April 27, 2023
I normally don’t put dreams down in here but a few nights ago I had the strangest dream and it continues to both amuse and haunt me. I have dreams like this only rarely but they are always profound and unsettling when they happen. Normally, my dreams seem to emerge out of my fears and anxieties and fantasies and are easy to figure out. Sometimes, though, they seem to come from somewhere else, somewhere outside of my own mind. This is one such case.
In the dream, I had a glider which was different than usual. Normally, I can fly and just take off. This required that I be standing on a cliff and catch a wind gust as I jump off. I jumped and caught the wind but didn’t have my form down because the glider descended a bit more rapidly than was optimal. Even so, it was stunning.
Every once in a while I have a dream where everything is hyper-real. This was just such a dream. The mountains, the forests, the rivers and streams, the trees, the rocks, everything was incredibly beautiful and vivid. Everything felt alive. There was no sense of separation. I glided along through the mountains, gradually descending until I reached a suspension bridge. I aimed between the bridge supports and used the bars connecting the supports to get a little boost, extending my glide until I reached the opposite side of the bridge.
The mountains and valleys and wilderness ended on the other side of the bridge and I was in a small city. It seemed sort of familiar but I’m not positive where it was supposed to be. It was evening and I made my way through the streets to an office building downtown. The streets were alive with people and there were open-air restaurants. On the way to the office building, I passed a motel/restaurant bar. It rented ‘spa’ rooms which was basically a fancy way of offering room rental by the hour for couples.
I went up several floors in the office building, eventually locating a lawyer’s office. I’m not sure what business I had there but I knew the lawyer even though he didn’t look like anyone I know in real life. I had the sense that I’d known him for a long time and really liked him to the point of having a crush on him.
He was quite handsome but not the sort of handsome I usually go for. He was tall and blond-haired and looked Germanic or Scandinavian. (In other words, he looked a lot like me and I don’t normally find guys who look like me attractive.) He was younger than me, probably in his thirties. In the dream, I was my age in real life, 53.
We chatted for a bit before he got down to business. I still have no idea what we were meeting about, only that I was impressed with his knowledge and also crushing on him. I made small talk, trying to prolong the conversation. He told me that his last name was Deegan and I mentioned that I knew a Jack Deegan when I was growing up in Suttons Bay. (Where did that come from? I haven’t thought about Jack Deegan in years and certainly never was attracted to him.) I said something like, “He came from a Catholic family, though. I think he had nine brothers and sisters.” The lawyer laughed. I guess I knew him well enough to know that he wasn’t Catholic and he wasn’t conservative. I have the sense that he was a liberal activist lawyer but who knows where I got that?
There was a fan blowing in the office, making it somewhat difficult to hear. At one point, I murmured, “Why do you have to be straight?” to myself, thinking that the fan would cover my voice but he heard me. I looked at him and he looked back at me, assessing. And then he stood up and motioned for me to follow him.
My heart was pounding because I knew that he was going to take me up on my ‘offer’ and we would get together. I couldn’t believe this was happening and was nervous. I hadn’t been super serious about my attraction to him; I found him handsome and attractive, sure, but I didn’t know if that meant I wanted to fuck him. Apparently, he thought that’s what I wanted and was going to take me up on the offer.
He wasn’t in any particular hurry, taking me through the building and out onto the roof. There was a stairway down to a rooftop, open-air restaurant. We walked down into the restaurant and he pointed out little curiosities to me. For instance, the banisters had been reclaimed from an old Victorian manor and the woodwork had been made by a famous architect. The restaurant wasn’t open yet - he said it belonged to the yacht club - but the tables had been set. Everything was ritzy and sumptuous. The wine goblets were red glass and the napkins were linen. It was like a table from the 19th Century.
I examined the fancy woodwork, noting how someone had painted it recently. Trying to impress the lawyer with my astute powers of observation, I said, “You can tell it wasn’t painted originally. See?” I pointed at the somewhat sloppy paint job. “There’s only one layer of paint and it’s recent. If it had been painted originally, there would be more layers of paint.” He nodded and told me the name of the architect before pointing out more of his woodwork here and there in the windows, on the walls and on the banisters.
We continued through the open-air restaurant and descended a stair. He pointed to the motel/restaurant bar (the place where couples could rent rooms by the hour) and said that they had really struggled during COVID but now they were doing better. He mentioned the owner was a woman whom he knew well. I gulped, realizing that was where he was taking me. Was I really ready to have sex with this guy? I mean, he was cute but not that cute. I didn’t know if I wanted to have a fling. It made me uncomfortable but I didn’t know what to say because technically I had suggested this.
The outside of the motel/restaurant bar was a patio and it was full with people. This made me even more nervous. The lawyer led me inside. He told me to wait while he rented a room for us. I looked around, seeing the place was full of people, mostly hetero couples. A couple of the guys looked at me and winked conspiratorially. It was clear they thought I was here with a woman and was about to get lucky.
I watched as my lawyer talked to the woman, presumably the owner, at the front desk. She was of Middle Eastern descent and spoke English with an accent. She seemed happy to see him. He seemed very happy as well, giddy almost. This made me feel even more uncomfortable.
When he came back to me, he was smiling. Taking me by the hand, he led me over to a stairway. The place was kind of seedy and definitely not luxurious. It was an older wooden building and the planks on the walls and floors had been painted white but the paint was scuffed and kind of peeling.
At the stairway, my lawyer did something funny. He was holding some paper cups in one hand. As an older man came down the stairs towards us, the lawyer placed the cups on a tray that the old man was carrying. When he picked the cups back up again, I noticed that he took something off the man’s tray. It was a pill of some kind. I don’t know how I knew this but I knew the pill was Viagra. So, I thought, he’s worried about being able to get it up. This only added to my discomfort. I was trying to think of any way I could to get out of this.
I was conscious of the fact that the lawyer liked my body even though I’m middle aged and quite a bit older. In the dream, I knew I was past my prime but also knew that I’m in pretty good shape for a guy my age. Even so, I knew that I was about as far away from an ingenue as possible and could hardly be described as a catch. This is what makes the dream so funny, or at least part of why it’s so funny.
The lawyer had removed my shirt by the time we were at the top of the stairs and I was only wearing a pair of shorts. I felt self-conscious enough being half naked but this increased exponentially when I realized there was, of all things, a fancy restaurant at the top of the stairs and it was crowded with people who were all dressed up. WTF? Why would a ‘no-tell motel’ have a fancy restaurant in it?
Everyone turned to stare at me as my lawyer left me stranded, saying he was going to check on our room. I looked around helplessly, feeling like I wanted to disappear. Everyone was still staring at me. Wilting, I turned and headed back down the stairs only to be stopped by a waitress.
“Which room are you looking for?” she asked. She was smiling in the most disarming and friendly way.
“Uh, Room 15,” I said, awkwardly trying to cover my bare chest with my hands.
“Ah, that’s The Eatery,” she said, laughing. “I think the name’s supposed to be a joke.” She winked as she said this and I flushed. Realizing I was embarrassed, she tried to sound reassuring. “Don’t worry! Go on!” she said. “Time to have some fun, right?”
“I guess so,” I replied, looking around for the lawyer who was nowhere to be seen.
She pointed to the room and I was contemplating whether to go inside or not when I woke up.
I have no fucking clue what any of this means, only that it was unlike my usual dreams in that I was not in control at all. Normally, I feel like I’m directing the dream even if it’s being directed by my insecurities. This dream didn’t feel like that. I kept getting caught off guard by the twists and turns. Additionally, there were so many little details that I never would have thought up on my own. Where did they come from?
***
