To Dreamby James C. G. Shirk |
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| part 2 of 3 |
Rodney shifted in his chair again. “That’s what I just said. Most of the kids in my dream don’t go with a date. It’s more a social thing, you know?”
Truthfully, Rodney did know. Besides being just average-looking and constantly fighting acne eruptions as a kid, he was awkward in high school and lacked all the social graces necessary to entice the gentler sex. That part wasn’t just in the dream. It was how he grew up.
It seemed he was always on the outside looking in, and he’d never quite gotten over it, even as an adult — a single adult, living in a two-room apartment, with a stunning view of an alley.
Welcome to my life.
“How old are you?”
“You mean in the dream?”
“Yes.”
“I think I’m a sophomore or maybe a junior in high school, so that makes me what, maybe fifteen, sixteen, seventeen. I don’t know.”
The doctor made a notation in his file. “Okay, continue.”
“The dream jumps at that point. The next thing I know, I’m pulling into a Standard gas station in my dad’s red Chevy convertible. The station is right around the block from our house. I have the top down and the radio cranked up — the Doors are belting out “Light my Fire” and...” Rodney stopped and scratched at his ear.
“Jeez, I’m driving the car. I guess that makes me at least sixteen or older, doesn’t it? I never thought about it that way before. Anyway, Jake, the gas station owner, comes out, and I tell him to give me three dollars worth, then I go inside to grab a Coke and a bag of peanuts. I hear a muffled voice when I get inside.”
“Who’s there?”
“No one. There’s a small black and white television on behind the counter. President Johnson is giving a speech of some kind; I can’t hear it too good though; the volume must be turned down. Picture is snowy too,” Rodney snickered. “In the dream, Jake never did like Johnson, said he was a Goldwater man in ’64, now and forever.”
“This scene is the same every time you have the dream?”
“Every time. It never changes.”
“Did you live around the corner from a gasoline station growing up?”
“No.”
“What are you wearing?”
“What?”
“I want you to describe what you have on. Do you remember?”
Rodney frowned. That didn’t make sense, but Handshoe was the doctor, not him. “Of course I remember; I see it every night. A pair of pegged black pants, black penny loafers, white socks, and a red short-sleeve shirt... It’s sort of shiny. I kinda look like John Travolta in Grease. You know that movie where—”
“I know the movie. Are you a collector of sixties memorabilia by any chance? Any record albums, political buttons, movies, things like that?”
“No. The only thing I collect is bills. Like I said, my frickin’ job doesn’t pay for squat.”
The doctor’s pen got busy again. Rodney wondered if it was about him or whether his remark about the company made the Doc wonder if the insurance was paying him properly.
Asshole.
“Okay, go on,” Handshoe said when he finished writing.
“Well, Jake comes back in, and I pay him the three bucks plus forty-five cents for the coke and bag of peanuts. Of course, then I go back outside, and that’s when I spot her for the first time.”
“The girl.”
Rodney sighed. “Yes, the girl. Damn Doc, who else would it be? I’ve told you about her every time. She’s standing out by the highway with her thumb up in the air.”
The doctor seemed unfazed. “Describe her.”
“She’s about five-six, reddish-blonde hair, long, down to her shoulders. She’s wearing jeans, tennis shoes, no socks, and a white cotton blouse with the collar turned up around her neck... She has a long neck.” Rodney stopped talking as he visualized the girl. She was pretty, very pretty.
“And?”
“What?”
“You’re forgetting something aren’t you?”
“Forgetting... Oh, yeah. She’s carrying a guitar case. It’s kinda beat-up, like she’s had it for quite a while.”
“Are you sure it’s a guitar case and not a suitcase? You said she’s hitch-hiking. Wouldn’t it make more sense for her to be carrying her clothes?”
“It’s a guitar case, Doc; I know the frickin’ difference.”
“What do you think this means?”
“You mean about the guitar?”
“No, I mean about the girl. Your dream starts out with a concern about going to a high school dance, because you won’t meet a girl, and then you run into one at the gas station. Do you see any connection here?”
“No. Do you?”
Another notation. “Go on.”
“I spin out of the gas station — it was the thing to do back then — see how much rubber you could lay down. It was... cool, but Jake didn’t like it. Don’t think he cared for the black marks on his drive. He’s giving me the finger from the doorway.” The doctor didn’t respond. “Anyway, I whip around, stop next to her, and ask if she needs a lift.”
