Maybe it was because I had three aspirin before I went to bed. Perhaps it was because I switched my ADD medication this week. Whatever caused it, I dreamt last night for the first time in years. Even stranger, I recalled each dream vividly. There were three.
In my first dream, I was defending what I had written on my website. I was trying to explain to a Senate Committee Hearing that I really believed in what I wrote on the website.
"But isn’t it true, counselor, if I should bother to call you that," Sen. Leahy asked from behind thick glasses that made him look like my grandfather, "Isn’t it true that you write fiction? That you deny that anything on your site is factually accurate?"
A murmur that was nearly a cliché escaped the Senate gallery.
"Yes, Senator,” I said, "but I write it as fiction to--"
"So you admit it's all a lie?" Sen. Leahy asked again. I didn't like Sen. Leahy.
I was wearing my brown suit, I Remembered, and I thought it was too informal for the Senate. I should have put on my black suit, the one that was woven with light wool that felt almost like silk. I looked around the Senate Chamber. I saw my old boss, the portly senator that I worked for before he lost reelection. He laughed as he walked out of the chamber by a side door.
"Should have stuck to golf, kid," he sneered.
I turned back to Sen. Leahy. "Senator, I use fiction or lies - whatever you want to call it - to tell stories about the truth. It's a titration, a concentration of truth that filters out--"
The Senate Chamber erupted with derisive laughter. Sen. Leahy stood up and smiled. It was a decidedly victorious smile.
"Even that’s a lie, counselor," he said.
I awoke to see the outline of my bedroom window in the dark. I rolled over. My CD changer, a fifty-disk carousel, changed disks. Erik Satie's piano music began playing. I closed my eyes. Before falling back to sleep, or perhaps in that stage of consciousness that is not quite sleep, I thought I heard someone working my door handle left and right. I squeezed my eyes shut and sunk in to sleep.
In my second dream, I was at a bar. It was a large two story structure, not like any bar I have ever patronized. I was walking around, looking for people I knew in this gray room. I ran into a group of women I had known from just before I passed the bar exam. One of them was an ex-girlfriend of mine, a girl I had dumped when I found out she was using cocaine. I grimaced and walked over to them.
"How are you?" I asked with false warmth.
"Great," she said. She wobbled - almost oscillated - on her high heels. She wore a gray cocktail dress and I thought about sex.
"Where is this place?" I asked.
She ignored my question, and I followed the women around. The bar was crowded, but cold. It was troubling me, the dark atmosphere, the flashes of light that seemed to appear from behind me, and the fact that I didn't seem to know anything about the place or who I was with.
I made my way downstairs and found a bartender. I couldn't find anyone upstairs who could make a gin and tonic for me. This bartender, a motherly woman who worked at the local public library (in real life), began filling a tall glass with ice, gin and tonic without being asked.
"Renee," I asked her, "where are we?"
She handed me my drink and waived away my proffer of money. "I don't know kiddo," she joked, "where are we?"
"No really, I need to know," I said.
She smiled and walked away. I sighed, shook my head, and looked for my ex-girlfriend. I saw her with her group of friends. I walked back to them across the dark, now blue tinted room.
"It's closing time," my ex-girlfriend explained. "We all must leave now."
All of the patrons of the dark, strange bar stopped writhing and dancing and began to jostle and shuffle toward the enormous open double doors that appeared at the front of the bar. The doors opened up to a stadium-sized parking lot and the starry night sky.
At my car, which was, amazingly, right at the front of the parking lot, I found a crowd of rowdy kids. They looked to be of college age or younger, and when I deactivated my car alarm, one opened up the back door of my car and took away a giant CB radio console.
"I needed that," I said.
"Someone's in your car," my ex-girlfriend said.
I looked at my car again and a smirking, blond-haired kid was sitting in the back seat, his legs sticking out of the open doorway.
"Get out," I said.
"No," he laughed.
My ex-girlfriend tapped me on my shoulder. "T., she said, "I have to go. My friends are waiting."
"Fine, fine," I waived her away dismissively (why am I so rude? I thought) before turning back to the kid, "but you're getting the fuck out of this car."
The kid smiled at me again.
"Get the fuck out of this car," I said, "or I will beat you and have you arrested."
He just smiled at me, a big toothy television news anchor grin.
"Out, now!" I yelled, hoarsely.
I grabbed him by the elbows when he didn't respond to me and pulled him out of the car. I punched him in the head, wildly connecting with his left ear. The kid dropped to the ground at once and clutched his ear. I bent down and helped him back to his feet.
"That's it," I said, "You're going to jail."
I turned around and walked the kid back toward where the bar had once been. The front doors to the bar were now the doors to a police station. They were open, and, in the warm light of the station, I could see people moving about and friendly, fake oak paneling on the walls. I walked the kid into the police station and turned him over to the desk clerk.
"I caught him and his friend in my car. The friend stole my communication equipment," I said.
The desk clerk told me that he would take care of it, and brought the kid around the wooden barrier that separated the public from the cops. He sat the kid down in a chair next to a government-style, olive drab metal desk. I sat down on the public side of the wooden barrier and picked up an old copy of Field and Stream. It was just like my old barber shop.
A uniformed officer with a stocky build, freckles, and red, Irish hair walked up to me. I recognized him as one of the sergeants that ran the night shift in Red Bank. A good guy.
"You the one with the kid?" he asked.
"Yeah."
"Okay," he said, putting his hands together as he spoke, "We have two options. We can send him to jail or we can let him go."
I frowned. "I just wanted to send him a message," I said.
"I'll be right back," the cop said before walking off impatiently. He went back around the wooden barrier and began talking to the kid. The kid stood up and began protesting my accusations. The officer shook his head. He walked back to me with a bemused smile on his face.
"I told him you were sending him to jail," the officer said to me.
"I just wanted to send him a message," I repeated.
"Look," the cop sighed, "jail or let him go. That's it."
"Fine," I said. "Let him go. I'm not going through with this."
I woke up. I was lying on my back, and couldn't see the ceiling. I brought my right arm up. The luminous dial on my Swiss Army watch read 1:40 AM. Too early to get up, I decided, and rolled over. I grabbed the pillow I had been sleeping next to - it had slipped from beneath my head - and embraced it. I thought of all of my old girlfriends and squeezed it tightly before falling back to sleep.
I dreamt I was back at Boston College, back on my old college campus. There was a mass going on in the grassy bowl by the library. One of the Jesuits was giving a homily. I walked through the congregation, almost fighting to get through all of the people.
A man in the back yelled out. "Can you speak up?"
The priest was using a microphone and could be heard clearly. The crowd shushed the man in the back. I walked past him. He was a fat, balding man with gray hair.
"I said, can you speak up?" he yelled again. I shook my head, annoyed, and moved on. I made my way out of the crowd and up a small hill, one that I didn't remember from my actual college campus. At the top of the hill was a dirt path. The dirt path led to a building where freshman cafeterias were located.
I walked inside the building and made my way to a long, curving staircase. It descended down from where I stood. I made my way down the white marble steps of the staircase. At the second-to-last step, I realized that there was a ten foot drop to the floor after the staircase ended.
"I can't get down from here," I said to myself.
I stood there for a minute. I needed to get to the cafeteria. I didn't know why, but I knew that I needed to be there.
"Well," I said, backing up, "fuck it."
I took a running leap. I landed on my knees and skidded on the floor. When I stood up in this strange, octagonal room that led to the cafeteria, I was wearing a dark blue overall that was covered in dust. In front of me were hospital-style swinging doors. I dusted myself off, or at least tried to, and walked toward the door.
A tan, blonde woman in a cafeteria uniform opened the door. She smiled at me as I walked toward her.
"Come in, come in," she said, "I only have a few minutes before the game."
"Don't worry," I told her, "I won't be a bother if you are serving."
"Nonsense," she said, "I'll make you a roast beef sandwich."
I sat down at a steel serving table, not unlike the one I used to make pizza when I worked for the campus dining service. The room was a warm yellow color. I looked around at the pots and ladles and colanders on hooks around the room as the woman set down the deli sandwich before me.
"I tell you, boy," she said, "things have changed around here.
"What do you mean?" I asked before taking a bite of the sandwich. It was delicious.
"I don't have much time," she said, "but there are so many gavrons here." She was using an insulting Italian slang word I didn't quite understand, but I nodded.
"I don't understand. What happened?"
"Oh son," she said, "And please, eat up, but the kids…." She pushed the roast beef sandwich toward me. "It's changed. The kids are no good."
"Well, how do you fix it?"
"I don't have time," she said. "The game is starting."
"No," I said, "I need to know." I was pleading with her.
"I'm sorry, T, you know. We all have to be ready for the game." She got up and took away my sandwich. I was still hungry.
"Well, no, that's not right. This needs to be fixed."
"You need to be ready for the game," she told me. "Are you?"
"No," I stammered. "I want to work on this. I don't have time for the game."
"That's too bad," she said before casting an evil glare upon my face.
"No!" I yelled.
I awoke, panting.
"Jesus Christ," I said to the darkened room as I rubbed my face. I waited for my breathing to slow down and then checked my wristwatch. 4:35 AM.
"Fuck this," I said, rolling over. I was done with dreaming. I scratched at my beard and sat up. I decided it was time for breakfast.
I was wearing the same smoke-riddled clothing from the night before. I slipped out of my house and walked to my car. I quietly pulled out of my driveway and drove to the Middletown Diner. I crossed over the many hills of my hometown, scanning for deer in the mists of the fields and orchards. A few years back, I hit a deer while speeding past a local reservoir. I didn't want to repeat the incident.
I passed the Middletown Township Police Station and thought about how, in high school, I had an anthropology professor that made his classes record their dreams. I turned onto Highway 35 North and wondered what became of him. The professor's idea was futile; he merely got twenty different versions of horniness and resentment of parents. Sure, there were the occasional aberrations. The Goth kids told of dreams filled with blood and devils. It was the silly sort of made-up shit that made even us too embarrassed for them to crack jokes about it.
I pulled into the Middletown Diner parking lot next to a cop's Chevy Suburban SUV. I passed the short Mexican man who was sweeping dust off of the plastic floor mats by the Ms. Pac Man arcade game in the atrium before the main diner entrance. The Middletown Diner was one of the 1970's era New Jersey diners. Marbleized yellow tile on yellow Formica, mirrors everywhere, and peeling imitation chrome tape bordering it all. I sat down at the counter at the back. In the corner, watching one of the ceiling-mounted televisions, was the swarthy, chain-smoking night manager.
Normally, the televisions were set to Headline News, but the night manager was watching Greek soft-core pornography on this set. Satellite signals beamed across the Adriatic, Mediterranean, and Atlantic, all so he could get his jollies in between furtive glances for eavesdropping customers. To my left was the cop next to which I had parked. When the cop noticed me watching him watching the soft-core pornography, he grunted and left.
I ordered decaffeinated coffee, an egg white omelet, and rye toast. I started reading my book on the Middle East. I felt like a ghost, though, and I let the pages slip away from me. Eventually, I closed the book, its spine crackling as the cover was shut, lit a cigarette, and rubbed my eyes.
I ate my breakfast in silence. On the way home, the local classical music station was playing chant music. It was by Josquin Du Prez, I think, and it made the drive home past the mist-covered fields a hollow, empty moment.
I drove west, and before me, the sky was dark, dark blue. Behind me, the sky was brown and white with the coming sunrise. A bland November sunrise to hint at the gray and black of December. I made it home by 6:05 AM. I slipped in by the back door and up the side stairs, so to avoid rousing my parents.
I stood in my bathroom, shivering in the early morning silence. I rearranged my cologne, my soap dish, and change dish. I looked in the mirror. I rubbed my pallid cheek and lip.
I shaved my beard for the first time in seven years.
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