Happy Tuesday, everybody!
I started this whole thing off as a way to share stories, tales and parts of me, so today we’re going to lean into that last part.
Now I get that normally dreams kind of follow the same rule of thumb as family photos: “If I’m not in them or nobody’s naked, I don’t really care.” I hear you, but would also counter that like the stomach being the direct route to a man’s heart (ho-ho-ho! supposedly), dreams are a great way to get an honest, raw CAT scan of how a person thinks. So the catch here is that I’ve gotten these interpreted (not professionally – if that’s even a thing that happens).
Also, lastly, I want to note that my bar for “weird dreams” is pretty high. My major cross to bear is that the woman I live with and share my home and heart with has painfully mundane dreams with very few exceptions:
Mandy: “I had the weirdest dream last night.”
Naive Me: “Oh? Sweet, lay it on me. What happened?”
Mandy: “I was in the kitchen, it was the middle of the day, and you weren’t home…”
Naive Me: “Great, then?”
Mandy: “I was packing up some leftovers and used the tupperware and was like, ‘Whoa.’”
Naive Me: “’Whoa’ what?”
Mandy: “Hon, we have glassware, not tupperware.”
Naive Me: “…”
Mandy: “Weird, right?”
Naive Me: “NO!”
Oh, and I should mention here that if you’re squeamish around talking about genitals in a civilized, grown-up, adult manner…I’ll see you Thursday.
Anyway, let’s get to it. First up:
The Spoon
I open my eyes and I have a bird’s eye view of a soccer stadium. I don’t really follow soccer (or futball, to my international brethren), so I don’t know how big stadiums get, but it was gigantic. Step-aside-Thunderdome-Papa’s-here kind of gigantic. And I say a “bird’s eye” view, but I’m not a bird. In fact, in the dream, I don’t have a body period. It’s just like watching a movie play out from that sourceless perspective.
Anyway, thing is, for how enormous this stadium is: it’s completely empty. Not abandoned, just plain empty. No one on the field, no one in the stands, nada. As I fly closer, my vision zooms in and I see there is someone in the stands. A single person high up in the stadium’s seating. My vision gets closer and I realize I know the person in the stands.
It’s LeBron James.
What’s he doing, you might ask. Well’p, he’s sitting there, calmly eating a Yoplait yogurt.
The only two things that make this weird are the last two elements that complete the picture.
One, he’s using a spoon to eat his Yoplait, not the folded foil cover like a normal person. And not just any regular plastic spoon. He’s using a piece of silverware, like brought from home. I don’t know why, but it struck me as fundamentally abnormal.
Two, a feeling dawned on me about that out-of-place utensil. To this day I can’t place my finger on how this identification or relationship formed, but I am certain of it. I realized, intuitively, unambiguously, and indubitably…I was the spoon.
It was like an out-of-body experience, but instead of a human being, I was a spoon watching itself be used to feed Lebron James Yoplait yogurt in an empty soccer stadium. And it wasn’t a sexual thing at all (as far as the psychologists I haven’t talked to would probably tell me), I was just a spoon helping a famous athlete enjoy his yogurt.
Say what you will, but I remember feeling very safe there in that moment being a spoon.
The Take pt 1: So, I think this should be obvious, but everybody I’ve told this dream to has offered in trade the oh-so-insightful divination that “I’m weird and/or probably gay.” (Don’t think so, but who knows? It’s a spectrum and LeBron’s admittedly a peak human specimen, objectively. At the time of this posting, jury’s out.) I might make fun of that interpretation, but truth is I don’t really know what to take from it. I was a spoon that felt safe in the gigantic hands of a famous black man that used me to eat yogurt. Hell, maybe it’s a metaphor for my future? Or a sign of father issues? Maybe I- actually, no. I’m spit-balling and that was supposed to be your job, not mine.
Next clip!
Grad Night
I’m standing on a pedestal with a spotlight hanging over me. It’s empty blackness all around. Just me, the pedestal, and the cone of light. Out of the dark, maybe thirty feet away, comes walking a woman in maybe around her mid-thirties. She stops about ten feet from me, looks me up and down, makes that “impressed Obama” face and gives me a thumb’s up, before walking away off into the dark.
