I dream that I’m watching a movie? Or at least I think so, I’m not there but Eddie Murphy is. I also notice he’s very fit, even though he was rather fat in Coming 2 America.
The good guys are trying to find a kidnapped two-year-old, he disappeared from his house and nobody saw anything. His young mom is at home now, she also has a baby and has just put him to bed. Someone climbs the stairs to her apartment, we don’t see their face. They sneak into the baby’s room and give him a tranquilizer shot. Suddenly the mom comes back and they hide behind the open door. They jump on her, give her a shot too. She says
God, you look awful
and falls asleep. When she comes by, the baby is gone.
(I also dream that I’m showing my classmates a new line of backpacks made with human pee. They’re biodegradable and colorful, I’m not surprised to learn everybody wants one.)
I dream about a movie I’m watching/living: there are two (three?) high school girls running away, they travel through America, when they miss a train they realize they can fly and follow the train tracks from above through the mountains, they see a castle on a hill that is now a hotel. The movie feels magical and lighthearted at this point. The girls can look into someone’s eyes and see/grant their most profound wish. One of them turns a black and red fish into a human.
Then things turn horror, as the girls realize they never left their school, they are in the basement strapped to hospital beds, being fed hallucinogenic drugs by an evil nun. One of them is hugging a stuffed black and red fish. Only an hour has passed.
(I wish I knew how it all ended but this us all I can remember.)
Early in the morning I dream that I’m reading a Mickey Mouse comic; Mickey and Goofy are fighting some pirates in the belly of a ship, they run circles around them so fast they make them faint. Now they only need to defeat Captain Hook, but he’s gone to the bathroom because he needs to pee. I’m confused, can’t he just pee overboard? He goes to the bathroom but can’t find relief, why, why, oh why?
I wake up because I really need to pee.
(There was also a dream about a place, an underground cave below the ocean you can reach swimming in a certain direction. In that cave live the souls of all dead humanity, I wish I could remember more about it.)
I dream I’m in a school bathroom that is on a lake in a large underground cave (reminding of this other dream). There are three toilets, one sitting totally in the open, one in a cubicle with walls so low people walking by make eye contact with you. And finally, a regular stall that is the most popular. I’m currently sitting in the middle one, trying not to look up at people. A girl tells me I peed on my shoes. I finish quickly and walk away, a centaur looks out gravely from a tunnel in one of the walls. “Hello, Firenze,” I say to him. I feel guilty for still liking Harry Potter so much.
I dream that I’m running late for school, I get quickly dressed in an oversize pink t-shirt and jeans. My mom is waiting for me in the car, she’s driving. Wait, I say, I think I got my period. I rush back inside and to the bathroom. My jeans are a mess. As I’m stripping down my cat jumps on the toilet and starts peeing, a focused, almost painful expression on her face. It’s too late to get to school by now. My parents ask me why I didn’t go, I change the subject and tell them everything about the cat instead.
Now I’m in bed with Corona. I feel fine, I don’t have any symptoms, but my test came back positive and and now I have an app that counts down the days until I die. I’m terrified, I don’t want to die, but all I can do is lie in bed and wait. Six days pass, nothing happens. Maybe there was a mistake? Hopeful, I venture out of bed. My legs feel weak, out of practice. I peek into the living room, ask my family if I could maybe go back to the hospital and be tested again? They tell me to go back to bed and wait to die in silence.
I dream that the whole family is at a beach village, one of those Greek sea places with white houses and blue roofs. The sun is shining and it’s clearly summer, still groups of children are coming down stairs and alleys singing a Christmas song, I know it’s Greek because I recognize the world “aletheia”. Another group is singing in… Hebrew? That can’t be right, they don’t celebrate Christmas. Maybe they’re Copts.
As more and more relatives arrive I yearn to go back home and avoid them all, I beg my dad to drive me and he refuses. I walk instead, looking behind my back to see if he changed his mind. I fall asleep on a bench and when I wake up Dad has brought me home on his bicycle.
I want to take a shower but there’s a tray of burned cheese burgers in the bathroom, the smell is foul. My mom sits next to me on my bed and puts some sort of rust colored lotion on my face. Meanwhile, my brother is telling me that Dad is gonna take down our shower panels, that upsets me so much I throw a little, pathetic tantrum.
We sit around the table to eat dinner, both my grandmothers are here. My late grandma G. is slouching back on her chair, she looks like she has no bones and is about to plop on the floor any minute, like she’s made of jelly. I’m explaining to the both of them what 3D glasses are, isn’t it marvelous, I say, how everyone can now see holograms? They don’t really understand the concept. I say, imagine a big red billboard with the name of your favorite supermarket. With my glasses I also can see… I fish around for an actress they would recognize,
I can also see Sofia Loren projected on the billboard, waving at me.
After dinner, my brother attempts to hack into my phone to see if I ever visited a certain city. He’s not gonna find anything, I say confidently. He finds a panoramic photo that looks more like a painting. It’s from my point of view, it looks like I’m sitting in a shabby room. He changes the prospective and we gasp: on my lap there’s a dirty rat with a syringe stuck in its neck. It’s a terrifying close up.
