It’s been a minute, hasn’t it? But after a couple passes through the wet and wild Slip & DreamSlide, I’ve decided it’s time to put my nose to the grindstone once again.
Without further adieu, let’s split this old melon of mine once again.
A Good Michaelob is Hard to Find
(I can’t remember if I’ve already used that header, but I’m rolling with it anyway.)
As you mentioned–or good old Tony “The Tiger” Crisp posited–sometimes the mere possibility that someone could disappear is enough to send you into a [striped] tailspin, especially when that someone is so near and dear.
Mr. Michaelob and I have been together long enough that I know he’ll always be close by (*cue The National’s “I Am Easy to Find”*). That being said, what the heck are dreams like this about?
My Brain Hath Been Battered, Scattered
That could almost be a Rolling Stones song, couldn’t it? To answer your question, I’m only creatively scattered in real life, and definitely feeling some anxiety because of it. And to piggyback off my previous question, I think that relates to losing my lawfully wedded ninja turtle.
It’s not very often that I feel out-to-sea anxious, but when I’m in the midst of prolonged anxiety, I do tend to feel adrift in that nautical way. Like any piece of shark-bait, when this happens, what I want is a life preserver.
I suppose said ninja turtle would be that life preserver, right? He can’t fix my problems, but he can keep me afloat long enough that I can solve them myself.
An Educational Shopping Trip
Hey, that whole lost at sea thing matches up with the cruise ship portion of this dream! Funny how that happens. You so tricky, subconscious.
But what about these other locales?
I LOVE your “before times” idea, connecting mine and Michael’s time in college together to the university setting in this dream. I look back on those days fondly as being somewhat carefree. I mean, we used to be able to stay up past 9 p.m. on weeknights. Carefree indeed.
Next, while “shopping for a new husband” tickles me pink, I’m wondering if there’s even more to this frantic mall excursion.
Back when we were kiddos in the ’90s, shopping malls were the place to be, both for shopping and just for hanging out. But we were also kiddos during the time when Stranger Danger was riding high and malls were to predators and kidnappers what spinach was to Popeye.
I think it’s entirely possible that this lingering childhood anxiety mish-mashed with my prevalent adult anxiety to inspire fears of the TMNT having been abducted…
Cut My Life Into Pieces, This is My Last Poptart
I can’t ruminate over the shopping mall without also ruminating over that butterfly knife. Does it represent transformation, as you mentioned? Is it about cutting something or someone out of my life?
Jennybean, I do think there’s something I’m hiding from in waking life, as you wondered. No, it’s not creepy strangers in the shopping mall of my youth. I think it is, quite simply, the anxiety that has plagued me throughout this dream so far.
I think I need to channel the cunning and tricksy butterfly: stealing Turtle Tears for Fears, using them to my own advantage.
Spiral Staircase Going Down
This one has sounded a bit like a bummerino so far, hasn’t it? Just a lot of me being anxious and needing to rely on someone else to anchor me?
However, since you know me quite well (I mean we only have the same brain and somehow the same Lithuanian nose), you’ve probably guessed that I’ll come out of this on the independent side of things.
Flashlights! Spiral staircases! Beefcastles in tactical gear! In the end, they’re no match for my own sense of stubborn indignation.
I think it’s time for me to take a ride on a Mental Health Cargo Van of my own making and kiss this anxiety butterfly knife goodbye. I’ll be sure to pick up my Ninja Turtle along the way.
Thank you for splitting that melon like a pretty Gallagher.
All my smuckers,
Mack Ketchum, Pokemenace Trainer Extraordinaire
P.S. If you rated this dream an 11/10 on the Newtmare Scale of Perkycutlass Estimation, then I must rank your analysis…
20/10 on the Drim-Cracker Barrel Biscuit of Writertrout Satisfaction.
Before I begin this, I really just want to say: CONGRATULATIONS!
Why? Because, my ferocious mini pony, it’s Friday. We limped across the finish line to find a three-day weekend ahead of us. We’ve done great work this week and we deserve all the wine we’re about to drink.
As I write this sweet, sweet (frightening) drim-dram I’m sipping on the delicious bottle of Bully Hill Space Shuttle Red that you bought me in the Fingerlakes the other week. I will attempt to go easy on it, but I make no promises.
Now, let’s dig into things, shall we?
Television is melting my brain.
I don’t even watch that much TV. If I lived alone, I’d probably barely turn mine on at all. Not to be uber pretentious, but… (okay, this is uber pretentious) I’m perfectly content with my books and my record collection. Visual stimulus not necessary.
However, I do not live alone. And my roommate/BFF/spouse-person is super into the TV-before-bed thing. Meaning we watch about an hour of something or other at 8 p.m. and then promptly brush our teeth and crash in bed with books at 9:15–9:30.
