Dreams to Dismiss

I have had occasional dreams that have left me panting. Recently, in a series of eventful nights of dreaming, I dreamed about Mike Mawr who I knew from my days at Albany College of Pharmacy. Saw him clear as glass, although Mike and I had not been pals of any kind. I started to blubber, snot and phlegm oozing beyond my control. Through this veil of mucous I told Mike I had to confess something, but I could barely talk for the hiccup-crying. I was embarrassed of Mike seeing me in such a state. But I pushed on, and managed to choke out that I had wasted my life, as anyone could see. I was 49 and visiting Los Angeles for the first time as a tourist, when in fact I should have moved there long ago to be an actor or director or contortionist—anything else than what I really had become. I told him how I should have had a number of high-powered male lovers by this stage. I had pissed away my youth and even some middle age on pharmacy and straight-married life and I only now understood my failures. I asked Mike if he could grant forgiveness, and maybe give me another chance. But even as I asked him this, I knew I really didn’t want anything from him, not sympathy or a way out, or even a kiss. And Mike just stood, impassive. I wasn’t even sure he was listening.

Then I was interviewing a famous actor whom I couldn’t identify, trying to find out what Hollywood magic was like. I kept looking out the window of the diner we were in but I couldn’t see any magic going on, just cement sidewalks baking in the ardent sun, and endless traffic and people who may as well have been trudging through Schenectady for all their glamour.

Since it was a dream and he could read my mind, my companion answered my silent observations. “At least they’re all trying,” he said. “Not hiding away in upstate New York.”

When I woke up, I felt that panic was sure to drown me. I considered going for a jog, maybe even something faster than that to outrun the terror. But I did not like leaving the house after dark, and I hadn’t run in decades. I soothed myself, counseled myself really, trying to calm my feverish heartrate. Taking myself in hand, I deconstructed the dreams. A calmer head convinced me I was simply experiencing a little childish guilt at having chosen the high road in life, the road of substance and meaning. I had an important job, a stable family. I wasn’t some pathetic middle-aged actor singing and dancing in the chorus of a superficial touring show that every audience member would start forgetting as soon as the curtain fell. I didn’t whore myself at hopeless auditions. Besides, where did this come from, I asked myself in a soothing inner voice. You never wanted to be an actor. What you should take away from this dream is not that you are a failure, but that you need something creative in your life. Your days are all business and no innovation. You might get a paint set tomorrow. Your subconscious may well be encouraging you to paint, paint, paint.

But painting would be messy, and probably expensive, and something about the smell of paints of any kind disgusted me slightly. I went into the bathroom and lit a cigarette. I almost never smoke, except in the bars and then only to subdue my self-consciousness. This was a special occasion. I flushed the thoroughly-consumed butt down the toilet, then went back to bed. It came to me as I lay there that my creative project was right before me: To explore my inner creativity, I would keep a log of my dreams and then write a journal about each one, in handwriting. No mess, no expense. No imposing on others to read them and tell me how much potential I had.

I committed this dream with Mike and the famous actor to my new journal. The second dream I wrote down had me lecturing my son Robbie about how to keep friends. Robbie was sitting on a toilet and I was sitting on a tiny swing of a seat, way up high on the wall, near the rounded top of a gigantic stained-glass window. I was shouting my words, knowing he would have a hard time hearing me up near the ceiling, though listening to me has never been a concern of his.

Well, don’t say you didn’t ask, Justin. I think the knots between us may be the result of both of us having different moral guidelines as to what fatherhood is supposed to be. Why is it so difficult to accept me as your father because I like _____? That doesn’t make me a bad father. I don’t bring them to this house!

I had never been so verbal with Robbie in waking time, and neither had I ever called him Justin. For a few seconds after waking up, I wasn’t sure if I had actually spilled the beans. Amidst breathing exercises to slow my respiration, I was tempted to go into the boy’s room and tell him it was all a dream. Still, I wrote it down.

The next recorded dream was the one where I attended the National Community Pharmacists Association’s Annual Convention, and all the papers focused on gays. I kept going from one presentation room to another, but I couldn’t make out what anyone was saying. I picked up a piece of paper and wrote a note to one of the presenters saying I hadn’t been able to hear him from my seat in the conference room. I found this man’s room and stuck the note under the door. Then the door opened. No one was in the room, so I thought to set the note on the dresser. I started going through the desk for paper so I could write the note over legibly because it had turned into a mess of green gooey crayon which would be impossible to decipher. As I searched, I heard voices in the hall and realized that I was in fact in a stranger’s room pawing through his things. The presenter came into the room. At first it was Paul, who in real life I considered a fuck buddy, while he waited patiently—and seemingly indefinitely—for me to commit. And then he became a hybrid of Paul and my tech Joanne. I spoke to him, or them, quite formally: I was unable to attend the panel discussion concerning lesbian and gay issues in pharmacy of which you were part. This was primarily because my party didn’t arrive until Friday and your session was on Thursday. I am sorry for this. I am interested in your ideas and suggestions.

The hybrid appeared not at all concerned that I was where I was, and so casual about being there. But the hybrid also did not answer. Then, in the nomadic segues that dreams do, Madge had these hardened, beef-red fissures all over her arms. Each one had a popcorn seed embedded in it. When I touched one of the kernels, it transformed into a quickly-gestating fetus. I started to scream, but Madge let the baby grow as if it were the most natural thing for an arm.

The last dream I recorded was so disagreeable, so ugly, that it could very well have led me to dread sleeping ever again. My mother was walking toward me, all dripping decay and skeleton like a corpse should be after some time in the crypt. She wasn’t a zombie, though, not hostile; that in itself was impressive, considering that in her living form she had been inclined to savagery in word and action. No, it was as if she had crossed to the other side, then realized she had forgotten her purse. In coming back for it, she had no idea what bad presentation she was making. I was frozen on the spot, not even daring to move. I woke up after a paralyzing sensation that I was being sucked into the atmosphere at a mighty speed. I was panting hard, worried that my heart would stop before I could reconvince myself that I didn’t believe in Hell. I refused to look over at Madge, terrified that she would be a pile of bloody threads, but the comfort of consciousness seeped through me, and I could hear her relaxed breathing. My mother, I assured myself, was still safely cremated, her ashes scattered in too many directions and too long ago for her to reconfigure.

I got out of bed and looked in on Robbie. He looked a good deal younger asleep, the tension of scowling relaxed out of his face. He would be angry if he woke up and saw me skulking; anyone would think it weird, and Robbie was always angry at me for lesser reasons. I went back to bed. Everyone was okay. Despite my many weaknesses and fears and deceptions, I was the man of the house, and I was protecting my brood.

That was the last dream I wrote down, marking the end of my creative venture. I never went back and analyzed this journal, only revisiting the pages to burn them, since they had served their purpose.