Next I go to the store because it’s my old coworker S.’s birthday and we are planning a surprise party. I buy birthday cards and balloons from him, he doesn’t suspect a thing. I really need to pee though, and I’ll have to hold it because it’s not hygienic to use a public bathroom, Coronavirus and all. I can’t remember my credit card pin, I look it up on my phone, it’s the old Motorola my mom owned in 1997. It’s broken and I can’t seem to fix it and I really need to run home and pee. S. tries to fix it as well, he hands back something that is not my phone, I really don’t care, I grab it and…
I dream that I’m going shopping, but first I need to pee. The bathrooms are located underground, I take an escalator and find myself in a long queue of girls. Maybe I can convince them to let me go first? I say out loud,
I REALLY FUCKING NEED TO PEE!
Another girl has said the exact same thing at the exact same time. We look at each other. Maybe we can share the toilet? One cheek each?
It’s our turn. The bathroom we step in is dark, gritty and enormous, with impossibly high ceilings, almost as if it was built from an underground cave. There are at least two toilets in the vast space, sitting high above the ground. A lot of people are watching, but I can’t afford to care. I need to go. I climb to the toilet and sit and… no pee comes out. How is it possible?
I have to wake up and run to the toilet for real.
I’m in a car with my whole family. My dad is driving, but he’s not paying the road any attention. Instead he’s reading something. I realize with horror it’s one of my old journals! Actually, all of my journals are here.
Furious at this invasion of my privacy, I grab them and get off the car. I end up in an old building, it’s dark and my old elementary teacher is there, wearing a black veil and smiling a wicked smile. She’s as ghastly as I remembered, I hate her so much I start to choke her. She seems to enjoy it. I have sex with her, it seems like the logic thing to do.
It’s raining as I walk home from high school. I’m wearing bell bottom jeansand (just like during my actual high school days!) the hems got all wet and muddy. Chatting along with me there’s my old classmate M., a bony girl with freckles and bovine eyes; she can’t believe we are already seniors and our school days are almost over, do I know what I’m gonna do next? Yes, I’m gonna apply to [IRL store I work at] and, I brag, I’ll have to work until 7:30 P.M. She says she’s gonna get off even later and I’m jealous, she’s always been smarter than me!
After lunch I get restless, I’m already late for my old philosophy teacher’s class, why do I always miss it? What if he never lets me graduate?! I go to pee on the balcony (it’s raining and everything is already wet so, I figure, why not?) and run off, but halfway to the school I once again remember that I’m an adult with a job and I don’t have to worry about graduating anymore.
I decide to go shopping with Gran instead. As usual, there’s too many people inside the supermarket and nobody is wearing a mask, I’m really concerned about Gran’s safety, so I drag her outside as it starts drizzling again. She’s carrying a plastic bag with a pink pullover inside, there is no place to store it though, so she hangs it from a branch that’s leafless and skeletal against the gray sky. I’m afraid somebody is gonna steal the bag and when she’s not looking I take it and bring it home, for safekeeping.
I’m inside a hospital with my mom, the ceilings are too high and the corridors are dark. I need to buy a pair of headphones, we look around for a store and end up in what soon we realize is a well stocked supermarket built entirely inside the hospital. We have a shopping cart now, mom starts picking snacks and coffee, the products are lit with artificial, sterile light and the ceilings are so high you can only see blurry darkness above you. There’s a general feeling of unsettling quietness. We finally come across a pair of headphones, mom says they’re too expensive (they cost a little more than 10 bucks) but I buy them anyway.
We have hired a professional chef to come cook dinner for us, it’s a chubby lady with a 1900s pompadour. My parents order pig stew and she gets to work extremely slowly, and while we wait she shows us a picture of the pig she’s cooking: the animal has a sad look in its expressive eyes, its head is bowed under the foot of a man standing triumphantly above it. I decide I’m not gonna eat the pig, even though the finished product looks juicy and smells really good. I order fried prawns instead and I watch as she tosses them into boiling oil along with big blue raspberries.
I never get to eat any of it, the morning after I try to remember why and I see myself as a young woman cheated on by her husband: to get over my sadness I end up sleeping with a beautiful lady guest who wants to recruit me as a spy. Now I’m so hungry I can’t stop crying, I start tossing things and yelling at my poor sister. I also need to pee so badly.
I have a friend whose boyfriend wants to propose, I’m helping with the surprise by hiding a bed for him. She arrives though, I need to distract her, quick! I end up telling her she’s being cheated on. It works, she storms away and the coast is clear. It seems like such a brilliant idea.
We are in an old building, a bit unsettling. I go back inside my apartment and there’s a giant tombstone smack in the middle of it, made of red marble. Everybody laughs like it’s a great joke, but I read the name on it and it’s the tomb of someone old and sick, but of a 31year old woman. Suddenly it’s not funny anymore and I need to leave the room.
I need to pee, badly*, but all the bathrooms in the building are men’s bathrooms. I seek the help of another friend who’s apparently a celebrity. She has a big bathroom all for herself, with a whole cleaning crew tirelessly working inside it. I pee and then start helping along and cleaning as well.
DECADE DREAM JOURNAL 