non-lucid

I'm back home by the lakeside after the department-store incident. I'd backed down with the police. I have a car. I have to go to a scene study group tonight. I'm finishing watching an old episode of Little House on the Prairie (playing on my TV as I'm sleeping in real life) and hoping to finish a due report as my parents come home. I'd really been hoping to leave before their arrival in order to avoid any trouble, and I know they're going to want to "discuss" this out (yell at me, put me down and hit me) instead of letting me go out. Then I hear my parents down at the lake trying get the boat into the water in high waves. My sister Bren and her friends, and Joanne and her friends, are there playing and there are a bunch of children flying kites. Dad comes in the front of the house and collapses exhaustedly on a chair. He's present-day Dad, and he's had two full-leg amputations. I ask him if he needs anything, and he says just get that damn Little House on the Prairie the hell off the TV so he can watch the news. I can't turn the show off (it's playing in real life), so I just toss him the controls and rush out to help Mom, who I can see is face down in the water with the boat out behind her. I almost trip over Dad's prosthetic legs on the way down to the beach. They've been discarded right before the steps to the house. I get to the beach and Mom is standing up by this time and the boys are in the boat having a good time. I brave Mom's thunderous look and ask her if she needs anything. She doesn't respond. I ask her if she needs a towel or a blanket and she says yes please. Some of her friends are on the dock judging me for being an unhelpful daughter. I run to the beach house to get the towel and shake the sand and spiders out of it before I bring it to her. Then I leave her there and run back up the hill, tripping over one of the kite strings - which takes me up, flying. It's a good feeling and it shows that I'm being included in the family games. I consider not going to the scene study because being included in the family fun is huge. As I'm trying to make thiis decision, I wake up.

My dad, my sister Bren, and I are in a department store. I've just completely defied the family by refusing to go to an all-day Mennonite church service and opting to hang out with the backsliders in the Mennonite Social Club instead. I'm refusing to say I'm sorry, and I'm telling my father he can't boss me around. I'm trying to get them to follow me to the Mennonite Social Club to show them that it isn't sinful. My father starts chasing me and hitting me with his fists. There's nothing in the Bible that specifically says he can't do that. I cower and try to protect myself. I yell at passers-by, "Help! Please call the police!" but no one helps, they just stare. I finally get away and he orders me, "Get in the car!" I say no. I keep refusing and I leave. Then my father starts to get flirty and cajoling. He calls me his little girl. I don't like the way he looks at me. He goes off to look at the rest of the store, and then he shows up again with a sly smile, saying, "I tricked you. You thought I'd left you. But here I am." I run away. I find a clothing store manager and tell her everything that's going on. She says we'll have to find store security and they will report it to the police. I'm just trying to GET it to the police, and no one seems willing to help me so far. The store manager finds one of her bosses and I tell her the story. They all say, "You poor child," and try to console me, but I can see they're also too freaked out to want to get involved. I go back to the part of the store where Bren and my dad were waiting. I see a note from Bren about where dinner is, etc. and they've gone home. I look around and there are a bunch of presents to unwrap! It's also a living room display, so it looks like it's my own apartment. I learn from security that I'll be allowed to stay in the store overnight and to help myself to any products I may need, such as toothpaste or shampoo. I'm happy. I discover that Bren has left a stick of chocolate licorice to make up for anything my father did. I still want to report my father, but I'm enjoying the comforts of this home display and considering just letting things be and accepting the gifts of material comforts and security. Someone shows up with "sexual intent vision" glasses to spot any illicit intentions on the part of my dad during his next appearance. I wear them too when my father shows up the next day, but I worry because I'm not good at pointing the camera while hiding that I'm wearing them. I'd also be punished severely for that unthinkable level of defiance toward my parents. That's when I wake up with an intense vascular headache and feeling sick to my stomach.

Real-life note: My father hit me, but never sexually abused me. He would be horrified and devastated if he ever knew that at 14, I was generally terrified that he might cross that line. I suffer from PTSD related to treatment by my parents and bullying in school. Also, I needed extra Clonazepam (extra-dosed under medical advice) to get to sleep last night because I'd run out of Mirapex.

