sardonically that fancy ivory toothpicks were a nice perk of the trade. For some reason he seemed very interested in spending some time with me (not that kind of time, he seemed more bored and lonely than anything else), but I had to politely brush him off because of the costume party.

What a weird combination of cameos.


*This detail was almost certainly inspired by that gruesome and sad Downton Abbey episode where Bates tries to cure his limp using a metal brace.

Amusement park.. and adoption

I was at Six Flags. I walked in, and got in line for a roller coaster right away. I remember thinking "no one stopped me at the gate for a ticket." I wasn't going to notify anyone. I was looking up at a roller coaster that was going upside down and a twinge of fear started to creep in. (In real life, roller coasters are not scary to me). I saw it go through the same upside down loop twice and I seemed to be fixated on that. I got on the coaster and strapped myself in. I had my cell phone out, I wanted to take a picture upside down while in the loop. My phone was broken, I felt stressed as I tried to put the battery cover back on and the ride was already moving. I had a tight grip on it, snapped a picture and realized I had the camera facing the wrong way. I remember thinking "that was one of the few pictures of myself that I actually like." I fixed the camera, took a picture and attempted to upload it to Facebook... but the ride was too shaky.

I got off the ride and walked into a room where people had many dogs up for adoption. I was always a cat owner and had reservations about owning a dog, but something drew me to them. One of the dogs seemed to really like me, and I spoke to him while I petted his head. I considered taking him home, when someone said the other dog had been severely abused and was in many different homes already. He just needed a stable place where he could be loved. well, that did it. I was determined to take the dog home. They explained to me that the dog was abused by the previous owner. I walked into another room and saw a dog laying on top of the covers, while a woman was laying beneath them. Her head was sticking out and I saw her eyes looking at me. I asked her "why did you abuse this dog? What's wrong with you?" She didn't answer. I continued to yell at her while she looked at me, expressionless and making no attempt to answer.

I took the dog home and when I walked in, my cat seemed nervous at the sight of him. There was another dog there too, but the abused dog just wanted to go lay in a dark room and be alone. He was frightened.

Then, I woke up.

The Moors

The beginning of this dream is lost. The first thing I remember is dark, cold moors. There isn’t a house around for miles. No lights. I have a job to do, but I don’t want to do it. Oh god, I don’t want to do it. But I have to. If I don’t do what I set out to do, my life will be forfeit.

            I smile in the darkness, even though he can’t see it, and grasp his hand. I hope my grip is steadier than it feels. The smile feels traitorous on my face. He drinks more. Good. He’s drunk. Not drunk enough to stumble and fall. I have to make sure he doesn’t drink that much. He’s bigger than me, so if he goes down, I have to do it the hard way. The mere thought of it sends my stomach pitching and rolling like the hills over which we walk.

            Darkness coats the moors like paint, but I look up and read the thick spray of stars well. I know these moors and I know where I must take him. It’s not far, but the bitter wind slices through to my bones and slows me. Neither of us has a heavy coat, but that doesn’t bother him. Alcohol is his coat.

            I stretch out the hand that’s not connected to his and brush something hard and rough. The tree.

            I tell him that we need to wait a minute, but I don’t let go of his hand. Don’t dare. I can’t lose him in the darkness. I lean against the tree, wrap my free arm around it and press my cheek to its crusty, craggy bark.

            It’s warm.

            I know what it looks like in the light: Gnarled and twisted, dark and blasted. Its limbs do not reach for the sky anymore; they’re arthritic fingers, curled into knobby claws by time and age. It’s shedding its bark; it falls off in musty-mossy chunks. Wind and water and day and night have worn away the ground around its roots. They rise from the earth like the backs of sea serpents. He trips over them and almost falls. My heart leaps into my throat. But he leans on the tree to get up again.

            “Don’t touch it,” I almost scream. “It’s not yours!” I screw my mouth shut against the scream pressing against the backs of my teeth.