“That doesn’t sound like you. In the past, it seemed you were... what shall we say... that you were more than shy around girls?”
Rodney felt heat in his cheeks. “Can’t argue that, but then again this is just a frickin’ dream, right? You can be Superman in your dreams.”
“Sometimes,” the Doc said. “Anyway, she says ‘yes’ to your offer?”
“You know the story better than I do, but you’re right. She throws her guitar case in the back and jumps in. I ask her where she’s going, and she says, ‘As far as you can take me, Wyatt.’”
“She called you ‘Wyatt’?” Handshoe flipped back through his notes. “I don’t believe you mentioned that before.”
Rodney nodded. “Hmmmm... I think you’re right. It was my nickname when I was a kid — in the dream I mean, not the real me. Anyway, my dream ‘me’ never missed an episode of Wyatt Earp on television, never. I idolized Hugh O’Brian, even acted like him growing up when I played cowboys and Indians with the neighborhood kids: Matt, Keith, Charlie Sipe and his brother, Little Eddy. They all called me ‘Wyatt’.”
“That’s a lot of background information for dream characters. None of it relates to your true childhood memories?”
How many times am I going to have to tell him?
“None of it. I never knew kids by those names.”
“Interesting. How does the girl know your nickname? Think. Does she represent a person you work with now, a cashier at a grocery store, someone at church perhaps?”
Rodney pulled himself out of the chair and limped to the window by the clock. If his dream ‘me’ felt like Wyatt Earp, his real ‘me’ felt like a bad representation of that irrepressible House character on television. Cold radiated off the window glass.
The snow outside was coming down a bit harder; the city streets below were covered in the fine white powder. However, the chill he felt wasn’t coming from outside. “Doc, you’re asking me the wrong questions.”
“How so?”
He turned away from the window. “You should be asking me how I know any of this stuff. I was born in 1975, at least a decade after this dream takes place. I grew up listening to U2, Falco, and Bryan Adams, not the Doors, and I sure as hell never thought I was Hugh O’Brian. I had to look him up to know who he was when the dream first started. So, how can I know all this stuff in my dream?”
The doctor eased back in his chair — assuming the posture he always took when he attempted to impress him with his psycho-babble knowledge.
“By internalizing information that you were not aware of receiving and replaying it in your subconscious mind.” He paused for a moment, collecting his thoughts.
“Think of it as if you were getting an oil change, and while you waited, you leafed through a magazine looking for an article to read and happened to flip by an advertisement for Mr. Donut. As soon as your car is ready, you suddenly have a craving for a chocolate donut. You weren’t really aware that you saw the ad, but your subconscious grabbed it, and you acted on it.”
He paused again, letting that thought percolate for a moment, and then went on. “Likewise, who knows where you came across the Wyatt Earp character... And it really doesn’t matter where you picked it up. It only matters that it is manifesting itself in your recurring dream for a particular reason. That reason is what we have to discover, and that’s why the details are so important. Understand?”
That actually made sense. “Then, why do I feel the way I do?”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, that every time I have the dream, I seem to be less of the ‘viewing me’ and more of the ‘participating me’. The dream is becoming more real. Sometimes I feel like...” His voice drifted off.
“Like what, Mr. Sumpter?”
“Like I’m not supposed to be here. Like this.” He waved his hand around the room. “I wonder: Is the dream real and all of this just the subconscious wanderings of a sick mind? Or maybe the dream events have actually happened before in a...” He hesitated. He didn’t want to say it, but then he — or at least Chilsom Amalgamated — was paying this jerk two big ones an hour to listen to this crap, so why not? “Like it happened in another lifetime, okay?”
The doctor raised an eyebrow. “You think you’ve been reincarnated?”
“I only know that I’ve always felt like I wasn’t living the life I was meant to. Is that reincarnation? Doesn’t sound like it to me, but the dream never finishes, so I don’t know what happens to this kid. Maybe he died a few years later at the same time I was born, and I got his memories. Some sort of shared consciousness bull, like you see on television sci-fi shows.”
“Do you think that’s rational?”
“Who’s to say what’s rational? You? If my dream isn’t reflecting someone else’s memories, then maybe they are mine. Maybe I’m asleep somewhere, and when I wake up, this will all be gone. You’ll be gone. Who knows?”
“You realize what you’re saying isn’t possible, don’t you?”
“Everything’s possible, Doc. You just have to be patient and work at it. Right?”
The doctor frowned. He obviously didn’t like getting his own words fed back to him. “Mr. Sumpter, you’re sounding a bit angry now. What do you say we just get back to talking about the dream, shall we?”
He motioned for Rodney to sit back down, and he did, reluctantly. “Tell me what happens after the girl gets in the car.”
“I tell her that I’m heading to school to go to the dance. Somehow I get up the courage to ask if she’d like to go with me, and to my amazement, she says ‘yes’.”
“Anything happen on the way?”
“Nope. She turned up the radio — Bobby Gentry was singing “Ode to Billie Joe.” She said she liked that song a lot. Other than that, she kept quiet, and so did I. We just drove over to the school. It was a warm night. The roadside lights gave the avenue a kind of soft, orangey look, and the palms were swaying in a light breeze. It was nice.”
The doctor flipped back through his notes once more. “Palm trees? That’s new. The dream must take place in the south then. Florida? Or maybe California?”
Rodney cocked his head. “I guess so. That part didn’t register before. What do you think it means?”
“You told me once that you’ve never been west of the Dakotas or south of Illinois, so that means at least part of your dream comes from another source: movies, television, books, something along those lines.”
“Unless the dream is someone else’s memory,” Rodney said smiling.
“I thought we agreed to set aside that notion. What happens next?”
Rodney hadn’t agreed on that, but he went on anyway. “We get to the dance, go inside, and I introduce her to some of the guys... They’re really jealous that I’m there with a really hot babe.”
Rodney felt a smile creep across his lips. He’d never had the feeling of anyone being jealous of him before, but the look in their eyes said it all. Damn, it felt good.
“How did you introduce her?”
“As Serpina, that’s what she said her name was.”
“I thought she didn’t say anything to you on the way. How did you know her name?”
Rodney sighed and furrowed his brow. “I... I don’t recall. I guess she did tell me; I just don’t remember when.”
“Nonetheless, an interesting name. Serpina was the lead character of an opera buffa by Giovanni Battista called La serva padrona — ‘The Servant Mistress’.” He eyed Rodney. “Do you attend the opera by any chance?”
“Me?” Rodney laughed. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Okay, we’ll get back to that later. Continue.”
“Well, there’s not much more to say about the dance. We danced, just to the slow songs; I couldn’t do the fast ones, but she seemed okay with that.”
Rodney’s mind pictured the scene again: Serpina not only didn’t mind, she intentionally clung tightly to him, pressing her body to his. One of the chaperones pulled him aside once and told him it was inappropriate, much to Rodney’s embarrassment.
“She smelled really good,” he went on. “I remember that, and she felt even better.”
“Were you aroused?”
The blush came suddenly, completely reddening his face. How did the Doc know that? Frickin’ Freud-wannabe would have him dancing with his mother next. During the dream, he frequently woke up at this point with his hand buried in his crotch. He’d usually turn over on his stomach and quickly fall back to sleep... He didn’t want the dream to end, or rather, he wanted it to go someplace it never did.
“Yes,” he answered truthfully.
The doctor made a note and motioned at him to go on.
“When the dance was over, we went back to my car and got inside. I asked her what she wanted to do, and she reached into the back seat, got the guitar case, and put it on her lap.”
“Was there anyone around to see this?”
“I don’t remember anyone. That’s funny. We were in the parking lot with lots of other cars, and the dance was over, but no one was there.”
The ubiquitous pen scratched again.
“Anyway, she looks at me and says, ‘Did you have a good time?’” I said I did, and then she says, ‘It’s not always been that way for you, has it?’ I’m suddenly dumbstruck. I can’t form the words to say anything. How could she know that? Then she smiles at me and says, ‘You can change everything if...’.” Rodney ran his hand through his matted hair.
“What’s wrong?”
“I didn’t realize till just now that it felt like she was asking me for a decision, a...” He couldn’t finish the thought, wouldn’t finish it. “And, something else happens at that point. It’s cold inside the car, but I feel like I’m sweating and shivering at the same time. I can’t seem to get my breath. Water is dripping down my face, and I’m suddenly aware that the ‘observing me’ is watching the scene again — like I’m trying to pull myself away.”
“Go on.”
Copyright © 2010 by James C. G. Shirk