It's the early 80s and I'm in my late teens/early 20s. I have an assignment I'm working on for university and I need more paper for the typewriter. I go all around the house, hoping to find some paper that Dad has left beside a typewriter somewhere or stowed away in one of his heavy wooden work desks. I can find none, so I sigh because I'm going to have to go upstairs and ask for some from my parents and I know things are tense up there. I go and ask for some paper. My mother asks me to apologize first for my tone of voice earlier. I now remember that we'd been sitting on camping chairs in the forest and she'd started to slap me around, but then we'd come into the present (me 47 years old and in good physical condition; her in her mid 70s and weakened) and I'd fought back, bringing her to the ground. She'd felt humiliated and hadn't spoken to me since. She and Dad were afraid I'd gone bad and would end up a street kid. So I ask for some paper, I'm asked to apologize, and Dad and my sisters just mouth to me, "Just do it." So I frame an apology under a tight smile. I'm given some paper. I go out the front door to the street where I grew up, and I let out a scream. It's heard inside, and then my mom herds my two sisters, both under 15, out the door and into the station wagon. They're about to leave the family and leave me with Dad and she and Dad are even talking about how to divide up the dogs. I look at the dogs and know they're crying inside because they know they're about to be separated forever and it's my fault. I can't believe my sister Bren is in the car and not saying anything. I yell at her that I thought she was my best friend and that she's a traitor - and it seems someone I can't identify is beside me feeding the word "traitor" to me, coaching me along. Then I yell at my sister Joanne, who is now a tall blonde woman with a two-year-old son. I see a Sunday School schedule where my sisters and I attend a shul while my nephew attends a Sunday School class on Jesus. (We're not Jewish in real life - at least not in practice, only in partial background.)

I wake up with people vaguely whirling about me, blaming me for breaking up my family. I'm still drugged up with Clonazepam and therefore half in dreamland, so I know I have to go back to sleep and kill myself in the dream to show everybody I'm a valid person. I know it's safe to kill myself in the dream, because I'll just wake up here. So I go back into the dream and then I'm watching news accounts of myself taking Clonazepam two at a time and delaying each dosage so I don't throw up, so that the overdose'll take and I'll get to leave. But instead I see myself as a blonde teen prostitute with tatoos all over her body. The tatoos are in the form of black vines crawling over every inch of my skin. There's a documentary narration voice stating I woke up here, my name was Margaret as a kid but it's now Megit, and I'm serving fries - which men are only too happy to take from me. The way I'm serving fries is, well, pornographic, and one by one. Apparently Margaret had woken up drugged up and surrounded by a prostitution ring. The documentary goes on to say that the rest of the family - who are now African-American brothers - has reunited and the sons have their own sons, who uncomfortably remind them of themselves.

Very important note here: I'm not suicidal in real life, not in the least. I used to be. But I'm too old and too well medicated for that crap now. I had forgotten to take my antidepressant yesterday morning, but had realized and taken it at night.

Another note: Yes, my mom used to slap me around a bit. She'd get in strange moods where you could almost see a thundercloud over her head. I remember once I saw her like that and stiffened up as I had to walk by her, and then she whaled on me with four or five slaps and told me it was because I was walking with my "nose in the air" looking like I had a "stick up [my] ass". I was scared of her and my dad, who got his slaps and kicks in as well when he went through his depression, to the point that at the age of 14 I almost left home. This is just another PTSD-type nightmare. I read a story about a street kid yesterday, so that was probably what triggered the element of fear of what could have happened to me.

I'm talking with Niri, an old friend from high school. She mentions she's at this hotel in this strange city because Adam is presenting a paper at a conference here. She says she met him a number of years ago and now she wants to have a baby on her own and is hoping that he will be the father this weekend. I feel very jealous. I ask, "Can we share him?" She evaluates this, and asks how long it's been since I've seen him. I don't want to tell her it's 20 years, lest she quote a smaller number and claim priority. I realize I want to have his baby too - to my surprise. I hadn't thought I'd want a baby. But I now realize how perfect the combination of his and my DNA would be.