            Technically it’s not mine either, but I bare my teeth and snarl at him silently. He doesn’t notice. He spilled his beer on the roots of the tree. I want to force his head down and make him lick it off, but there are more important things to get done.

            I don’t want to leave the tree. I draw no comfort from its crumbling existence. Its peeling, pointed bark pierces the bare flesh of my cheek and arm, but I grip it tighter anyway. It is still warm, and that’s what I cling to.

            It’s time to go, I say to myself. You have to. Now.

            I let go of the tree gingerly, feeling like I’ve left my heart impaled on one spiny piece of bark. It’s connected to me only by strings, which spin out like thread on spools as we make our way over the moors.

            It’s downhill now, and I know we’re getting close. I don’t hear it yet, and I hope he won’t hear it until it’s too late.

            There is no moon, which is good and bad. Good because there isn’t enough light for him to read the land and, more importantly, to read me. He’s always been good at that, and I’ve been bad about keeping my heart hidden. Bad because I love the moon. I miss the moon. It anchors my heart. It is my eye, my satellite, my safety, my blanket of light in this always-night.

            He doesn’t notice when I begin to hum. He still holds the empty beer bottle and tips it back from time to time, trying to drink from it. We still hold hands. I try desperately to keep my grip from mimicking the clawed branches of the tree.

                        To my dearest forsaken

                        Who the earth now has taken

                        Empty, the bottle drains no more

A rushing, hushing sound begins to drown out my quiet hums. I’ve been down here dozens of times, but that doesn’t matter. I must be still. Because to most, the sound has no source. It creeps and surrounds, blankets and disorients, makes you scared and dizzy. The very air makes the sound, it seems, and it’s warning you like a rattlesnake.

            But I know better. I know how to find the source of the sound. I close my eyes and remove myself from myself. It used to be a lot more difficult than it is now. I throw my consciousness out wide in front of me like a net and find what I’m looking for. Close. Not even a football field away. Relief and trepidation muscle into my mind and I am sucked back into myself.

            Awareness begins to clear the cloud of drunkenness around him and he asks where we’re going. I squeeze his hand in reassurance, which he seems to accept. We walk. I feel the strings attached to my heart begin to pull. I hum.

                        It is true that I loved you

                        Despite the harm now on you

                        Wash us; the river has you, boy

As we get closer, the sound does not grow or change. It gets colder, though, as we pick our way through the blasted moor grasses, down, down. I glance up. The fog kicked up by the water is separating us from the stars. That’s okay. It’s not them I’m wedded to, not their tiny needlepricks of cold white light. I urge him deeper into the mist.

            We may as well already be underwater. It’s bone-cold and dangerously black. The air, the fog, the sound presses on us like silt on a riverbed. Here is where it gets tricky for me. I don’t know precisely where the drop-off is, so I have to tread like a frightened child, reaching out to test the ground with one foot before I take each step. I tell him not to step ahead of me.

            Even though that would be easier.

            But I still have hold of his hand; if he falls, he’ll grip me tighter instead of letting go.

            I can’t let that happen. I can’t fall with him. I can’t.

            The heartstrings, connected to my heart still at the tree, are nearly taut now.

With my next step I reach out, step on nothing but air. I find the edge of the bank, orient myself along it so that we stand side by side facing the yawning crevasse the river has cut into the flank of the moor.

            Despite how close we are to the roaring rapids, the sound is not deafening. That’s because the water has spent millions of lifetimes carving this never-healing wound; it’s cut so deep into the earth that the sound works so hard to reach us it’s tired and weak when it gets here.

            “It’s warm,” he says.

            It is. The poisonous cold is less here, right at the bank, especially when you lean out over the emptiness. The river ran so deep it must have struck the earth’s vital warmth, which it was now releasing. I look down, even though it’s still too black to see even a hand an inch from my face. The water must be boiling down there.

            I let go of his hand.

