Dream on a Thursday Morning

by Gareth Edel

I was in a court building, or other similarly official and civic center, and friends were with me, their identities don't figure into the dream in any important role. It had been a nice dream, with humour, and flirtation. I suppose only I would dream about flirtation as opposed to sex, but I digress. And in the dream, I needed a cigarette badly, which is no surprise, since I am in real life, the amazing walking chimney boy, or at least that would be my carnie name.

I rushed to get outside, with the sole intent of lighting a cigarette, and the elevator was slow. This slowness mimicked my feelings about the real elevator at the Queens county Civil Court House, which exasperated me on a recent Jury Duty. I burst out of the elevator, and was so excited to be on the first floor, I got confused and lit the cigarette that I had withdrawn from the pack on the ride down. Trotting quickly through the lobby attempting, self consciously, to hide a cigarette billowing smoke, I approached the security desk near the front door, and was stared at by a guard who was older and frumpier than any I have seen lately. This, unlike the elevator, was not the doppelganger of my recent court house experience, since the real guards had mostly been white and at least fairly fit.

As I passed the guard, he looked and started to open his mouth to speak, and in my dream mind the only thing I came up with to say was: "I just lit it back there, sorry." To this enigmatic nugget the guard responded with a smile and ceased his preparations for elocution. I stepped outside, and despite the smile the guard had presented, or perhaps to avoid the friends who were following m out, I stepped behind a small glass booth (where it came from I don't know) that resembled the ticket booth at an old movie theater or a carnival in those films set in the 1930's through 1960's. I can only suggest that if you are curious, I think it was most like the one in the John Goodman vehicle Matinee.

As I stood smoking the cigarette, whatever confused desire I had held to hide behind this transparent structure ended and I began to step our from behind it, and saw, or moreover nearly bumped into someone I recognized walking with several men. She looked beautiful, older and more mature than when I last saw her in real life. She has always walked with superb posture, as if proud, and almost heroic, and this has not changed. It may sound strange, but she has small breasts, which always makes me think that she should be self conscious, and therefore slouch, but she never has. She walks upright. And it makes her beautiful. Hair that would have hung in a perfect bob, if it wasn't curly, which although ruining the bob, gave her more personality and a certain slightly messy charm, and she has these eyes which as I look cloud from peace with a look that verges on disgust, as I call her name.

We met during Passover, as we all know the best relationships start with wine and the trappings of tradition. It could only have been better if we had seen the slaughter of a lamb. I remember the weak attempt at religion, and mostly the wine. They had estimated poorly the amount of wine that was needed for the crowd and that at the end of the night, some of us sat, passing around innumerable huge magnum sized bottles of Kosher wine. I remember the sweetness of our first kiss after hours of flirting, and the desire to follow her in when I walked her to her dorm. We had planned all night to finish the wine, but there had simply been too much. I do not remember what happened to the Excess wine that we failed to consume. I wish I could still laugh at her gay friend interrupting our kisses, and saying he felt left out. Drunk as we were, we both kissed him. In the end, we dated for a month or so, and then we went separate ways, and although we intended to, we did not keep in touch. I hadn't seen her in more than three years when she appeared in my dream last night.

"Aley?" and as the word, her name leave my mouth I only then connect the look in her eyes and my presence. And her pace quickens to carry her past me, and she raised one hand held at a ninety degree angle to the shaft of the arm, which looks painfully stiff, held out to block my presence from entering her vision, after that first glimpse. I try to continue speaking, but the weight of her hand snapping up like that, and it's rotation, to continually block my face from her vision, have made me unable to form words. And she and the group of men who cluster around her continue on.

I stand immediately sure that she thought I was someone else, our breakup, if you can call it that, was not bad. My role in her life ended several years ago. She couldn't still be hurt by it. And as this thought enters my head, I look again at her walking away, and see that her shoulders are slightly slumped forward and that her back is curved.

I awoke this morning before my dreamed friends found me behind my transparent hiding place, and I had not yet looked away from her.