I'm in an apartment suite with Adam. I know I have to leave for my first day at high school, so I try to find my clipboard and a bathroom. I can only find an exposed toilet in my bedroom, and as he's coming to poke his head in, joking about how the room is in a different city and the weather is so nice at my end of the suite, he points out another bathroom behind a closed door. I go in and notice it's all stocked up with paper supplies and there's a whole cupboard of fresh bread - this turns out to be a laundry room.

I go to the school and find a table outside. The woman there says, "You're late!" I look and notice my slip is the only one left. I do the paperwork and get my list of classes. As usual in these dreams, the first class is history (that's always the class I've missed all year and suddenly have an exam in). I go to class and I'm yelled at for being late. I leave the class and decide to skip it to buy all my books and go chill in the cafeteria.

Bits of this morning's dream (last vestiges of a Clonazepam sleep):

I'm making popcorn in my wok. Clearly I haven't thought this through, because I don't have a cover big enough for it. The popcorn and the oil start flying all over the kitchen, and I'm afraid my mom's about to come in and start yelling at me again for making a mess, or slapping me as she used to do whenever she was "tired". (I've actually been living on my own for 21 years and I could certainly take down my 70-year-old mother in a physical fight. I only recently started making my own popcorn and I frequently burn it.)

As I'm trying to cover it up, we shift to an establishing shot of the building I'm in - a gas station/diner - and then to a computer screen where I'm getting an email from a guy who in real life has just asked me out for the 17th time. I'm not interested in him, and I've told him repeatedly that I'm busy, and this last time he asked me out I finally told him I had a boyfriend. (I don't, but often a persistent man will finally leave you alone if he thinks he'll have to deal with another male instead of just trying to wear YOU down.) He had responded nastily - "Okay what a weird response, I wasn't asking you out, I was just asking you for coffee!!!!!" (Creepy.) In this dream, the same email exchange occurs, but in addition to this nastygram from him, he includes a series of symbol characters (as in smileys or winkies and stuff like that) that, when looked at sideways, look like Mr. Knox from Fox In Sox with an erection.

Ew. But I do wish I could remember the sequence of characters....

I thought this was worth noting. I had a dream about Colm last night. We were, at one point, in the midst of the physical act. It was very vivid; I physically felt every sensation. And that was strange, because in real life, the sexual act is usually physically extremely painful to me. Here there was no pain, only love and an indescribable, beautiful connection. The one I felt with him when I was with him in Mexico. He is one of only two people with whom I have felt that kind of connection.

It's nice to be able to see what the big deal about the penetration phase of sexual intercourse is all about, even if it's only a dream. It's also nice to have a break from my nightmares. I suppose my mind needed the respite. I am also at the onset of menopause, and have likely had that in the back of my mind as well.

I get a birthday card in the mail from Colm (who in real life didn't wish me a Happy Birthday on Facebook). I open it & it's addressed to someone else, a "Michelle", & it's a Happy 16th birthday message. He has also written her a lengthy note about how he used to babysit her & how much she's grown. He's put her full name & phone number at the bottom. Turns out to be the same phone number of a party I'm supposed to be at. Then I'm at work & I get into a conversation with my supervisor (a friend as well) that Colm quite obviously expects me to call this Michelle & tell her I have the card & ask if she has the card Colm was to have sent me, if there is one. In that way, I will have reinitiated contact. (In real life I've made it a New Year's resolution not to do so and to wait until he initiates things this time.) I remark that it's not going to work, no matter how tempting it is to find out whether Colm did in fact send me a card. My supervisor remarks that this is what very attractive Leo men do - manipulate things so that it is the ladies who are pursuing them. A fear grips me that perhaps if this is the case with Colm, he doesn't have a clue how to pursue a woman he likes. Moreover, if he's scared to, he might never initiate anything. Then I get distracted by a surly server's refusal to give me a lunch I had ordered one hour ago (before this intense conversation had begun) wherein I yell at the server and go to McDonald's. They have a quarter-pounder all ready for me.