We are boring and The Worst™ , and I know it.
Except that the hour of TV we watch is usually something super unpleasant. For example, this week it was a mixture of the v. v. depressing Chernobyl as well as the equally depressing Handmaid’s Tale.
I’m telling you this only because this dreadful hour of TV tends to seep into my dreams. Sometimes in a bad way. Sometimes, like on this particular night.
I’m in three places at once.
This has been happening a lot recently. The locales just seem to blend together (you know, like an aromatic red wine blend). This time, it goes from cruise ship to university campus to shopping mall in the span of a few steps.
In the beginning of the drimmer, Mr. Michaelob and I are on the tail-end of a vacation. Our backpacks are in tow, passports in hand, and we’re departing a cruise ship. As always, port is something of a mob scene. There are swarms of people, and we’re milling slowly through the crowd, trying to find our way off the ship.
As we near the exits, Michael and I are separated. It’s something I don’t immediately panic over. We’re adults and heading in the same direction, and he’s also a dude (and thus, a less likely candidate for kidnapping). My higher brain tells me we’ll call each other and meet up outside of the ship. My lower brains submits to a sense of sheer anxiety. What if I can’t find him outside? What if I can’t find him at all?
Sidebar: This seems to happen in a lot of my dreams. Michaelob and I are separated somehow, and it ends up being a big source of anxiety. Maybe that’s something I can take on its face?
A B.A. in Criminal Psychopathy
As I cross over the crowded gangplank of the ship, I arrive not in port, but in the halls of a crowded university. Judging from the lively common areas and rooms, it seems I’ve emerged in a dormitory. Thinking maybe my significant otter is somewhere in the crowd looking for me, too, I meander about the dorms. My passport is still in my hand.
Michaelob is nowhere to be found. Instead, I’m approached by some milquetoast, college-aged young man with a dark mop of hair. I can’t remember any details of his face. I don’t think he was anyone that I awake-know. Really just some vague amalgam of TV characters and people I’ve seen in passing, maybe.
What sticks with me is how utterly persistent this guy is. He’s trying to get my attention, trying to make me laugh, trying to make me see him. The issue is, I just don’t really care. It’s Michaelob Ultron I’m looking for. Still, the guy pesters me to such a degree that I start to feel legitimately uncomfortable and flee the dorms.
I end up in a semi-vacant corridor. I’ve crossed over into the classroom area of campus. The walls are all white, the lights fluorescent. There’s a patently sterile feel to it all. Peering into one of the rooms, I notice labs. Now I’m just feeling like I’m somewhere I’m not supposed to be. I walk on instead.
Capitalist Meet-Cutes for the Masses.
I’m relieved when I walk through a large set of double doors into what appears to be the campus cafeteria. Only, after a moment’s inspection, I realize it’s not a university cafeteria at all, but the food court in a mall. There are shopfronts all along the wall, a penny-fountain, and an exit blanched in white light on one side.
I’m still missing a Michaelob, so I hurry towards the exit. Of course, since this is a creep-out dream, I’m intercepted by the frat boy. He’s not happy I walked out before. This time, his persistence is taken to a new level. He’s hovering like a gnat, and to my horror, wielding a butterfly knife. He spins it around his fingers, waving the tip in my face, threatening me.
I start to run, but Edward Scissorshit gives chase. The knife grazes my cheek. He’s laughing and shouting. I start crying out for help, but the surrounding shoppers are completely oblivious. They lope across the mall’s tile floors like cows grazing in a field, their arms full of shopping bags.
The lights go out.
I’m aware of the passage of time. I didn’t see it happen. But this is a dream, remember? When have clocks ever made a difference (except in the realm of existentialist symbology).
The room I find myself in is pitch black, with the exception of the flashlight in my hand. That, and the flashlight on the other side of the room, where Edward Scissorshit and what appears to be his sister are calling after me.
My flashlight might as well be a bullseye, so I turn it off and drop it, edging along the side of the room. When I say room, I’m talking warehouse-sized. It’s big, the center mostly empty save for a few crates, and there are stairs everywhere. One flight, two flights. Three or four floors, as far as I can see in the darkness. The Shits are on the ground floor, so I quietly pad up the stairs.
The next several moments are just climbing and descending stairs. Sometimes I’m heading towards the second and I end up on the fourth. And when I’m going up, I’m going down. It’s like an M.C. Escher painting, only with more Jason Statham-level action suspense.
Eventually, I start to see doors. Lots of doors. I open them, one at a time, each leading to some dead-end storage room, until I finally find an exit I can slip out of.
I open up on some sort of chateau-style terrace with a long banister and armed guards milling about. They’re dressed all in black tactical gear and carrying sub-machine guns.
Sidebar: What the fuck? Do you ever wonder why every morning when I message you I’m like, “I’m so tired, omg.” I spent all night evading heavily armed militia.
It’s Prison Break but with less prison and more panache.
A couple questions at this point:
Who in the actual dicks kidnapped me?
Why am I so easy to kidnap?
Is this the actual worst end to any vacation ever?
Where is my real-life human husband?
Truth be told, I’ve never been kidnapped before. I know, hard to believe. I’ve been told by family members before that I’m quite kidnappable, which is actually v. v. alarming? Thanks, fam.
All that being said, I’ve stealthed the heck out of a lot of video games in my day, so how different can this be? It’s a drim-dram, and I really believe in myself as well as the stupidity of my foes, so lo and behold, I actually manage to sneaky-snake my way down to the street.
There’s a woman waiting for me. Do I know her? No, not really. But she’s a woman wearing white (HELLOOOO, Symbolism) and I was just butterfly-knifed repeatedly by some greasy-haired shitboy in black, so I’m like, “Hi, I trust you with my life.”
She’s pulling me towards a cargo van. Apparently it’s used by the owner of the estate to transport jewelry. Certainly an odd detail, but I’m running for me life, so do I have time to question it? Jenny, I donut.
It’s time for a nerve-shattering Hell-ride.
Passenger vans weren’t exactly made for speed. It’s not like I’ve ever had to write about one of these things for work before so how would I…
Well. I slam the sliding door, buckle up, and look to the driver. Does she look familiar? Not even. But her M.O. of “get the actual feck out of here” seems to align with mine perfectly, so I question nothing. Instead, I look at the passport in my hand. Only now, it’s not a passport anymore.
Now it’s a notebook, and I see all these notes and drawings left by Michaelob. Notes about a fantasy world he’s constructing for a book, pictures of swords and monsters. Gummy bears stuck to pages. Fragment of little action figures taped in. I wonder if I should be looking in on his thoughts without his permission, but then I remember he drew them in my notebook, and I feel vindicated.
The van gets going, but the going is slow. I look out the passenger side mirror, and I notice we are, in fact, going slow enough that Edward Scissorshit’s sister is almost catching up to us at a run.
“Go, go!” I’m shouting at the driver. But I assure all of you, this bucket-o’-bolts is going as fast as it possibly can. Shitsister is getting close, and I’m getting nervous. I look around the front of the vehicle for some sort of weapon, something I can defend us with.
All that I find is a half-drunk smoothie in the front cup holder. It’s strawberry, red enough that it looks just like blood. Unsure of what else to do, I toss it into Shitsister’s face.
She’s so shocked she stumbles back, and the van charges forward.
Farewell, third glass of wine. I hardly knew ye.
That’s how many I drank before I finished this bad-boy of a drimmer.
Shh, don’t tell the flight of beer I had at dinner.
Sorry, it was that kind of week. I’m getting it out of my system now so it’s not that kind of weekend.
In any case, that was a fast-paced romp, wasn’t it? There are a lot of images to pick through in this one, and I can’t wait to see what you glean from it, my dear.
In the meantime, I might just pour myself another. Thank you again.
There are few immutable truths in this life. Someday, we all must die. Rain will always be wet.
Gin is an affront to mankind.
I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but anyone that claims to like gin is actually just nurturing a traumatic pain. Probably from childhood.
Them’s the rules, and I do not make ’em. That being said:
This dream is brought to you by gin.
You ever have one of those dreambinos where you’re not quite yourself? Maybe you’re not even someone that you know, you’re just some random character. Perhaps this person is an amalgam of other characters you’ve been hoovering off of screens and pages throughout your life: TV super spies and dashing knights and zombies.
I don’t know where this person came from, but as so often happens in these types of dreams, it feels utterly right to walk in their skin. Or maybe it’s just that all day as I coast through my conscious life, this made-up stranger is walking in my skin.
Maybe I should let my imaginary friends out to play more often.
Not too long ago I was on a cruise ship (slaycation, you well know). Some people find it mildly terrifying to be adrift at sea inside of a massive boat, but I’m sort of the opposite. I find comfort in a self-contained city surrounded by nothing but miles upon miles of water. And that’s what a cruise ship feels like–a tiny city. You can walk from room to room at all hours of the day, from bar to casino to theater and back again. Everything is just steps away at any moment.
This is what the city of my dreams feels like.
There’s an interconnectedness, a metropolis made of rooms. A promenade shopping mall here, a pub there; but for me, it always starts and ends in the theater.
I like theaters, too: the smell of crushed velvet, heavy drapery the color of cabernet, gold leaf molding, dust motes cascading down under the stage lights.
The theater of my dreams is empty. Footfalls echo. I weave through the aisles of velvet chairs, whistling all the while.
(This is the first moment I can look back and know I am not me any longer, because I cannot whistle.)
I push through the heavy black doors into the city beyond. The promenade awaits, half abandoned and overgrown with ivy. There is evidence of a time before: shattered glass panels, a filthy skylight, amputee mannequins in windows, cracked cement. If that time was somehow more profitable, good fortune has clearly passed.
I first see her surrounded by a crowd.
She is laughing and grinning, with a smile that could cut glass. And maybe, in fact, she is the source of all this ruin. I think to myself it’s entirely possible. She’s artfully cruel like that.
My sister, the destroyer.
Not Mackenzie’s sister though. This one has wild, dark curls and green eyes. This one is tall and waifish, and she doesn’t shy from a crowd. Not just my sister, but my twin.
Pulling my jacket a bit tighter around myself, I lope into the shadows, trying to walk past the crowd unnoticed. The problem with that is, I can’t seem to go anywhere without her finding me. Except, of course, the theater.
She laughs and laughs and laughs.
I take the escalator to the house on the hill.
In a little blue house on a hill, with a little white picket fence and little pink flowers, a man lies dying on the lawn.
Maybe this is a thing that would scare me–real-life, actual me–but dream me is here with a purpose. This is what she was made for. The man must know it, because when I come towards him, he chokes, begging me to turn away. “Not yet,” he’s gasping, “please.”
I kneel by his side. He seems like a nice enough man. His hair is thinning, belly only just softening with the paunch of middle age. In the driveway there’s a little pink tricycle parked beside his car.
With a single touch of my hand, the child that rides that tricycle can be made fatherless. I know this, implicitly. A history of taking and taking and taking from the world is known to me in an instant.
This is the worst part of the job, really.
“What are you waiting for?” Sister asks me. She’s more curious than she is agitated. I guess I’m an oddity to her.
In the distance, sirens are wailing, heralding the ambulance that will drive this man to safety.
“I don’t have to take him.”
“If you won’t do it, then I will.”
She reaches for him. I grab her by the wrist. It’s not what I’m saying with my mouth, but with my eyes. For once, can we just do things my way?
I’m shocked that she lets me lead her away. She can’t be so bad, can she? Not my own twin.
We’re strolling down the hill as the ambulance arrives. Twilight has fallen over the promenade and the looted shops below. Sister isn’t talking to me, but it’s a comfortable silence. I’m proud.
She can be different. I can be different, too.
A middle-aged man passes us on the stairs, dark-haired where the man on the hill was fair. He looks, strangely, like Burt Reynolds. And he’s whistling and cat-calling my sister and asking to take her home.
“Let me show you a good time, sweetheart…”
It’s the kind of attention that makes me want to gag. It’s uncomfortable and unnecessary, and I’m just about to tell him off when she shrugs and smiles coyly.
“Why not?”
She winks at me, and I’m left staring after her. The man slings his arm over her shoulder. If he’s lucky, she’ll be the best he’s ever had. She’ll almost certainly be the last.
Why do nice reapers always finish last?
With my twin by my side, I’d be invincible. But here I am, strolling these strange shopping mall catacombs alone at night, and I feel weirdly… vulnerable. Kind of ironic, I suppose.
There are young people sitting in stairwells, laughing from low walls as they drink malt liquor. All eyes are on me as I pass, and I can’t help but feel that they’re laughing at me.
I try to pass through into the theater, but a girl stops me. “Hold on. You gotta pay up to pass.” Her cronies surround me on all sides.
“I don’t have any money.”
“You’ve got money. Everyone’s got money. Pay up.”
I empty my pockets. “I don’t have anything. I just need to get through.”
“No one gets through unless they pay.”
I push. They push back. One of them shoves me, then another. Then the lead girl is swinging a fist.
In my theater, nothing can hurt me.
I keep touching my face. My right eye is swollen and puffy, but I can see, and I can hear, too. There’s laughter in my theater where there should only be silence.
I walk up the right aisle of chairs to find my mother joking with a blonde woman my own age. When I say my mother, of course, I mean Lorelai Gilmore because… well, why not?
“What are you doing here?” I ask her. She’s not usually around when I need her. And while I wouldn’t exactly say that I need her now, I need someone. Anyone.
Not that she hears me.
“Mom? What are you doing here?”
She and the blonde are laughing and laughing. I take a seat in one of the red velvet chairs. They’re laughing by the yellow light of the stage.
“Mom?”
She turns, as if only just realizing I’m here.
“What happened to your eye?”
Jenny, why doesn’t Lorelai Gilmore love me?
Okay, maybe it’s the gin that doesn’t love me. It certainly doesn’t love my stomach. I do have some good news though: that bottle of gin that’s been taking up space in my cabinet for a year and a half is now in the recycling bin.
And if nothing else, I got a pretty interesting dream out of it.
