The Man of My Dreams

I had dreamt about him before I’d met him. In my dreams I’d see him doing mundane things. Shopping in the produce aisle, plucking his eyebrows over the sink, biting his nails and spitting them into coffee cups. Domestic scenes that ranged from typical male to moderately intimate. Not the kind of thing you’d fall head over heels for, but the more he appeared in my dreams the more I found comfort in his uncomplicated truths. Since moving to the city, I’d lost myself, I felt unhuman, unreal. Disgusting even because of how little I’d accomplished with my life. However, my dreams showed me his humanity, and his simple kindnesses were salve for my soul. I watched him pull lunch meat from his own sandwich to feed mangey alley cats. Saw him pulled stray lint off his friends’ clothes without them knowing. Whenever he found misplaced books at the library, he’d take the time to search for their proper home. There was something too real about him, too genuine to be only a figment of my imagination. I became convinced he was real and was constantly reminded of him in my waking life, like I was remembering an old friend.

When I did meet him in the chatroom, I’d known instantly he was the man of my dreams. Literally. As soon as we started chatting, I’d stopped dreaming about him, but I wasn’t worried. I knew that he and I were destined to meet in person. It would happen spontaneously like in a fairytale. The way a prince meets a maiden in an enchanted forest, not knowing what curse she may carry. I was like those fair maidens, I had baggage. Either he would climb my tower to save me, or he’d fail. I’ll spare the gruesome details; we all know how those fairytales really ended. I waited patiently for this meeting.

We sat together, he and I, only a few seats apart at a big table with the other extras. It was a long dining table, the kind you’d see in a club hall, the kind where everyone wears fur caps with moose antlers and sings the same anthem. Everyone in the room was bubbling with that same enthusiasm because we were all about to see our project come to life, admittedly it was just a corny remake of a classic nineties’ sitcom. But, we sang our anthem anyway, which was just the intro song to the show. It was a badly mixed cover of the original intro song, but I was happy to be apart of something. I enjoyed being an extra because it was my opportunity to fade into the crowd, to be apart of a larger organism that was free of judgement.

We were at the director’s grandmother’s house, I assumed this was a grandma house because of all the baby photos and bowls of scented pinecones. It was a farmhouse that was painted green and red like a Christmas present, but I hadn’t anticipated the surprise that would be waiting for me inside. We were watching the premiere of a show that neither he nor I knew the other was cast in. It was a big show with a big cast, and we had both only been extras in different scenes on different locations with different filming schedules. We still hadn’t met after all those letters and emails and dreams, so we were both tentative to share those little successes we felt were too small to brag about. To me he was still a ghost haunting the space between my ears. He was just a concoction of my isolated mind. It was all just typed words on the IBM I kept in the corner of my kitchen, which also happened to be my bedroom. I lived in a studio apartment that was about the same size as my mailbox which was a mousehole in the lobby that all my mail got smashed into. Whenever I found a manilla envelope folded in my slot I knew it was one of his headshots. I would unfold those photos like little paper fortune tellers opening up to show me my future, then I’d flatten the folds by passing my hair straightener along the creases. I’d tape those warped photos over my bed and study them at night. Was the shape of a brow or the crook of his nose different in this newest edition? Was this truly the same man I’d seen all those nights? I wasn’t entirely sure.

Then, in the kitchen of that New England farmhouse somewhere outside Hartford, a place I’d never stepped a foot in before that night, he materialized. Over crumpled brown paper bags and white cartons full of lo mein we met eyes for the first time. I could see in my peripheral on the TV that a scene I was playing in was on, but I couldn’t look away from him. It was like seeing a ghost. Our hands shot to one another like frogs jumping for the same fly. We were both too stunned to speak so instead we babbled incoherent half-phrases and through all the “I didn’t know…” and “wait you...” we pieced together that we were stars destined to collide.