I've been asked to audition for a teacher. Somehow this audition is a huge life-changing deal. She has already decided to reject me - that's clear - and the audition is merely a formality. The trouble is that my music isn't played by someone born into a wealthy enough family for her.

I start. She immediately covers the keys so I can't see what I'm doing. Fine, I accept that as a teaching technique with some students, but it's a little weird at an audition. She then starts demonstrating arpeggios, Hanon moves, elaborate sostenuto progressions, the works. I'm out of practice and intimidated. I'm not about to show her the music I've written - she's a hostile force.

This is right after I've been introduced to two unattractive gentlemen and asked to choose between them. "Neither" was not an accepted option, so I am now on the blacklist with this piano woman.

Finally, I've had enough. I start playing Scott Joplin's "The Entertainer" - and not perfectly, either, but just because I like playing the song.

She stops the audition and asks me to talk to an adjudicator on my way out.

Before this, I'm on my way to the audition room and I'm walking through a huge house, very clean and spacious. I see lions and antelopes and other huge beasts materializing before my eyes - some of them being ice sculptures, yet alive. At one point I say there are lions, but my sister says, "Lions? There are no lions," and gives me a significant look as if to say, "Don't tell this lion he's a lion!" I pick up on that and say, "Of course there are no lions, because there are no predators. Lions eat people." Then I catch a hurt expression in the lion's face, and I hastily add, "Except the good lions, of course."

Real-life parallels: I've been helping my 20-month-old nephew play the piano. He keeps trying to close the keyboard cover. I showed him how to sweep the keys with his palms and he's fascinated with trying to do that. My sister has repeatedly been correcting things I say in front of the child and ways I deal with the child - in a nice, toddler-friendly voice, of course.

In the part of this dream that I remember, I'm leaving work at a psychiatric ward (which was a former waking-life workplace for way too many miserable years) and I'm driving a Model T type early automobile, in the style of the era when they used to be actually called automobiles, or horseless carriages. Aidan is a patient in the hospital and I stumble across his records; he is from a very wealthy family who is keeping it quiet, and he is under the name Adam MacNeill.

(Triggers from waking life: I've been watching a lot of Road to Avonlea lately as a way of dealing with the stress of being home for Christmas with a real-life 21st-century family. There are a lot of those early cars in that show. Also, I'd noticed that there was a minor character named MacNeill, never seen, but named as the legal owner of Green Gables. I'd recognized that as one of the series' many sly nods to the author's estate: Lucy Maud Montgomery's grandmother, who was her legal guardian and who was by most accounts very strict and harsh with the young Maud, had been named Lucy Woolner MacNeill. I had had a conversation with my mother about my father's early-onset Alzheimer's and the fact that he is starting from an IQ well above normal, so his memory loss is not as easily noticed; I'd commented that in the patients I'd assessed, we had to start with a rough idea of their baseline IQ, and usually the professors or economists or others of that social class who were somehow in the public mental health care system (and very few were, as their families usually made private arrangements) were harder to flag as having memory difficulties needing attention, because their scores on the Wechsler Memory Test were usually at or above normal.)

I'm well aware that I have no business even being aware that Aidan is in need of care (although I kind of know that anyway), let alone that he's an inpatient. There is some kind of paperwork that needs to be completed and left on the supervising psychologist's desk before I drive off in my ahooga-mobile. This paperwork will mean I'll be fired when the supervisor gets around to reading it, but I leave in the car before he finishes his coffee. It's the end of the day anyway on a Friday and it's time I was driving off. (In the real-life job, there was a stretch where every Friday contained some kind of reason to worry all weekend about losing my job.) When I do drive off, I'm stopped at a turnstile on the way out and asked for change. I initially don't have it and will be unable to escape the hospital, but eventually I do find it and get out of there.

