Tuesday, May 29, 2012

In which Sam Peckinpah directs my dream

I dream that I have a female friend visit me in my apartment (not my actual apartment - my dreaming brain gives me one completely different, unlike any I have lived in). This is a woman to whom I've hoped (in the dream as in life) to get closer for some time. Unfortunately, when I take her out on the balcony to show her the view, it transpires that my neighbours have decided to throw a party, and since the balcony space is, in fact, enormous - larger than the apartment itself! - and connected to theirs, they have spilled out and are everywhere. They are full-of-themselves drunken redneck types who expect me to be "be cool" about their party when it's fucking with my life, but after my initial outrage, I decide to try to be understanding towards them - "okay, okay, have fun, if it's just for one night," rationalizing to myself that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the one, only to discover that the woman I've brought over is unimpressed with my territorial cowardice, and is disgusted by the complete lack of privacy. She leaves by a long flight of stone steps, descending into the night; my hopes are dashed. As my obnoxious neighbours look on, chuckling, I race back into the apartment, thinking at first that I will catch the elevator, beat her down, and meet her on the other side; but I discover that somehow - no doubt due to my neighbours - one of my doors has been forced off its hinges and is hanging damaged in the frame. I try to repair it (this being an apparent reference to a piece of writing I've been working on, by the by) but am growing in my frustration, and a sort of rage at my neighbours is building - plus a valuable print of mine on the wall has been damaged along with the door. I race to the window - my window! - where, outside, my neighbours have stacked their stereo, and I wrathfully push it over, screaming at them to get out, flailing at anyone within reach. I hear some of them chuckling at my impotent rage and others clucking about how they'll charge me with assault of various forms ("he touched me and I'm only 15, do you think we can get him for sexually assaulting a minor?"). I race to my phone, to call the police, but it's been disconnected, no doubt by my neighbours, in anticipation of possible trouble. I stumble to find my cellphone, but when I start pressing buttons, it also doesn't work. I can hear my neighbours hammering at the damaged door. It's shaping up to be a bad night.

That's the last I recall of the dream - it ends like the whole thing has been an overture to my own personal version of Straw Dogs. Not all my dreams are quite so disturbing these days, but the ones I remember have been.

No comments: