The Language of the Dream

We are such stuff

As dreams are made on; and our little life

Is rounded with a sleep

The Tempest

I had a dream last night my friend, Sergio, picked me up in some 1970s Pacer with a Saxon yellow paint job. Its body was covered in rust like some malignant expansion of pox, and that it pulled up with a phlegmy cough didn’t improve its look either. What a rotting pear ready to be thrown away, but I didn’t wonder too much about where he got it when I got inside. The reason was due to the fact that Sergio kept repeating this story about picking up his Asian girlfriend from the airport in the morning.

He kept bringing it up throughout the night as if it were the only conversation he knew; and every time he re-told it, he made it his priority to make me understand that the most important part was the fact that his girlfriend was Asian. The stranger thing was that he didn’t emphasize this point out of a certain pride, but as if this bit were crucial to understanding the whole; as if this were the kernel from which to make sense of what he was saying.

I listened half-caring anyways so I don’t know why he even bothered. Part of my attention was more focused on the shadowy streets we passed that only seemed to go as far as my mind could create a setting of. Everything seemed incomplete: the car, the barren buildings we passed as he drove, and the simple two lane streets within a short horizon. All of it lacked enough detail to form a single whole. It was as if the world existed within a narrow range of vision and the rest was empty space.

I remember sitting in the backseat because for some reason I thought it was just going to be Sergio and me. I had this whimsical idea that he was going to be my chauffer for the night, but after driving through the obscured city streets of my mind for less than it took me to get into the back, Sergio stopped in front of a browned wooden tiled house with a porch supported by two pillars that held a sheltered roof. The rest of the house was incomplete as well as if it had been build from one side to the other instead of from the ground up.

Two girls came out of the front door, laughing as they shoved each other, and got into the pacer as well. One was a tall, milky-skinned girl with red hair that fell down her back. She looked like she was dressed to go practice yoga or ballet in her form-fitting black sweats. Her arms were bare and I could see the river of ruby moles that ran across her skin. Her friend was much shorter, had Blond hair that was cut to her neck and parted down the middle. She was wearing some silk emerald dress that complimented her soft peach skin and her pretty face. She sat in the back with me.

We drove on only to stop at another tackily-painted house where this time an Hispanic man who seemed to be in his late thirties with some bee-inspired flannel shirt, tight blue jeans, and burgundy leather boots with some tapered design I was too far out of focus to view came out and sat in the back with us. He was silent the entire night. The girls, on the other hand, started chatting to us in a lively language, but one in which I could not understand their words. It felt as if I had never learned how to speak like that—with that tongue or with those gestures. However, It did not matter because it seemed like we were having a good time and getting to know everyone; Sergio with his obsessive retelling of having to pick up his Asian girlfriend, the two girls laughing at their own jokes; and the Hispanic man sitting silently and staring ahead without any sign of interest to what anyone was saying.

We drove on until we arrived at a party, club, or bar, I was unsure of which. I could not distinguish because once we got there it was as if the scene would shuffle between these three points of axis as my mind decided which setting it preferred best. The events at the party/club/bar were a blur except that I remember Sergio getting separated from our group, yet still within earshot to hear his story; the Hispanic man disappearing completely; and myself spending all my time talking to these two girls, not remembering the conversation we had, but it seeming to appear as if we were all enjoying what we were saying.

Then the party ended. At this pointed the scene was a house party, and everyone was exiting into the street as the music that I only noticed now because of its absence stopped playing. Sergio seemed to wave me over with both arms coming down his shoulders like a tarmac guard; either that or he was describing the airplane landing at the airport in his story. I took it as a sign we show leave and proceeded to escort the two girls to the pacer.

I helped moved the seat back for the Blond girl to get in, and then went to the back because the hatch was open and I was going to close it. That’s when the Hispanic man reappeared. He was standing with his right hand by the bottom edge of the opening, and I remember I noticed this with an acute sense of vision as if my eyes magnified to focus on his hands; his thumb was just out of the way of the opening for me to close the hatch. This closeness gave me a mild anxiety, which my arm ignored as I brought the hatch down with a forceful push. He turned to look at me then and we stared at each other in knowing silence. His foreboding eyes told me, “That was close and you could have hurt me, but lucky for you, you didn’t.’”

My apprehensive eyes could only say, “Sorry. Please don’t ruin the night” before they all too quickly broke our stare and I went back into the car and sat by the Blond. The Hispanic man let us drive off and then this time disappeared forever into the blur.