Cut to a wealthy neighbourhood. My mother, a young girl in her 20s, is there with her toddler. I am there with a camera to take photos, but she has quarrelled with the family in one of the houses there and wants to get the photos taken as furtively as possible in the nearby park on the swings. My job is to carry the camera.

(Real-life parallel: My 20-month-old nephew is here and, for his time with Grandma, who is ill, it is often my job (and my pleasure, so no problem there) to follow and fetch soothers and the like and to open the baby gate. In other words, I'm there to perform all the low-profile support tasks so Grandma can have her joyful time with her grandson. I figure I can always get my time.)

One of the families across the street in that wealthy neighbourhood is the MacNeill family. It is a huge house, tan-coloured, with quaint rustic white trim hanging down from its roof, like Rose Cottage in the Avonlea series.

Oh, I know too darn well that I need to make myself scarce when anywhere around the MacNeills!!

I'm in school again, except I'm my real age, 47. None of the other students know this, though, and if the teachers know it they don't care, so I get no special treatment. As usual, I have trouble finding the classrooms. If I'm late for history class or haven't done my homework, which is usual, I skip the class. In fact, I skip history the whole semester. I usually skip gym, too, because it's first thing in the morning and, well, I'd rather be at Starbucks. (Who in the world expects a 47-year-old to perform well in a high school gym class anyway??) I get my report card, with As and Bs in everything except history and gym. History is a B based on the final exam, for which I just had to read the textbook, but it's marked down to a D because you lose one mark for every class missed or late, up to two grades down. As I'm reading this at home with my sister and parents present (and I'm still 47), I remark, "You know, I'm 47 and I already have a Master's degree. These marks don't even matter because the school board already has my marks from 1981. This year is just filler anyway until I can arrange to be in a university-level film production program. Why should I even worry about it?" Everyone agrees.

This is a recurring dream. History and gym are usually the subjects failed. Also, the term "filler" might have come from my having cooked a tofu fake-egg-salad sandwich for my mom's lunch yesterday and explained to her about tofu being best used as tasteless "filler", for texture and for a vegan to get a full protein serving with all the amino acids and much fewer calories. (She had been grossed out by the idea of tofu until I'd explained this. Tofu is disgusting, to vegans too, if you eat it unprepared. It absorbs the flavour of whatever you cook or marinate it in.)

But.... How did "filler" in that context translate over to "filler" for the high school year I'm usually repeating in my recurring dream? Those are two totally different meanings, and that's a big conceptual jump!

I'm playing Witch #1 and MacBeth (cross-gender casting) in a big amphitheater. Places is called and I'm not even in costume. I miss my entrance and the stage manager takes over my role, reading from the script. Everyone gives me the freeze-out and I'm mad at myself and everybody else. Next night, closing night, I've had so many fights with everybody that I lose my temper and refuse to perform. They pick someone who's younger, better trained, and brilliant. Serves me right.

After the play ends, I send a text message to the screen where the final credits are rolling. I forget what it was, but it makes the audience laugh. I get onstage and do a brilliant monologue, feeing my way through the blocking and using all the aisles and balconies, fired up, beautifully. I get applause and I know I've earned it. I've felt the magic. Too late, though.

I'm leaving the theatre. Someone congratulates me and says, "Great job!" I reply, "Yeah - eventually," and smile faintly. She reassures me that I can act.

I go home, exhausted, and see a rerun of Friends on TV. I remember why I love that show. Because I want to make people laugh. The great Shakespearean dramatic roles speak to my depths and purge me. But if I were Jennifer Aniston, I could be a part of a cohesive, symmetrical and perfectly bonded cast - a family. And a pretty one. Sometimes that's just what I want. It feels restful.

(Backdating this entry because this is a dream that's been on my mind for several weeks now. Originally posted in my private blog November 13, 2010.)

Okay, this sucker is way too weird not to journal about. And I've just awoken from it, so retention should be pretty good - although it was too detailed and involved to easily forget. I'll follow the usual practice of dream recall and work backwards.

