prostitution, partying, and megastores

Guess who had another group-trip dream? This one was to Italy (or an Italy-like country). In the first part, I was walking around an old city square. It wasn't as idyllic as it sounds, though. There were various construction things around (those wooden sidewalk-cover tunnels, mostly), and a fair amount of trash. There were also a lot of youngish men loitering and walking around*. They were invariably small, kind of greasy, tackily dressed (tracksuits, gold chains, and curly mullets figured prominently), and they were all, in various languages, propositioning me for favors. The most common was "how much for the night?" I found that I understood perfectly what they were all saying, and a tiny part of me was exulting at my perfect understanding of languages I didn't really speak. I didn't take the propositioning too seriously; it was kind of annoying and unsettling, but I figured that it was a cultural thing and that they weren't targeting me in particular, just any female in a certain age range.

After that I was with my dad in a gigantic semi-outdoor home/garden/decoration megastore. My eye was caught by a display of wrapping paper on sale--there was a really beautiful Art Nouveau-ish design with red poppies, and some colorful Josef-Frank-esque botanical designs. I was trying to decide on a couple to buy, since I don't use that much wrapping paper. The more I looked, the more confused I got. I saw some very cute designs that were very original and would be really good for wrapping kids' gifts--but then I remembered that I don't give that many kids gifts. I finally decided I should just go with the two I had seen at first, since I had been there so long (my dad was being extremely indulgent, pretending to root around and be genuinely interested in the wrapping paper while waiting for me). Once I decided on that course of action, though, I could no longer find any that I wanted, let alone the two I had seen before. All I could see were disappointingly unoriginal designs that looked pretty lackluster up close.

I decided to give up on the wrapping paper and accompany my dad to look for some item he was looking for (which had been the original purpose of the trip). I commented on how gigantic the store was, and recalled that Curly Sue had told me of being on a business trip to Houston (??!) and killing time in a similar store.

After that, I was with a larger group (still in a vaguely Italian place) including my husband and some assorted acquaintances from college. It was in the evening, and activity plans were being negotiated. Several of us were lounging on a huge couch/bed thing, and suddenly a girl I had known in college threw herself down next to me/on me John-and-Yoko style. I was a bit taken aback at this sudden incursion into my personal space, but didn't try to make her move because I was cold. There was a lot of tedious back-and-forth in the group about where we would go and what we would do, and it became clear that the group members were all very !Party!Party! types. I found myself agreeing to go out and "party" with them. Not being much of a partier in real life, I was surprised at myself, and even more surprised to realize that although it was getting late I wasn't tired at all. Of course I woke up tired after that.


*An eerily true-to-life detail, from my limited experience in Italy.

chubby and manly?

I hate to displace the great dream below, but if I don't I'm going to forget this. I've had three depressing low-self-esteem dreams lately, three nights in a row.

1.
All I really remember from this one is suddenly realizing that my posterior was WAY bigger than I had been thinking it was. This didn't really fundamentally shake my self-concept, it was just really weird and very surprising. My first thought was, "well, I guess I didn't need to be worried about having a lack in that area", and my second thought was, "oh, I guess I should start exercising more". I also wondered what other aspects of my self-image were totally inaccurate.

2.
This was the worst one, and I was discombobulated by this one for a while after waking. It was in the course of a much longer dream in which I was in Italy on an extended vacation with my parents, sister, and grandmother. We were staying in a huge rented villa. It was a very old building with a lot of weird rooms and strange layouts resulting from hundreds of years of add-ons and modifications. There was also some very unattractive carpeting and paint (think a church basement/fellowship hall with carpet that was cheap thirty years ago).

At some point I was attending a wedding in a nearby church. I don't know who this wedding was for, but the curious thing is how I was dressed. Normally in a dream like this I would have gone through an agonizing search through a weird assortment of very detailed clothes, but I don't remember a getting-dressed sequence in this one. I do remember what I was wearing: an oversized sports jersey (hockey?) tucked into a rose-colored below-the-knee early 90s pleated skirt and topped off with a squarish navy blue cardigan (??!). I had my hair straight and parted on the side, and I remember being satisfied with how I looked [although, at the same time, my always-awake editorial review board was strenuously objecting to the outfit].

I entered the church and wasn't sure which side I should sit on, not recognizing any of the guests. I had just chosen a spot when an older man stationed on the opposite side of the church said--loudly--"young man!" I looked around to see who he was addressing, and he repeated it. Somehow I realized that I was the "young man" in question, and I tried to make him understand that I was not a young man. He was not to be dissuaded, and getting more and more worked up. He said, "young man, don't argue with me!", and went on to bluster that my lack of a tie was inappropriate and that I was going to have to leave until I could produce a tie.