The blur continued until Sergio arrived back at the house of the two girls and dropped all three of us off. I was telling Sergio through the driver’s window yes, yes, I would hear his story later, and then remembering watching him drive away only to be suddenly sitting in a dark couch in a dark living room where the only source of light was the little noise of a television set.  I was sitting to the left of the redhead while Blond was on her right, when Red suddenly stood up with a passionate cry and a violent swat of her ruby-deck arms. I knew somehow it had to do with Sergio; she must have liked him and Sergio had ignored her the whole night. Red stamped out of the room with Blond closely following still to her right like a friend ready to fall in front of her.

I felt sleepy then (yeah, in my own dream). I picked myself up from the couch and walked to the next room where the girls had run off. There was a bed there against the center; while on the other side another television placed in one of those fake wooden living room stands laid adorned with plastic beads hooped around it like some cheap idol, ignored and seen as little value, but still deeply worshipped. It too gave a little light with its little noise. It at least made the soft comforter on the bed visible enough to see it’s purple polyester tapered in a diamond pattern with curves for edges. That was enough to smooth myself onto the bed until I lay hugging the pillows to my face.

I was beginning to slowly drift into a sleep within a sleep when Blond came into the room and lay beside me. She had this look of consternation as she told me about comforting her friend; a look that saddened me to see, but reminded me that I recognized the language she was now speaking—if only because it was the language I desired to speak with her. It was a language of compassion, a language of intimacy, a language of wanting to know you, it said oh Blond, what’s your real name? Who are you really? I moved my hands onto her soft shoulders and rubbed them down and back towards me until we were both facing each other side by side. I kept sliding myself closer until our bodies were nearly touching. I could see her darken face. It was round and soft and had a reddish glow where blood would rush into her cheeks. She still had her dark mascara over her green eyes with irises so large they left little room for the white inside. Her hair was still parted, but a cluster was making its way down. I moved it aside and neared in close for a kiss. I pressed my lips against hers until they were softly touching and left them there for the longest second. Neither of us opened them nor made any other movement during this time. These soft lips holding themselves together like soft hands comforting each other. I moved my head back and smiled at her like a child saying, “look, now it’s all better.” She smiled back and kissed me with more passionate lips. She pushed me gently on my back and took off her silk emerald dress to reveal in the obscurity of the room that she was wearing matching silk underwear. She then straddled on top of me and we began kissing more passionately still, and I could feel my hands rubbing down her supple legs and up her even back. I could literally see my hands at this moment. They were pressing towards her bra strap; I could see the fingers of my left hold the hooks steady as the fingers of my right pushed against the surface of the hard band until the first strap was free. There was another strap on the bra, so again my hands moved and talked in the silent language all their own. They repeated their same conversation over again and succeeded to break through. And then she eased her elbows up and rested them on my chest until she sat halfway. I could now see her bra slide down slowly about to reveal the beginnings of a new dream.

Then my alarm goes off.

I awake from bed bereaved and run quickly to shut it off, but I know already it’s too late. I have lost the dream. I have lost her. I stand between the alarm and the bed with my eyes half-closed and a glazed look over them, my arms limp while I teeter on my knees as I try to find balance. Inside my mind, I am slowly coming to the realization of what has just happened. I look at the bed still with my disbelieving eyes; there’s no point going back. She is already becoming a distant memory, and I know I wouldn’t allow myself to recreate the dream with its former honesty. I would know it was an illusion this time, and it would feel like self-pleasure in bad faith.

Dammit! Don’t you know how hard it is to get a wet dream? They’re like one-in-a-million and when they come if feels like you have been visited in the night by some magic nymph who has left you with all the evidence of the after-sex you’ve had. You feel a little deceived, a little piqued, still a little frustrated, but overjoyed with ease. I looked back at the bed, then at the time.

My God, 4:00 am in the morning! Why am I up so early? I know why though. I have to wake up to the dreariness of work; I have to wake up to the dreariness of customer service; I have to wake up to the dreariness of my life. I put on my khaki slacks, I put on my faded and stained polo shirt, and I put on my name badge. I wash my face of any semblance of resentment, though I know this too will not fool anyone but me. I walk out into the cold morning light where the sun is still not here, but the moon is smiling, wishing me a good morning, as I warm up my car and listen to the same songs from the same station interrupted by the same commercials, already forgetting details of my dream.

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