The dream ends with me losing my temper at Aidan right after he finds me hiding in his apartment. I'm yelling at him about everything. In fact, true to Clonazepam's side effects, I'm still yelling at him in my head as I'm getting up from my bed after waking up, or rather hearing him yell that this is all a dream now and I'm awake anyway....

He has just discovered me hiding there in a closet in an empty room that he obviously never uses, sitting on a portable potty he's got in there. (Marker of my dreams: there are lots of these fake potties not connected to any plumbing.) I've managed to evade discovery up to now because Aidan's been in the next room (which has a slightly ajar door connecting to this one) writing/singing a song about how much hate is in him bursting to get free, and a variation on the usual bait line about longing for the right woman, this one about how he'll know her because she will see and discover that hate and know what to do with it.

This is after I've just left some other girl, part of Aidan's circle, sleeping in his spare room - we'd been there because Aidan had given me a key and we were stopping there to get ready to go to the party. I'd left her, found a little alcove with a bed, and found this closet and pulled my laptop into it to blog, with the AC cord plugged in around the corner. I was reading a book that the other girl had written. She said she was from Madison, Wisconsin and four of her five sisters were nurses, while the other was a lawyer and she named the firm (I can't remember, but I think one of the names sounded like Blast). I had read a book that was chronicling what had happened in my life five minutes ago. I was making notes all over it. It was fine when I confronted Aidan and R, a well-known Canadian actor, playwright and activist, together and said, "Obviously I'm well known among your friends. How am I known?" (A waking-life concern for several years now.) Whereupon both of them sort of hem and haw and Aidan finally takes it: "Well, the usual comment is when they see you walk into a place, 'That's your stalker? Wow - I'll take her off your hands, man!'"

(In real life, not to be obnoxious about this, but everyone tells me how beautiful I am and how I don't look my age, and I have to say bluntly that I generally agree. But not once - not once - has it meant my romantic feelings for a specific person have ever been returned in kind. So it's a great compliment, and I always appreciate it because I usually forget it as real-life experience doesn't support it, but I do wish it would lead to better results.)

So I'm reading further into this manuscript - which has an advising professors's name on the front page - and it goes on to describe how other girls at the party say things like, "We've all been taken in by crocodile scrips like Colm." (???) I've finished the book and finished arguing with the girl about how non-roadworthy my car is, and obviously the party's over by this time so she goes to bed. I look for a bathroom to use and notice noises indicating that Aidan's home. It'll look like I'm stalking him if I've stayed there.

Cut to before the apartment: It's 4:00 in the morning, and a wafer-thin African-descent hooker named Lola (word in a crossword puzzle three days ago), with blonded Afro hair and a skin-tight micromini sheath, is following me, saying no one cares about her. The other girl with me from the party is getting exasperated, and she turns into Bree from Desperate Housewives. Cut to a moment before: Lola has been eyeing me as if I'm encroaching on her turf, but then she just says, "You done for the night?" "Yeah." "Good night!" "You're beautiful!" Then she follows me, saying no one ever calls her beautiful. My Bree-like friend looks exasperated. "This is Melissa," I say, "and she already knows she's beautiful!" Melissa gives Lola a strained smile. We get to Aidan's building and I say, "This isn't my apartment, so I can't invite you in - but I'll help you find a homeless shelter for the night." Then the details get lost in how I'm using my iPhone to look up hostels online, but that turns out to be a bad idea because they'll ask for a credit card from Lola.

Cut to: My old parking lot in a suburb of Toronto. The Lada is there that my parents gave me in 1989. That thing was ten years old and never worked properly. It was broken into once just for the radio I'd put into it. It doesn't stop on snow unless you press the brake at least five car lengths ahead of time - the brakes are ground almost to nothing. I'm nearly out of gas. Repeatedly, I impress upon Melissa that perhaps driving this thing to a party in North Hollywood, where I would almost certainly be drinking, wouldn't be the sharpest move. She just goes, "Uh-huh," and does up her seatbelt. I sigh and continue to drive, making a mental note to stop at the store near my parents' house, 1500 miles away, for gas before going on the half-hour drive from Toronto to North Hollywood for this geographical confusion of a party.

