Dream: 01/11/10

Do you ever have one of those dreams whose residual effect persists after you've awoken. The first time I experienced this was with a dream I had as a 7-year-old about a girl I knew and a boy I was friends with in the second grade. The dream morphed from me using the toilet to take a leak at my house to those two friends showing up and me eating the chlorine cake that my mother would hang on the side of the toilet. My stomach was upset well into the day, and I even stayed home from school I was so sickened. I do recall going to the grocery store with my mother that day and eating Whoppers as my mother declared that I wasn't sick. That's the kind of mother she was; quick to come to your aid in support of your view, then equally as quick to discount it with a mixture of scolding and laughter.

The dream I had on the 11th had this residual effect. Luckily, it only persisted for about 5 minutes after waking. Two disconnected pieces of the dream will remain seared in my mind for some time. I'm at what looks like a house party. It's evening. I can faintly make out lights strung in the air and people around the periphery. None I can make out. I walk down the steps that go into the back door. There's a phone on a stand next to a tree about 10 feet from the steps. I am on the phone talking to a man who, I am informed by disembodied voices, is speaking to me from a research station in the Arctic. He's trying to give me his address, and I can hardly hear his voice. He keeps repeating his address. The pen and paper I'm using aren't working, so I ask him to hold as I get an actual pad and a new pen. I return to the outdoor area, and that same phone rings. Apparently, the way I rested the phone back down on the cradle hung the phone up. I assume it's him calling me back. It's not. It's my grandmother. She's been dead for almost 6 years.

She says hello. Her voice sounds quiet and somewhat infirm. I return with a hello. Instead of how she is doing, I drop the bomb. "What's heaven like?" I ask. I was feeling somewhat brave. She responds, "Everyone is dead." I then hear an explanation of what that means. I get the gist that the dead are the non-believers. She was one of the few devout Catholics who is in heaven, but she's surrounded by dead, non-believers. I tell her that, since I don't believe in an afterlife, I won't have to worry myself with being surrounded by the dead because I'll be one of them. The conversation ends. I enter the house, and now the house has morphed into the interior of a bar. This sets up the second part of the dream.

I'm at the bar. There are people there. I notice at one table a woman, more a girl really, looking at me. She has light blue eyes, and they're locked on mine for a length of time, the kind of length that indicates attraction, which some study that you'd read about in the news has determined scientifically. I'm convinced that she's interested. She's with friends or family, I'm not sure. Several are at her table. She stands next to it. I build up some courage, and when I see her again, she has re-entered the bar wearing a dress. She's still at this table, only now she is with a girlfriend. I muster up some courage, talk with the friends that I've apparently accompanied to the bar, and set off to make my move.

I approach her table and say a simple hello. She's speaking out loud to her friend about the hot guys at the bar. She's ignoring me as is her friend. She scans around the bar as if I'm not there. Dejected, I walk away. I pass my friends' table. Apparently, by the short conversation that we have the girl is my friend's sister. I say my goodbyes. I want to leave this bar. "Just don't pity me." I say as I leave the bar area for the exit. On my way out, I stop into the restroom. As I round a corner of the bathroom, I see that a man using one of the stalls has barricaded his section off with several trash cans. He's on his phone as he unseats himself from the toilet he's been using. I'm trying to focus on using the urinal, and I wake up. I have to take a piss.

People tell me that when they've dreamed of going to the bathroom they've inadvertently gone somewhere in their house or in their bed. I suppose that I'm glad that in my dream all the usual anxieties surrounding women, the afterlife, and even pissing in public are involved. The one saving grace of the dream is that I didn't follow through and piss my bed that day. As I get up to go to the bathroom my ego is still smarting from the dream. I'm still actually feeling somewhat hurt and dejected. The worst feeling is being treated as if you're not there, and the dream girl switched from locking eyes with me to being oblivious to me. I'm thinking of this as I try to take a piss and I'm having trouble still. I'm thinking too much and the anxieties have me all pinched up. Nothing is flowing. Eventually I do piss, and I go lay back down in bed.

Dreams like this reference my current state of affairs. My fascination with the dead and with being treated as if I'm not there are recurrent elements in my fantasies. They do have something in common. When you're being utterly ignored, you're non-existent socially. As an ignored entity whose only affirming presence is that of your own self-awareness you consider yourself as good as dead to the others. After all, you came all this way to be among others. For them to completely ignore you sends a message that your presence is more than not welcome--you presence isn't even worth their time to acknowledge. I'm going to see how long I can go unnoticed. My one magic trick is my disappearing act.