24 June 2010
Last Night’s Dream
Filed under love
I’ve been debating all day whether or not to write this one down, but I don’t want to forget it, so I’m going to do my best to put it down exercising all due discretion but not changing any details, because when it comes to dreams, the littlest detail can be very important. Here goes.
It frustrates me that I can’t remember how it begins, but the general setting is in the Pearl City area. You know that stretch of Kam Highway between Waimano Home Road and Leeward Community College? Imagine that whole stretch on the makai side of the highway as a row of houses, small stores, temples, and churches, all looking kind of like the houses in older parts of Makiki and Moiliili. You know what I mean: they have shake roofs and the eaves are curved downward like old Japanese architecture. All the way to LCC. For some reason, I walk past those houses on my way to LCC every day, and one day I strike up a conversation with a woman who’s making the same walk.
She’s Japanese and definitely younger than me by at least six or seven years, but not more than nine years younger. She’s got shoulder-length, straight black hair. She’s just a little heavier than she perhaps should be. Somehow, we really hit it off and take a detour to a nearby park, where we sit and talk. One of us produces (in the magical way that dreams often provide) a picnic blanket, and in a semi-private section of the park, we proceed to get busy. Not busy busy. I’m talking about first base. Well, rounding first base, but definitely not much further than a few steps past that. I can say this with some amount of confidence because (and I really never thought I’d be admitting this in this space) that’s as far as I go. Now, I know that in dreams we often go past where we go in real life (else what are dreams for, really?), but in this case, even while one of my hands is getting quite familiar with one of her thighs, part of my dream-brain is reminding me that okay, here’s the line and it’s time to rein this in.
Don’t judge me. I have a conservative line for a reason, and for the most part I don’t regret it.
Now I don’t know how this happens, but I am aware of another person’s presence on this picnic blanket. It’s another guy. And he’s somehow entwined with us but not really. I mean, I’m still the one kissing this girl, but he seems to be equally involved with her and I feel the need to compete with him for her attention. I figure that as long as I’ve got her attention, it doesn’t matter that there’s this other shirtless guy right there on the other side of her. I’m not getting any encouragement from her to rein it in, and I’m really enjoying that thigh, but then I whisper between long kisses, “You’re so pretty.” It’s like slamming on her brakes.
“What? No. Don’t say that,” she says. I sense it’s from some kind of lack of confidence, which is weird because she’s seemed pretty confident up to this point.
“No, really. You are. You’re so pretty,” I repeat. But the spell is broken.
She says, “I think we should get up.”
We get up. The other guy disappears. We rearrange ourselves (hair, shirts, glasses, you know what I mean) and as we continue our walk to LCC we share our stories. Where’d you go to high school; that kind of thing. The communication is better than I can remember with anyone except R, whose presence in this dream is mostly just my own memories, except near the very end. The thing is, I am communicating with this girl in a way that I didn’t think was possible for me anymore.
Now somehow we don’t make it to LCC. We find ourselves back at her house. We enter the house (I think it’s to get lunch) and the girl’s mom is there. And the girl’s mom is someone I know.
There’s this girl (in my real life, not in this dream, ‘though it’s also true in this dream) named Heidi who graduated the year after me. Her mom worked at the school (which I say partly so readers familiar with the players don’t confuse her with another Heidi in the same class) all the way up to just a couple of years after I started my teaching career at the same school. I once hired Heidi to work in the after-school program I ran. In fact, she was my last hire before I moved to Hilo to finish my undergraduate studies. While working there, Heidi got to know one of the guys, another person I recruited to work there, whom I’d dormed with. They got married and moved to Washington several years ago.
Well this girl in my dream introduces me to her mom, and it’s Heidi’s mom. She runs over and gives me a big hug and asks how I’m doing, and asks how it is I’m having lunch with her younger daughter, Heidi’s little sister.
In real life, Heidi doesn’t have a younger sister, as far as I know.
The next hour or so (in dream time; I of course have no way of knowing how long this is in real time) is spent getting reacquainted with Heidi’s family. The vibe is really good, because her family already knows and loves me and I feel very comfortable in this house with these people. I become aware at one point that I don’t know the girl’s name, but I figure that won’t be hard to figure out pretty soon. I’m uncomfortable about it, but not too worried.
Which is really interesting because (in real life) the only short story I’ve published so far (don’t bother looking it up; it wasn’t in one of the indexed journals) is a story about my meeting a girl on a bus and how just as I’m trying to figure out how to ask her name, we get interrupted by a fellow bus rider who looks toward us and starts cussing.
The girl and I have to get going to school (or whatever it is we do at LCC) and as we’re getting set to go, it becomes clear for some reason that I need to borrow a t-shirt. Someone in the house holds up a shirt for me to borrow, and it’s one of R’s shirts. R has somehow remained just a memory in this dream, but now here invades my dream in a much more concrete way. I think now that maybe it wasn’t R’s shirt; it could have been Heidi’s (there are a few shirts they would have had in common) but in the dream I’m certain it’s R’s shirt.
Something happens (I don’t remember what) and that shirt becomes unnecessary and the girl and I are about to head out the door and that’s when I wake up.
You know how it is with some dreams. The fact that they are dreams doesn’t change whatever they do to you. I feel like certain buttons were pushed and my being awake now doesn’t just unpush them. I woke up VERY sad that this was just a dream.
2010-06-24 :: me