Dreams

You were in my dreams last night. Yes, you. Pretty weird, huh?

Creepy, too. I don’t even know you that well, or at least well enough that you have any right to crawl into my head while I’m sleeping.

You probably thought it was only other people who showed up in your dreams uninvited. You know how it goes. You have a dream where someone from your past unexpectedly takes a leading role and you wake up in the morning and say to your partner, “You wouldn’t believe it but I had a dream with so and so in it. Don’t ask me why he/she was in my dreams last night, but they were.”

“Oh really, that’s odd,” your partner casually remarks, which is all they can do because that same night they were having a sex dream of their own and you were nowhere in it.

Well, you were in my dream last night and let me tell you, you were having a bad hair day.

Here I was, minding my own business trying to take a leak in some strange bathroom and next thing you know, you’re standing there looking at me. Now I can’t piss.

“Get the hell away from me,” I tell you, but it doesn’t matter. You start talking nonsense about something that happened years ago that I’m not even certain really happened. Then I find out we work together at a job I didn’t know I had and everybody else in the dream treats you like you’re our supervisor.

To me you’re just a middle of the night gate crasher who’s watching me trying to relieve myself. Sorry, I can’t wait for lunch or break time. I gotta go NOW.

Suddenly, you’re not only having a bad hair day but your head is starting to look weird, as in big and somewhat misshapen. Worse, your clothes don’t match because you’re mixing plaids and stripes. What are you, some kind of idiot?

And here you thought you were a normal person minding your own business and living a normal life. Not in my dreams you aren’t. This is what nightmares are made of. And who knows how you behave in other peoples’ dreams. They’re probably too embarrassed to tell you.

There’s nothing normal about you eyeing me in the john and then introducing me to your dog who is as big as a horse or is it a horse the size of a dog? Where did that thing come from? And why do I get the feeling its reading my mind? Don’t tell me the fucker speaks Serbian too.
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"Get screwed,” I say, but you insist on setting up house in my head. I guess you knew I had horses so this was you’re way of trying to buddy up to me, but you’re only making me feel very, very uncomfortable.

So my dream goes on, me trying to figure out this new job I didn’t know I had and having to piss (where the hell did that bathroom go?), your dog/horse thingie looking like he wants to tell me a secret and you with your lumpy skull chatting with our coworkers. I’ve got to hand it to you though, you look like you know what you’re doing at your job, whatever it is. At least you’re not naked; not yet anyway.

You complain that I often show up for work late and that makes me nervous, but whose fault is it? I didn’t even know I work here.

Then it happens. Now you’re standing next to me, way too close in fact, and you’re only in your underwear. To you it all seems perfectly normal. Do you really know what you look practically naked? No, you don’t. Not in dreamland.

Your head doesn’t seem quite as lumpy as it did a while ago but the rest of you, YECH! Lumpy in all the wrong places. Another thing: did you just have a sex change in, say, the last minute or so? I can’t say for sure what sex you are anymore, but you don’t seem to mind and neither does anyone around us. So why do I feel like I’m the weirdo here?

Do you do this to other people you’ve met? Do you like prowling around like a ghost at night, creeping into peoples’ dreams? Oh, another thing. I’m in real estate and things are slow. Are you looking to buy or sell a house? One with good blinds or shades on the windows? No phony dream money, please.

Finally, you start to fade and become nothing that a good cup of coffee would take care of in the morning. By the way, I told my wife, Regina, about you being in my dream.

“Oh really, that’s odd,” she said.