wicked dreams

i think it was the pomegranate martini. or ... maybe it was the third pomegranate martini?

but really. it was kind of awful.

i don't know how it turned out that way. the night started off beautifully. we had our first mini-birthday celebration for C last night after work, when C and i met for drinks at dressler, where capt. mcflirty bartender was serving up some frosty pomegranate-ness. he looks familiar. good-looking guy with a sharp wit behind a bar ... maybe one of the millions of underemployed, overintelligent northwestern grads in williamsburg? he must be an actor. and if he's an actor, he must've been on law & order. he MUST have.

so i ask. have you been on law & order?

why yes, yes he has. he was the skeevy jealous ex-boyfriend suspect on one of the original law & order shows. and now he makes a delicious pomegranate martini. so we had several. V showed up after a bit, all clean-shaven and preppy for C. then Y arrives, and we sip on pomegranate yummyness while C and V move on to dinner. i haven't seen Y in many moons and kind of can't stop fawning over her. we go for noodles and chill on my pretty new orange bar stools, and all is calm and pretty and wonderful and pomegratey. i feel really good and loving towards everyone and everything. and then i go to sleep.

the bad shit starts here.

i am in stadium, a huge, massive stadium with a thrust stage in the middle, and people are screaming, calling out, and waiting for a play to start. it's friday night, they have to wait until sunday for the play. and i'm the lead in the play, and i'm overcome with exhaustion, and all i want to do is sleep, but i suddenly realize ... i don't know my lines. any of them. a whole play's worth. a litany of lines. a hamlet of lines. and i can't sleep, i have to try to memorize my lines, but i know there's just no way i'll be able to do it, and i am going to ruin the play for everyone, the other performers, the audience, everyone. and it's paralyzing and awful, but all i can do is try try try even though i know i won't be able to live up to expectation.

um.

i woke up from that dream to fits of tossing and turning. my mouth was parched, so i reach for the water i always keep by bed, but i knock the whole glass over onto the floor, and i am just too defeated to get up and go to the kitchen for another. i try to think ... is there anything i've forgotten? in real life? what could i possibly ruin for EVERYBODY else i know, for all these people who are relying on me? where am i fucking up? what can i do to make sure i don't disappoint everyone?

i fall back asleep.

i am in my childhood home, sitting at the vanity in my parents' bathroom, which somehow magically has long benches and tables in it, and i'm frantically trying to make myself beautiful and clean up the tables and benches and make the room pretty before all these people show up. somebody has died. i think it's somebody close, but i don't know. crowds of people start pouring into the house, and i can see them and i go rush out to meet them, and somebody, i think my sister, asks, "do you think she was dead when she was alive? or do you think she is more alive now that she's gone?" and i look back into the bathroom which i for some reason have been trying to make perfect, and two old, haggard, dirty men wrapped in ratty clothes are sitting at the benches, and marring everything. and they look familiar, and i know, in my heart of hearts, that they are the same men that haunted me in my old recurring nightmare from when i was a teenager, when haggard old men's faces would suddenly appear in every window of my house, so that even when i was locked inside, in my safe space, i couldn't ever get away from their eyes.

now, how fucked up is that, that DURING a dream, i'm haunted by the ghosts of my dreams past? i haven't had that nightmare since college. and that now ... now they are just sitting down in a space i have tried so hard to make beautiful? as if they have access to it whenever they choose. as if it's not really mine.

i wake up. i'm still thirsty. and then i fall back asleep.

i'm in a bedroom, and it's all white. there are ropes of christmas lights hanging from the ceiling, and a mattress on the floor, and everything is pristine. there are sheer white curtains on the windows, and everything is floating and pretty and nice. and i'm sitting on the edge of the mattress, and i'm watching an old flame and his current love interest dance around the room, wrapping themselves in the lights, and smiling, and dancing, and they are all twinkly and happy and pristine and he smiles at me, as if to say, see? and i'm genuinely happy for them, but something about the lights and the smiles is totally heartbreaking, and i shrink away from the whole room and suddenly i'm sitting alone and watching the whole scene on a screen, as if it's a home movie that's been recorded before. just two people dancing and laughing, tangled up in lights.

i wake up. it's 6am and i don't let myself go back to sleep. the day starts as usual: i get in the shower, shave my legs, brush my teeth, make some tea. i sit down at my desk and DR dings me at 7am so i can start work. we finish up, i get dressed, make my way to the J and here i am in midtown. everyday ordinary morning. it's like last night never happened, except it did, and i'm still all twisted up about it. it's kind of hard to write about real estate strategies or downtown revitalization or a new architecture exhibit when i'm wondering where i'm fucking up or why the old ghosts are back or when i get to be the one in love, dancing in lights.

sigh. but time to focus it is. the work is good work, at least ... and i have korea vs. switzerland, a play with D, dinner with G, and C's big birthday bash to look forward to this weekend. dreams be damned. the real world is calling.