I’m confused at first, but then I look down and realize I’m naked. Nude. Sportin’ my birthday suit. Buck-ass nek’ked.
Soon another soccer mom steps out of the dark, followed by another, and soon another after her. An infinite conga line of cougars (not say mid-30’s qualifies, I’m saying there was an age range, okay?) extends out to the distant horizon. One by one, they approach in an orderly line, compliment me on my penis [EDIT: I must have written a dozen different words before finally settling on the basic term of anatomy (“peen”, “wang”, “cockadoodle”, “mah dick”, etc) – just so you know] and then walk off into the void.
It was never anything specific, they would just walk up, say something like, “God, just, good for you young man” and then leave. So I did whatever a self-respecting Beta-male would do and absorbed the moment and savored it the way I should: with hands on my hips and a grin with an awkward raised eyebrow sidekick.
A moment later, everything began to spin and blend together. The next I knew, I was “waking up” – the way you do in dreams, but you’re still in it, Inception-style – at my uncle’s house in my cousin’s bunk bed. I had the top bunk – rad – and was just rubbing my eyes as the bedroom door opened. In walks my uncle carrying a covered silver tray, the fancy kind you see in movies about super rich folks. I’m thinking, “Sweet, breakfast in bed” and sit up nice and tall.
He walks over, wordlessly places the tray on my lap, pulls off the lid, and can you guess what was on the tray?
Was it bacon and eggs?
Waffles with a cube of butter?
Oatmeal with raisins like I’m a freshly retired city worker?
…nope.
It was cocaine. Five neat, straight lines of cocaine.
My uncle looks at me, mutely pumps his eyebrows like he’s a proud cat presenting a dead bird, and proceeds to do a line straight of my lap. He does that classic coke movie “Woohoo!” as I wake up for real.
The Take pt. 2: So, like the Spoon Dream, there was nothing erotic about this one. I get that it’s about being naked in front of an endless line of ladies, but genuinely: it wasn’t actually sexual in the slightest. This one’s called “Grad Night” because for my high school’s graduation party, among the many kickass stations they had set up, one was a dream interpreting station some poor mothers decided to volunteer for (bless their hearts). At this point, I’m seventeen and this dream is a few months old, so anybody who’s heard it is dragging me to that tent. I sit down and reluctantly given them a PG version of events which, as you could imagine – like watching a censored-for-television Tarantino movie – kind of left a lot out of it and left them confused. So, round two, I told them everything as you’ve just now read and this is what they (Oh! Bear in mind they had to act like they were psychics and receiving the interpretation like a vision!) had to say:
“Hmm, well. Yeah. What I’m getting from this is that you have a great…mmm, gift deep within you that you’ll share with a lot of people. Probably women, predominantly. You have a healthy sense of esteem and…[EDIT: I’m sure they were going to say an ego problem, but left that part out] Well, any way, the part about your uncle…hmm, I’m feeling…you’ll soon be offered something dangerous by someone close to you. Make your decisions wisely.”
A lot of the stuff about the “gift deep within” was actually kind of extra funny because at the time I was graduating, I was planning on going into Emergency Response and EMT training (wound up not being right for me), so I thought it might be kind of applicable. When she added the “predominantly women” part, it got screwy. By their divination then, I might be entering psychology, some sort of activism role, or porn (TBD on all three – we’ll see where life takes me).
Anyway, hope you enjoyed, and if you have any alternate meanings you saw poking out from between the lines, feel free to share.
Catch you Thursday, everyone.
…
PS – I have NEEEEEEWS! Another story of mine, “The Scars of Eliza Gray”, is currently in the works to be featured on the NIGHT LIGHT horror podcast in a few weeks. So stayed tuned, ’cause I’ll be posting updates as I get them and blasting it out there once it’s up! Also keep an eye out and an ear open for the episode where we discuss and give our takes on Jordan Peele’s “Get Out” and “Us”! Yaaaaay!
The Light of Day 