Cut to R's (said Canadian famous person) estate in LA. I've met a bunch of girls from various parts of the US that are there for a fan convention. Most of Aidan's crowd has left, but some are straggling around passing around the address where the party will be. I don't have it, so I hook up with a bunch of girls who know the address and have GPS in their cars.

Cut to previously mentioned conversation in which R and Aidan reassure me that I'm okay. But this time it's about stalking R!! We also talk about the fact that I'm usually unaware of sex, but when confronted by R's full-frontal naked body, I feel a strange, oddly familiar, and unbidden full-body sensation of pleasure. It's commented, I think by R himself, that this is natural and biological. It occurs to me that pure, plain sex is something I rarely, if ever, think about these days. (And it's true. If I'm ever turned on - and I don't think I am - I don't know it. I'm not certain, but I think it's a side effect of my antidepressants. Possibly when Jeff claps me on the shoulder the way he usually does. What I think of as a "rush of endorphins" when he hugs me might actually be a rush of reproductive hormones, for all I'm aware. I just know I enjoy it.) R is very nice and logical about it, kind of as if he's trying to explain this to a 12-year-old kid entering puberty. (And I think I noticed him favourably in a movie when I was about 16.) But by the end of this conversation, I somehow just want to be around Aidan some more - as if he's raw masculine sexuality, without the complication of actually liking or having any feelings of friendship for him. It's an intriguing feeling.

Prior to this, R is smiling at me and telling me he's sorry he didn't tell me that the pool was a self-contained pool, not a pond connected to the earth. I in turn tell him I was about to apologize for peeing in his pool. And then I'm inside the main house where everyone is drying off, and I'm looking for a place to get to a bathroom and change. The only place avaliable is off R's bedroom, where I walk in to discover him lying naked - only he looks like a giant burnt squid. I still avert my eyes and stick my hand out to block my vision, and I manage to get past him and get to the stall. Meanwhile he wakes up and discovers me there. There's a definite you-are-a-disgusting-stalker colour to being discovered uninvited in a room where an attractive and sought-out man is lying naked.

Before this, I go down to a pond. It's just after dawn, calm and idyllic. I strip down. I'm in the pond, and I decide to relieve my bladder. Then others arrive - all people from Aidan's crowd. It's a closed-off pool. I'm certain the yellow cloud of social-ostracism flag surrounding me is obvious to everyone.

Somewhere in the middle of all this, R and I are doing a scene from MacBeth in which we have to kiss. I'm trying my best not to be obviously attracted to him. He is attracted to me as his character, but when the scene ends, he's an acting teacher. He's even coldly analyzing my kissing technique.

That's pretty much the bulk of what I remember. A few things are obvious in writing this dream down. 1) I must have had to go to the bathroom pretty badly. 2) It's all about my fear of being considered a stalker if I get too familiar and informal around celebrities. 3) There's a slight possibility that I may be feeling the lack of a current boyfriend who is actually in the same city with me.

And 4) It's probably these drugs I'm on that are making my dreams this detailed, complex, convoluted and weird.

Regardless, I know for sure that I'm not an obsessed fan of R in real life, though I do have a good deal of respect for him as an actor and as an activist and teacher. I'm just not the obsessed-fan/stalker type. Getting into that would be just plain dumb. Perhaps he is an attractive man, but that has no relevance to me in waking life and I simply never think about it. I guess I must have seen him on a rerun recently and thought about the romance between his character, a painfully shy scientist, and one of the main characters on the show, and I must have thought of a painfully shy man to whom I've found myself involuntarily attracted lately. Plus, Aidan is still normally not at all attractive to me or even someone I'd normally hang out with. What are either of these two gentlemen doing in my dreams?