IRL I have a penpal of almost 10 years, C. I never met her in person, but in tonight’s dream I go visit her for apparently the second time, I’m on vacation from work and I’m gonna spend a week with her.
She hugs me so tenderly, because after all we’re in love and neither of us will admit it, and she invites me to her school. I watch her play some sort of nerd game, kinda like Quidditch, then we go to class together. I think the lesson is rather easy, we learn about smaller or greater math numbers, but afterwards the teacher says something truly offensive and homophobic and C. and I storm out of the room.
She walks me to her house, where her dad –a man with a truly impressive mustache– hugs me. Her mom and grandma are very lovely and welcoming, they make me olive pizza. I notice there is no drinkable water anywhere in the house, but they have a kitchen cabinet full of alcohol and soda bottles. As we’re eating, another grandmother appears at the table. She’s a ghost, and also she looks uncannily like my mom.
My sister is being insufferable as always, to shut her up I turn her into a cat. And not just any cat, but my very own black, grumpy kitten. I put this creature that is both my sister and my cat in her carrier (she bites me through the bars) and bring her to the vet.
I meet my friend F. there, he tells me it’s not much, but he put some free menstrual pads aside for me. I thank him warmly. As I’m sitting in the waiting room though, two men steal my pads. I confront them with all my wit and sarcasm and humiliate them into giving my pads back.
My breakfast toasts are wrong: instead of mozzarella, they are filled with slices of pale, unripe pumpkin . There’s also a bread roll on the table, it has peanut butter sticks inside; my brother grabs it and takes a bite, I yell because the sticks are actually cat food, but it’s too late, he has eaten the bread.
It’s time to walk to school! I’m running through a meadow because I’m late. On my way I meet two unnamed voice actors and their dog, I explain to them I’m going to “phone school“.* I finally reach the building and it’s not my IRL High School: it’s a ~technical school that I apparently decided to transfer to. Inside there is a massively high ceiling and a lot of stairs moving and intertwining, a bit like Hogwarts but much more airy and modern.
My class is in the upmost right corner, I hurry up the stairs and I’m very relieved to realize I’m only five minutes late. The teacher pops his head from the door, he’s my usual philosophy prof but there’s something different this time: he has a big smile, like he’s enjoying himself, for once. He gives me a pair of scissors and tasks me with cutting out the tags from his sweater. But wait, all my classmates are teenagers, I realize with a sudden jolt. I’m an adult in my 30s! How am I supposed to get along with them!?
Back home, I boot up The Sims. Since I have all the expansion packs, I find some oriental clothes and objects. I create two Sims, an old Chinese woman and her daughter, give them musical instruments, and listen to them playing in the snow for a while.
*My new job is indeed at a phone store, but of course I’d still be stuck in high school in some way.
I’m in high school, we need computers but the only available ones are in a classrooms already being used. The teacher bring us there anyway, there are only four PCs and we all huddle around them. The kids already there are actually practicing ballet, how artistic of my school. They are all dressed in pink, boys too, working at their barres. They are quite talented and motivated, I want to take pictures of them but my phone has caught some sort of virus, there are ads all over the lock screen and it keeps ringing randomly.
Meanwhile my classmates are just playing around with the computers, and the teacher (my actual English teacher from back then, hey Mrs. L.!) is at her desk chatting with a colleague and smoking a cigarette.
I’m a soldier sitting at a table in my own IRL living room. A fellow soldier is sitting next to me. We are searching through a pile of jackets belonging to prisoners, one by one we rip the seams with a pocket knife, searching for hidden money or keys.
There is a journalist hiding in the room, taking pictures with his phone. We grab him, try to force him to release the phone, but he says the public has the right to know what we’re doing! We have to call one of our special agents, a skinny guy with glasses and a lab coat on. He smiles gleefully in a disturbing sort of way, gives the journalist a drug. I shake the scientist’s hand, it gets covered in spit. His mouth is full of spit too, he reminds me of a boy I was forced to sit next to in middle school.
I go to my usual salon and look around for F., the man that always cuts my hair. I notice stairs that weren’t there before and go up to the second floor: F. is on the balcony smoking, a balcony that looks almost like mine. I tell him about my new job and how I urgently need a haircut, he’s very happy for me and tells me to go fix an appointment.
Downstairs next to the register are standing Naya Rivera and Heather Morris. They look older than what I remembered, Naya is wearing a baseball cap and stinks of alcohol. They greet me because we went to school together, ask how my cat is doing. Hearing this, my sister walks up to show us the cat inside her tote bag, it’s a white and brown kitten that looks very unhappy. I get mad at my sister, how can she just walk around with a poor kitten like that! She ignores me and skips the line, so she can pay for the roasted potatoes she apparently bought at the salon.
I suddenly realize I’m not wearing my shoes and I don’t remember taking them off. The place is now filled with hundreds of people. I try to look outside in the yard, but I’m chased away by the Golden Girls. Inside a child is arranging hundreds of shoes in a long train on the floor, I pick them one by one but can’t find mine. Then a thought occurs to me: I’m wearing no shoes because I’m in actually in bed! And I wake up.
A recurring dream: I’m at school, usually high school, and still have to graduate. It’s been years and I’m stuck here, failing my finals every time and having to go back. Often I’m sitting in my old philosophy teacher’s class, but in my dreams he teaches something even more horrid, like math or biology. I’m always unprepared, always didn’t study, always have skipped classes and don’t know how to catch up. Today’s dream is no different, I’m sitting at my desk but I don’t even know where on the textbook we’re at, I’m hoping and praying that the teacher won’t ask me questions. Suddenly a thought occurs to me: I’m starting my new job soon!* How can I go to school if I’m supposed to be at work every morning? Does this mean…? Dare I hope? I run to my mom and ask her if I’m allowed to quit school, at long last.
Another dream: I’m sitting in a little Victorian living room, I am Jo March from Little Women. I’m entertaining guests with my sisters, there’s two gentlemen for now but we’re waiting for a friend of Meg’s to come by, we’re told she’s a very sweet young lady. She arrives just as Beth is sitting at the piano singing an Ave Maria with her beautiful soprano voice. I think to myself it’s pretty cinematic and we’re gonna make a great impression. The guest enters the room and Amy –as played by a young Kirsten Dust– does a little double take and exclaims, “And who are you supposed to be?!” It’s very funny and endearing.
We all go out to the yard where the gentlemen strike a conversation with Netflix’s Lucifer. The two are gushing about something awful, like slave trade. Lucifer punishes us all by shrinking down the whole party to half our size. Baffled, Amy picks up a red leaf from the ground, it’s bigger than her hand now.
Meg and I leave to find a cure, accompanied by our butler, who’s a posh Brit with a white mustache. We are so small the three of us look like children walking down the street. We reach my IRL neighborhood and sneak in the local kindergarten, the rooms inside are covered wall to wall and floor to ceiling with blue porcelain tiles. We leave from the window, and there’s a cackle of hyenas waiting for us outside! We grab our batons and flame throwers and get ready for the fight.
DECADE DREAM JOURNAL 