Hi!

Have any of you had dreams (not lucid) in which you do stuff or are involved in situations that you would never do in real life? Are dreams a kind of psychic safety valve or outlet in which can safely let our fantasies out to play?

Back in the summer after I got my BA, I needed a place to live for a few months before I started my graduate studies. I saw an ad for a second male roomate & found a really nice apartment for the summer. My roomate, I've actually forgotten his name (really!), was a med student. His girlfriend would sleep over every now & then. I certainly didn't mind (he asked if it would before agreeing to accept me as a roomate); they & I were very open and got along fine. We didn't socialize or hang out together. I just sublet space in the apartment (I had my own basement bedroom; we shared a kitchen, living room, bathroom, etc). Almost right away, I suspected him of being bisexual. I don't know why; there was just something about him that caused me to have this suspicion. One day, he confirmed my suspicions, I think. I was getting ready to go have a shower. He said that he was pressed for time and asked if he could "share a shower" with me. I thought about it for a second. I assumed that he was, in effect, making a pass at me. I replied, "I would prefer not." He let it drop and never did/said anything close to that again.

At that point in my life, I was on a long celibate period (this was before I met my wife). I'm not homosexual or bisexual and am not attracted to other men. Still, I'm curious and often think about what might've happened if I'd agreed to share a shower with my roommate. It might've been interesting (and fun) to experiment a little, just for the novelty of it.

This was also before I decided to become religious, i.e. an orthodox Jew. There's a classical debate about kashrut (i.e. keeping kosher) once in which one sage said that he was proud never to have had a craving, or even a curiosity, to try shellfish, pork, etc., because such things disgusted him. One of his colleagues said that if these things disgusted him so much that he abstained from them, where was God in that equation? Rather, the second Sage said, we should say that we crave/are curious to try/ these things but abstain from them because it is God's will that we do so. I'll admit that I am curious about certain things but I will never indulge these curiosities because (I believe) I have a Divine obligation not to do so. It's the choices one makes about the life one wants to lead & who one wants to lead it with that often obviate the possibility of ever fulfilling a particular craving or desire. Other desires take precedence and relegate such curiosities so far down on the totem pole of possibility that they're pushed into a small, well-concealed, deeply hidden section of our consciousness, where they will never see the light of day and are indulged only in our fantasies or in the occasional dream.

Anyone else have similar dreams?

ZVBM