                        Here on the eve of too long

                        Where you’ll think I have done wrong

                        Waking in fear of you no more

I am scared. I feel the triphammer-pound of my heart through the strings, which thrum and vibrate and send out a frantic, skittery song.

He is quiet. Still. He’s sober now and beginning to guess why we’re here. I have to do it before he realizes how deeply I violated his trust.

            I have to do it.

            I wonder if he can feel the terror and anticipation baking off me in waves.

            I have to do it.

            I will the soft soil under his feet to suddenly crumble and pitch him into nothingness.

            I have to do it.

            I put my hand on his shoulder.

            If he decides to fight, he’ll win. He’s bigger and stronger than me. What will I do then?

            If I move another inch, the taut strings of my heart will snap.

            I have to do it. Now.

            I take a shuddering, painful breath and push.

            There is a terrible ripping from the center of my chest. The pain is blinding. It tears the breath out of me and I fall back onto the bank coughing and gasping. I clasp the sucking hole in my chest, expecting to plunge my hand into gouts of hot, thick blood, but feel nothing. Not even a hole.

            I feel nothing.

            I lie there for a moment and catch my breath. Gazing up into the stifling blackness, I begin to hum again.

                        To my dearest forsaken

Dearest vow I have broken

Afraid of your angry hands no more

River may help me later

                        Sleeping my lost love for you, boy

Song: "Dearest Forsaken" by Iron and Wine

The pregnant lady

In my dream, I am pregnant. I’m not exactly sure how far along I am, but I know that my belly gets in the way of things like steering wheels, tables, other people, and being close to anything.

            Because of this, the outdoor café table at which I sit is far enough away that I have to look up from the book I’m reading to reach for my cup of tea. I notice a man in a suit in the ironwrought chair across from me. His appearance does not stir any emotional response in me at first except for a mild surprise. I immediately understand why.

            This man is the devil.

            He sits straight-backed and still in the chair, one leg cocked and resting on the other. His hair is sleek, slicked, curly and dark. His skin is pale but not noticeably so; the crisp cream-colored suit he wears compliments his strong, sturdy frame nicely.

            The only inhumanity that betrays him is his eyes: they are bright bluewhite, as if his brain were an electrical plant gone AWOL. His face is no face and every face; handsome but indistinguishable. He does not blink. He does not smile.

            I don’t either.

            “Hi,” I say, closing my book.

            “Hi,” he says in a rich, silky purr.

            I know this man well. We’re past small talk.

            He reaches out an unblemished hand and picks up my teacup. He moves with a fluid, unbroken grace that only exists for him. He sips, never taking his wild, lurid eyes off mine.

            Later, as we talk, I realize that there is steam rising from my cup where there wasn’t before. Every so often I check. The tea never cools. I don’t touch the cup again.

            “Your child will have a good singing voice,” he says in his own sweet baritone that nearly drove me out of my mind with need for him. “Your child will have good eyesight and gentle hands. It will grow wise and compassionate. It will love easily and be loved by nearly everyone close to it.”

            “Nearly everyone?” I ask, the answer dangling just out of reach on the hinge of my mind.

            He nods once, slowly. For the first time since he sat down, his eyes stray from me. I look at him now in profile.  As he speaks, I watch with interest the words riding out of his mouth on a heat shimmer so intense it blurs the color of the space behind him into a watery grey.

            “Your child has nothing to prove to you. But you won’t remember that.”

            I cock my head. I am not angry or defensive or even confused. I am curious.

            The baby kicks me high in the ribs once.

            “I would never ask it to prove anything to me. Unless I were teaching it how to argue.”

            The devil sighs. Twin blasts of heat billow out from his flared nostrils. The air distorted by the heat is mesmerizing. There is no breeze in the cool spring morning, but I catch a whiff of burning leaves.

            He returns his face to me, etched in lines of sadness. Those lines look foreign, alien, on the plain white clay of his skin. His eyes spark with something that is not sadness. It is not greed or rage or lust or envy or hunger or pride. It is not human; it is not emotion. All I know is what it is not. His eyes spark and glitter, and the not-knowing is the water that urges the feeling of unease into full, queasy bloom. It is never outright fear, not around him.

            “What do you gain from having this child?” He asks.

            “The knowledge of another part of myself,” I reply.

            The baby kicks me again, this time low.

            The devil stands up, not even a whisper of silk on silk accompanying his movement. It is then that I notice a song playing softly through the speakers on the café’s eaves:

                        Time it took us

                        To where the water was

                        That’s what the water gave me

                        And time goes quicker

                        Between the two of us

                        Oh, my love, don’t forsake me

                        Take what the water gave me

This song would be playing throughout the rest of the dream.

            The devil rests a hand on my shoulder. My eyes trail up the length of his arm. The suit fits him so well there is barely a fold or a ridge. He’s got his eyes on me, those cold-burning blue eyes, those eyes that have seen the firstborn chaos of the universe, those eyes made of entropy. They uncouple me from the hook of reality.

            When I surface from the moorless depths of disassociation, I am sitting at the edge of a large lake at dusk. I breathe in the dimness, but my lungs cannot expand.

            Partially because the darkness is thick and sticky and it coats my lungs like tar. Partially because the baby has grown so big that it presses against my diaphragm. I cough, but it does no good.

            Darkness drops fully like water from a bucket and I look for the source of my unease.  To calm myself, I begin humming under my breath.

                        Lay me down

                        Let the only sound be the overflow

                        Pockets full of stones

                        Lay me down

                        Let the only sound be the overflow

It’s a struggle to stand. I keep stepping on the gauzy, flowing dress I find myself in. It feels wonderful against my skin, but it’s little comfort. With the smell of rotting lake all around me and cold mud sucking at my knees and feet, I am immobilized by the mire in my mind.

            The moon is broken and sickly, gives off a drunken yellow light that does not illuminate but confuses. I grab at something near me upon which the light sizzles like sluggish oil. It’s an oar.  I pry myself out of the swamp by clawing up its length. My legs are rubbery and uncooperative, so I stand swaying for a moment, resting a hand on my belly and feeling the mud squelch up between my bare toes.

            I can’t catch my breath. But years of dealing with asthma have taught me not to panic and gasp, so I don’t.

            In, out, in, out, in, out.

            There are soft voices behind me. Familiar familial voices.

            Oh no.

            The thought sparks in my head and lights a flame of fear. I know what this means. When I dream of water, I dream of drowning.

            There is a log cabin set several dozen feet back from the lake. Lights burn fitfully in the windows, casting shadows that leap like rabid things over the walls. The voices inside are risen in song. I open the screen door and the flickering candlelight flays me. I cringe and squint and am assaulted by life, foaming at the mouth. My family, extended, adopted, all, is crammed into the cabin. They are exuberant, they are wild, they are loud and completely unlike themselves. They dance as if there is nothing left for them in the world. There is gravity here, and it grabs at my chest, wanting me.

            “Hey!” I scream into the light, the heat, the rush, the motion, the oppressing life. “The water is rising! You have to get out! Get out! Get out!”

            I lean as far in as my arms will let me, my hands holding onto the outside edge of the doorframe for dear life. For a moment, the terror of getting lost in the press of bodies overwhelms the sick, sinking knowledge of the water behind me.

            Nobody hears me. Suddenly, my feet are cold. I jump and look down. Water, ankle deep. Moonlight slathers itself on the little lapping ripples like rancid butter. Still gripping the doorframe with both hands, I twist my neck as far as it will go. The grass is gone. The gravel path from the lake to the house is gone. The creeping fingers of the lake have taken it all. The darkness, I realize then, did not grow down from the sky. It grew up from the water like vines and infected the world. The smell of decay, of murky, evil water, gets thicker. I feel it trickling into the hollow spaces in me, filling me, making me feel heavy and awkward.