Needless to say, it was extremely humiliating and destabilizing. I think everyone else there pretended that nothing was happening as I beat my retreat.

Later on in the dream, I had an exchange with Lindsay Lohan, who seemed very depressed and a little needy. We talked about how cruel the "entertainment media" was to publish pictures of "Stars without Makeup" and dissect celebrities' appearances when they didn't look any worse than your average person on the street. I got tired of the conversation pretty quickly, but I felt bad for her and couldn't figure out how to extricate myself without hurting her feelings.

3.
The third dream involved a couple of my real-life friends. We were eating in a restaurant somewhere, and one of them (who in real life is the most tactful person you could ever hope to meet) commented on how much I was eating. She said, "yes, I've always been amazed at how much you can eat and how often. I could never eat that much. I guess that's why you're chubby with a belly." This was said with a perfectly straight face, as if it couldn't possibly be offensive to me, so I figured I had better respond in kind, as if it were just a normal discussion about anything else.

jumping on the snippet bandwagon

Here are some of my recent snippets (no full-scale plotlines for me lately):

• I was staying in my aunt and uncle's house with my parents (aunt and uncle weren't there). My dog (the giant, hyperactive one) was there too, and my mother had stayed up all night with him in the living room watching tv. To the average layperson, this wouldn't sound so funny, but the idea of my mother staying up all night watching random tv movies with my large dog is so unlikely as to be hilarious. I had woken up early and wanted to go out to do some sightseeing (apparently my aunt and uncle's house was in Italy!). My mother wasn't ready to leave the house after her all-nighter, and I was a little impatient. While waiting to see if she was going to accompany me I noticed that the bathroom shower stall was all dirty and scuzzy, and was self-righteously scandalized that they hadn't cleaned it for incoming guests*. I tried to use some Scrubbing Bubbles product on it, but was frustrated because it didn't foam properly. Then I gave up waiting for her and went out, where I bought some overpriced and weird-looking (orange?!) Spanish tortilla and some similarly overpriced coffee from a streetside stall manned by an old man.

• Then another night I had a dream in which I missed a train due to poor time management and ended up having to spend the night at a nearby anarchist commune. In the dream, I knew a lot of the people there from past periods of my life, although I'm not sure, apart from one or two, whether these were dream people or actual real-life acquaintances. I was just getting settled in and over my frustration at having missed my train when people started saying that I guy I do know in real life had come back from a long trip (the implication was that this had been some sort of meaningful quest). They were saying that he was going to rest up and decompress before coming out to mingle, and the implication was that he was some sort of returning hero.

• Then last night the only dream bit I remember was that I was supposed to do a science project (you know, like a science-fair/ science-class project). As expected, I didn't have much time left in which to do it, but I wasn't too worried because my plan was to have "Curly Sue" and her sister help me--wait for it--capture a small crocodile. That was going to be my science project, a captive miniature crocodile. I don't really know where the location of the dream was, but it was somewhat exotic and the ground was covered with a swampy groundcover. When you looked closely you could see that at close intervals in the groundcover there were tiny crocodiles in a dormant state. I knew that once I started trying to capture one it would become active, though, which was why I needed help. I figured it wouldn't be too hard with one person to grab and hold the body and the other person to grab the snout (?) and hold it shut; a third person for backup could be nice too. Unfortunately when Curly Sue and sister showed up (with their mother and possibly some other extended family members) they were considerably less enthusiastic about the enterprise than I had expected. Due to their lack of enthusiasm, I decided that I should go with my science project backup plan, an origami model of a double helix (here again, I was somewhat hazy about the actual details involved in its fabrication).

*Ironic considering the squalor in which I usually live.

how to have interesting dreams

Use your cell phone as an alarm clock, because that way you can press "snooze" an unlimited number of times and wake up just enough to think "this is a really great dream I'm having" and then go back to sleep and continue it.

The downside is that afterward you can't remember everything. I do remember that we were buying a really great old house in Italy. I was also, for some reason, babysitting some spoiled little kids. At another point, my husband and I were taking our dog for a run. He was driving his work truck, I was driving a car behind, and the dog was running between the two vehicles. It seemed like the perfect setup, and it didn't occur to me to wonder how the dog was managing to run so fast for so long. She seemed to enjoy it, but worked up a huge thirst and afterward jumped up on the kitchen counter of the Italian house to drink directly from the faucet.

Then, after it had been established that we were buying the house, we had to pack to get back to the airport, because we were going back to the U.S. for an unspecified period of time (the house was apparently a vacation home). One of my former roommates was there, a couple of random friends, and lots of objects from my past life were scattered all over the house, which made it difficult to hurriedly figure out what to put in the suitcase.