Generally speaking, I don't enjoy relating my dreams to other people. By "dreams" I mean the nightly cavalcade of bizarre, sometimes grotesque, images and feelings we fall victim to in our sleep. But last night I had a dream that was a fairly accurate depiction of something that happened to me while attending university. First, a little background on my dreams.When I retire for the evening, I take my clothes off and put on a nightshirt. I'm not sure why, but I love this thing. After that I answer some emails, read, watch television and have a late night phone conversation with my love. With the exception of the phone conversation, this has been a regular routine for years. Habit helps to take ones' mind off of the ensanguined, wretched pageant called, "life." A therapist once said to me, "Habit is a gift from Heaven." I told him that I thought it was a pretty shitty gift, and that the saying is, "a banal platitude." In retrospect, I feel like a jerk for that, but I'm also partly proud. Aren't I complex?
Once I'm in bed and of a mind to finally get some sleep, I pat Toulouse (my familiar) and close my eyes. Even with as many as 2-5 lorazepam in me, sleep often evades me. And that is very bad for someone like me. I suppose it's bad for everyone. But my mind races and I think about one shameful memory after another. Every woman I've ever slept with is lined up, and they all get a chance to rank on me. They say terrible things about my body, mock me for coming too quickly, and make fun of my expression when I climax. In reality, I've never met a woman who would be such a jerk; I have high standards. But in my mind, anything goes. Although I did have a girlfriend who said that I scrunched-up my face and looked like I was about to sneeze when I climaxed. If memory serves, we both thought that was funny as hell. My brain is merciless.
I'm not going to list every humiliating and/or sketchy thing I've ever done. But my gray matter is happy to run down that list every fucking night. And it's bad. Sometimes I say out loud, "Oh, please, no more!" Some of the memories are funny. Like the time I went back to a woman's apartment down in Brockton to spend the night. We were kissing, and it was very passionate and exciting. We had most of our clothes off, and we were both certainly ready, but at that moment I had to go to the bathroom really bad. It was no big deal, she just pointed me to the toilet across the hall. What proceeded was most-definitely a big deal. We went to Grimsby's in Harvard Square, Cambridge that night, and I had the black bean tostada, or something with a lot of black beans. Naturally, on my first date with a woman who was crazy about me I had a case of savage diarrhea. Details will be spared, but I produced a cacophony of farts, some extremely loud. The din also included the occasional splash in the toilet water, along with a grunt or two from me. I was talking to myself, as well. "Only you would get the trots like this when there is a beautiful woman practically throwing herself at you." And I shook my head in disgrace.
When I emerged from the bathroom, she was smoking one of her unfiltered Camel cigarettes. She didn't look me in the face, perhaps out of embarrasment for me. But 5 seconds later we were making love like crazed weasels. So it didn't matter. For some reason, however, the daft goblins in my head love to playback that night. Not the sex part, just the inability to stop shitting part. I think most of us have these strange PowerPoint presentations every night before we drift off. But I know it's worse for me. What with the other problems I have and all. But anyway, that leads me to the university story.
Back when I worked full-time nights (11pm - 7am) and went to UMass Boston full-time, I rarely got any sleep. I missed an exam on cell biology, so I rescheduled to take it in his office. All was going well as I took the test; I'm good at Punnett's Squares, surface area to body mass ratio, mitochondria, and all that stuff. It's a shame I amounted to nothing...back then I was working so hard to be something. Can anyone spare a violin? No? That's fine. Anyway, I finished the exam and found him in the next room. We spoke for about 10 minutes, about biology and gossip, and I felt compelled to ask him something about sleep. Since I had just gotten off from work, and was really feeling it (I hadn't slept in three days), I hazily asked the professor, "What exactly is sleep for, anyway? Why do we need it, and how does a lack of sleep damage cells?" He gave me a funny look, but I explained my interest. He decided to lend me a book from his collection in his office. He pointed to it and said something like, "That book there covers your question." But then, all hell broke loose.
I couldn't reach the book, and neither could he; he was even disinclined to stand up from behind his desk. So I grabbed a chair, stood on it (he let loose a barrage of "be careful" advice), and reached up to the book. It was tightly wedged between two other books. I pulled on it, and it started to move toward me. But the shelf, which had to have 100 books on it as it extended across the wall of his office, buckled and made a, "poink!" sound as it said goodbye to its attachment to the wall. Books went flying everywhere and I jumped off the chair and ran out of the way, a mere 10 feet or so. The prof never took his eyes off me, and I could see that out of the corner of my eye. Finally, I looked at him, but I wish I hadn't. His expression is burned into my memory. He looked like James Cann ("Sonny") in The Godfather. Specifically, the part where he finds out that his brother-in-law is beating his sister. It's the, "I'm going to kill the fucking bastard!" look. I tried to put the books back, but the shelf had ripped the anchor out of the wall. So I stacked his books and papers for him and then beat a hasty retreat.
My dream the other night was a replay of that event. And it was a real dream, not a slideshow before the dream. Cripes, at least in the retelling some of the details could have been changed! Like the part where I trashed the professor's office...could have done without that. I could have done without a retelling at all. How about a dream where I'm Sophia Loren's gynecologist? Or an alternate reality where Gore's victory in 2000 is recognized. I had a dream about Anne Coulter, but it just upset me. What I really want is a plane to fly into Congress while Bush is giving his State of the Union address. Is that sort of dream so hard to muster?
It says in the fucking Talmud, "A dream which is not interpreted is like a letter which is not read." I hope with ever part of me that that isn't true. Otherwise, I'll have to try and figure out why Al Jolson was giving Marcel Duchamp a piggy back ride through The Garment District. And hell knows the significance of the sloth eating the bean dip. I'm not deconstructing that, man.
Thank goodness for lorazepam.
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