            I hear singing in my head:

 They took your loved ones
But returned them in exchange for you
But would you have it any other way?
Would you have it any other way?
You couldn't have it any other way

I rend myself from the doorframe of the cabin and shut the door against the painful light inside, against the rising liquid darkness outside. I pray that my family is safe from the water inside the cabin. I hope that the energy they create will be enough to fight the water back. I cannot help them now.

            The water is knee-deep. My dress is no longer gauzy and light but floppy and sloppy. I slog back toward where the bank of the lake used to be. My leg bumps something. I reach down into the freezing black, curving my back so that my chest doesn’t touch the surface, and pull up the oar I used to help me stand. The water drips off the oar onto my arm and it’s not water but a condensation, a concentration, of the darkness. It leaves oily trails on my arm.

            There is a small wooden canoe to match the oar, but it’s way out on the lake. Yards away. To reach it, I’d have to swim.

            I lay my hand on my belly. The baby has been quiet for a long time. I worry for it. Will my heat be enough to keep it alive in the impossible cold of the water? Will the weight of it, plus the weight of the darkness in my lungs and the weight of the dress drag me to the bottom?

                                   

Lay me down
Let the only sound be the overflow
Pockets full of stones
Lay me down
Let the only sound be the overflow

The water reaches lustfully for my hips. As I wade toward the canoe, I keep an ear trained back toward the cabin. The terrible cold rips the breath from my lungs. It swallows my belly. The baby does not kick. The water licks my neck. I fight the air for breath.

            In, out, in, out, in, out.

            Kick.

            I kick.

            I’ve lost the bottom; I float now, kicking to keep my head above the grabby little waves. Soon, my legs disappear into the numbing black. So I wave my arms and, despite what I’d feared the most, I reach the canoe. The devil is sitting in it. I know it’s him because his eyes slice through the darkness like knives made of electricity. They seem to scream at me. He sings:

Oh, poor Atlas
The world’s a beast of a burden
You’ve been holding on a long time
And all this longing
And the ships are left to rust
That’s what the water gave us

            I know better than to reach out a hand to him. I cling to the side of the canoe. I am past cold, past shivering, and I know that if I don’t get out of the water, both the baby and I will die.

            “You remind me of Ophelia in that dress,” the devil says. “Or the Lady of Shalott.”

            “The Lady of Shalott didn’t drown,” I say.

            “I’ll write your name round about the prow,” says the devil. “Then you can sing me your last song.”

            With some untouchable force that is brother to the darkness, the devil pries my frozen hands from the edge of the canoe. I swallow my panic, force it down into my gut to warm me, give me buoyancy, buy me time.

            The sick yellow-grey moonlight wanes. Only the high edges of things are lit, and even then they aren’t lit but painted with light. It drips from the tops of the trees and falls thickly onto the devil’s shoulders and head. He chuckles deeply as he carves my name into the inside of the canoe. That chuckle finishes what the water started; it crawls into my ears and piles up at the base of my brain, sinking me.

            I sing with the last breath I have:

She’s a cruel mistress
And a bargain must be made
But oh, my love, don’t forget me
I let the water take me

It’s peaceful in the deep.

The arms of the water are no longer crushing. They welcome now; they curl around me protectively as I curl around my belly. The fingers of the water no longer grope and want; they soothe me and smooth my hair and my dress.

            I rest in the black sanctuary. Now that I don’t have the sound of the devil or the cabin in my ears, I can hear the singing:

Lay me down
Let the only sound be the overflow
Pockets full of stones
Lay me down
Let the only sound be the overflow

            It seems to take hours to lift my head far enough to look up at the surface. The last bit of moonlight is fractured by the waves and sluggish fragments float down at me.  They never reach me because I’m sinking.

            I look forward to reaching the bottom. I’ll finally have somewhere still and quiet to rest my head.  

Is this what it feels like to give up? I ask myself.

            The baby kicks once, hard.

(Song: What The Water Gave Me by Florence + The Machine