After that night we became fully enmeshed with each other. I had quit acting and returned to my studies, but he stayed mostly the same. He continued going to auditions and riding his bike around Manhattan delivering gourmet groceries. I always liked his day job more than his dream job. To the private chefs he delivered to, he was just a sweaty delivery boy. But to me he was a pioneer, a lone caravan driver transporting the finest treasures across a concrete desert. He delivered vanilla pods from Madagascar, saffron in vials no bigger than a pinky, fish and cheese freshly wrapped in butcher paper tied together with string like presents waiting to be unwrapped. He would list out the deliveries he’d made that day every night when he came to my studio mailbox. He would tell me about these things over the comfort meals we ate. Butter sandwiches with cheese, fried spam, or potato bowls with runny eggs on top. We both loved our eggs runny. The convenience of this little preference had given me hope that we were meant to last. I think he noticed my peculiarities right away. Sometimes when I turned on my gas range to cook our dinner, I forgot to use a match, but it would light for me anyways. Whether he noticed this small detail or not he never made a point to mention it. He wasn’t like some of my nosier, ruder, neighbors.

When I stopped auditioning, I did not stop acting, but even the best actors are bound to break character. Sometimes the door would close behind me when I hadn’t touched it or even breathed in its direction. I could walk home in the rain without a single drop touching me. I could jaywalk through a busy intersection without looking and come out without even a scuff on my shoe. I tried to be mindful of these lucky coincidences, but I wasn’t going to inconvenience myself because a few people with loose mouths wanted to spread rumors. And I wasn’t always in control either. Occasionally things happened out of instinct like they were a natural reflex. If I dropped a glass, it would bounce back into my hands, or if I tripped, I’d swing back upright like a punching doll, my center of gravity always evening me out. The only downside was that none of my neighbor’s dogs could stand me. I’m still not sure why, but they barked at me incessantly. On the sidewalk, in the hallway, through windows and doors the dogs barked. That was a major factor for why most of my neighbors disliked me. I wasn’t making their dogs bark, but because I was around when they did, they assumed I was doing something or existing in a way that alarmed them. Maybe I was and I just didn’t notice.

He ended up telling me all the whispers he heard in the hallway. He always carried his bike up to my apartment for safe keeping whenever he visited. It took some time because I was on the fourth floor and there was no elevator, so many of my neighbors took it upon themselves to warn him. They’d come out of their apartments to scold him for bumping his pedals into the walls and instead try to dissuade him from visiting me. They were just good Samaritans spreading a cautionary tale.

“She’s a demon you know, she can move things with her mind.” Cliché and not worth addressing.

“Can't you tell she’s an alien? She has little probes that emit supersonic whistles that drill into your mind. She’s driving our dogs mad and stealing our secrets.” I still refute those claims, correlation is not causation, and besides, they didn’t have any secrets worth stealing.

“Stay away from her! She’s a foreign government PSYOP here to learn our culture, infiltrate our society, and collapse the housing market.” This one was creative. He and I had a good laugh over this. I’d sputtered and coughed over my drink when he told me. I got box-wine down my chin and on my tank top. I hadn’t meant to, and I think this genuine act of graceless foolishness had drawn him even closer to me. He brought his forehead to mine and said, “Don’t worry, I won’t tell them your secrets. My lips are sealed.”

I hadn’t mentioned the dreams because I’d basically forgotten about them the instant he’d stepped into my reality. But one afternoon after a particularly long study session I’d taken a nap and had another dream. I dreamt of the most beautiful cake. Two tiers with frosting piped liked clouds, dusted with sugar that sparkled like glitter, and topped with syrupy red cherries. He and I both loved maraschino cherries, it was another one of our convenient preferences, and we’d feed them to each other with spoons straight from the jar. I woke up with a puddle of saliva on my pillow. I had a ravenous appetite for cherries, so I went to the fridge. However, when I opened the door, I found the cake from my dream. I wasn’t sure what to make of this, but I wasn’t going to stick my nose up at free cake. Later that night when he came over, he saw the cake and asked what the celebration was for. I told him, "I just wanted to make a cake for the man of my dreams."