Nightmares

Nightmares

It's 9 o'clock in the morning and I'm wide awake. This doesn't even happen on weekdays, I'm a zombie on my morning commute. I'm awake because I had a nightmare that was so vivid I woke up gasping for air. It started out that I was having a party at my house. We were watching Tea With Mussolini on cable because I love that movie and all of a sudden I was in the movie, but events were happening that didn't occur in the real movie. I was outside on the street with my family and this seemingly psychotic soldier started harrassing us. When I refuse to follow her order --to stop selling car posters wtf-- she threatens me with a billy club and tries to attack me (Editor's note: who the hell is "Billy" and how much did HIS life suck if this thing was named after him...forever). So I take a blow to my arm then end up beating the shit out of her with her own billy club. My relatives end up taking her home with them because no one else wants to. When she wakes up she tells me that life is unfair because she doesn't even want to be a soldier. She had tried to get a leave and escape the country but the dictator's military caught her and brought her back. Naturally I feel like shit. The funniest part of this portion of the dream was the fact that I was Liesl from The Sound of Music so actually Liesl feels like shit.

At this point the Tea With Mussolini portion of the dream ends and I'm me again, back at the party in Jersey City. The phone rings and it's Lani. She tells me she just got married to this guy and that they spent the weekend in London and Peru. Apparently geography is not important in my dream, nor does my psyche take into consideration things like jet lag, flight length and time zones. (Editor's note: by the way, contrary to the idea that all people only dream in black and white, this dream was in color. I have a distinct vision of colors and scenes. For example, when I dreamt of Lani at the airport she was wearing a bright red sweater, blue jeans, a black leather jacket, a light pink scully and these cute glasses like Elle from Legally Blonde.) I get off my cell with Lani more than a little upset that I wasn't there at her wedding, but she calls me back on my (nonexistent) videophone and it's all better.

So my friend Jimmy comes by the house and ends up getting into a fight with one of my other friends. We decide to leave and go to some bar in Hoboken (I know, I'm obviously an exceptional hostess). Hoboken doesn't look like it usually does, it's more like a bazaar with tiny bodegas and street vendors/bars. It looks like Tijuana in Appalachia. But we just need a drink so we pick this outdoor bar where guys are juggling flaming objects and approach the Kid Rock lookalike (complete with cowboy hat and white fur jacket) person at the door. On the way home me, Jimmy and his driver who looks like Mr. Belvedere get into a horrible accident. Usually I wake myself up instantaneously, once my mind gets an inkling of danger but not this time apparently.

The freaky part of the dream is that this is the second really bad dream I've had with this scenario and both times I was sitting in the exact same location, right behind the passenger seat. I was in college when I had the first dream and when I told it to my sorority sisters they never let me sit in the right side of the backseat ever again. But I guess I'm slightly superstitious because usually I wouldn't even sit there in the first place.

Some of you are probably tripping out at how detailed and bizarre my dreams are but they're almost always like that. I've dreamt about walking in underground aqueducts with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Snow White... going to back to UC Santa Cruz and seeing enormous Smurf houses with jewel-encrusted roofs... starting work at my company that turns out to be an entire planet of worker drones (my friend Paul gave me a tour on rollerblades and our CMO calls us to meetings by appearing as a little hologram above the mouse like Obi-Wan)...