meeting a girl; tometeas; back for more; fetish, porn, and game boys

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was on the subway, sitting on a long bench that ran across the side of the car. I crossed to the other side of the car, where there was a wide open space. A woman was sitting to my right. She had a back pack and maybe some other bags with her. She may have been a little heavy, and her clothes may have looked a little worn out, but she was blonde with tan skin and very attractive.

The woman lay against me, partly as if she were simply resting against me, but partly as if she really wanted to cuddle with me. I enjoyed having her against my side, but I didn't want to admit it. Somehow both of us got into some game of making up an excuse for the woman leaning against me. We were pretending that we were looking for some guy the woman was supposed to be with, and that, in order to find the guy, I had to stretch my body one way and the woman had to stretch her body the other way, so that it would look like we were cuddling with each other.

Through all of this we had gotten to talking with each other. We were really comfortable with each other. Now the woman and I were getting off the train. We walked out onto some huge outdoor plaza that was full of people. I was kind of shy, sure the woman wouldn't like me. So I began walking away quickly. But the woman caught up to me and asked me some random question to get me to slow down.

I slowed down, and we began talking again. We were headed into a building that looks to me now like an airplane hangar with the huge doors wide open. Everybody was headed in there. As we headed in there, the woman asked me what I was doing for a living. I didn't want to admit what I was doing for a living right now, but I also didn't want to mention what I had been doing for a living before, as it didn't seem to matter very much anymore.

We were now walking through a grocery store. We turned left at the front of the store and were heading along the endcaps of aisles that looked like salty snack and party food aisles. The woman began telling me about herself. She said she'd just moved here from some big city (maybe Chicago). In Chicago she'd been involved with some industry, maybe the real estate industry. But now she was cleaning houses for a living.

Listening to the woman, I felt relieved. I realized that my life story was a lot like hers. I felt a lot less shy about sharing my own story.

Dream #2

I was in a car, in the front passenger seat. My mom may have been driving. We passed behind, and then to the right of, a small cargo truck. The back and sides of the truck were decorated with advertisements for a food called "tometeas," I believe. The name sounded like "tomatillas."

These tometeas were actually very small scorpions that were tomato-red. They were supposed to be cooked (I think) and eaten by the handful. They tasted like tomatoes. The tiny scorpions basically looked like flat discs with a small rod coming out of the front or back end and two goopy, purplish eyes, either on the disc or at the end of the rod. There was also a slogan for the tometeas, which I found to be almost preachy.

My mom was having a heated conversation with somebody in the car. As we passed along the right side of the truck, the car pulled into a ditch along the curb of the road. There was a lot of muddy water in the ditch. It splashed up as we drove through it. The rest of the road seemed dusty and desert-like.

Dream #3

I was in some small park in a big city, sitting out by the stone basin of an empty, dry fountain. I had a back pack with me. In the back pack was some kind of secret information or machine. I kept walking away, leaving the back pack unattended, so I could go eat some brownies. I must have walked away to go grab more brownies two or three times.

The last time I came back to the fountain I wondered whether the secret items would still be in the back pack. I figured that the people who wanted the secret items were always following me around. If they'd seen me continually walking away from the items, they'd eventually figure out that this would be the perfect time for them to come grab the items. But I also had a feeling that when I got back to my back pack, the items would still be there.

Dream #4

I was "in" some kind of fetish store. But it wasn't like I was quite there. It was almost like I was intensely feeling a movie I was watching. I heard a narrator describe some other part of the store. People thought this part of the store offered actual sex services, like a covert brothel. But the narrator explained that, even though people did offer a service, it wasn't sex, it wasn't prostitution, and it wasn't illegal. Whatever it was, however, was to be revealed right then and to come as a big surprise.

But I "skipped" to the front door of this store. I now stood outside it, looking across a street that looked very much like a side street along the east side of Manhattan. I stood under an awning, looking toward another awning across the street and down to my left by one or two buildings.

The narrator explained how the next place he was going to was a pornographic video store. I suddenly realized both the store and the place I'd just been inside of. I realized that I'd actually done this trip before. The narrator was making a film about something I myself had considered to be an occasional consumer ritual of my own!

A man and a woman were now walking up from behind me, having just come out of the store. As they did so, a business man in a shirt and tie, but no jacket, slammed directly into the man, knocking him back a foot or so. The man who got slammed into was tall, kind of chubby, wearing a shirt, tie, and tweed blazer. He looked tough but soft. He didn't say anything to the man who'd slammed into him. The man actually seemed a bit drunk.

I turned around and said back to the drunk man, "Hey, man, what in the hell?" But the man didn't listen. He opened the brassed-lined glass doors to the store -- which was now a bar full of people -- and joined a group of his friends who stood right at the front.

I knew better than to mess with the man now that he was with a whole group of friends. So I just turned around and headed toward the porn shop. It seemed like the man and woman were also going there, even though it seemed like they didn't want anybody to notice them going there.

As we walked up the steps to the store (there hadn't been steps before, and there was now no awning), the man and woman changed into an older, father-like man and a younger, son-like man. The store was now an electronics store.

I was with the two men, but I followed behind them at a bit of a distance. They got into the store a few seconds before I did. The store was crowded inside, even though it only seemed to be selling old-looking, used-looking electronics.

There was a circular customer service desk a few meters past the door. Two Indian-looking, middle-aged men wearing dark blue polo shirts were staring at me suspiciously. I knew that because of my brown skin, the men were already convinced I was going to steal something. I just wanted to catch up to the two men I'd come in here with, who were both white, so that I'd have the protection of their company and not feel so watched all the time.

I caught up to the two men. The older man was now tall, fat, and bald, wearing a dress shirt, a tweed blazer, and slacks. The younger man was now just a boy, a blonde, pale-skinned, shaggy-haired teenager wearing a baggy, white t-shirt and blue jeans. The two men were looking into a glass display cases of old devices that were all something like variations on the Nintendo Game Boy.

I commented on how much I used to love the Game Boy. But as soon as the two men became aware of my presence, they quickly shunned it. They didn't walk away, but they made me feel like they really didn't want to have to acknowledge me at all.

I decided that I would walk away from the men, showing them that I wasn't trying to be obsessed with being in their company. I tried to look for some other glass display case that I could be interested. I figured if the men wanted to acknowledge me sooner or later, they would. But I couldn't find anything else I liked. And I was becoming increasingly worried about the store owners seeing me on my own and thinking I was an easy target for accusations.

***

UPDATE: Added illustration for dream #1, September 18, 2012, 7:23 AM, Mountain Standard Time.

big-eyed scorpion; old friends' concert; expensive water slide

Good morning, everybody.

Dream #1

I was in an apartment, either in the late afternoon or early morning. The apartment was very dim, growing dark. I stood in some area like the living room, right on the edge of the small kitchen of the apartment.

I suddenly saw a scorpion run across the kitchen floor. The scorpion was huge, maybe 15cm long. It was pale yellow, and it looked really meaty. I couldn't tell what it was at first. And even after I concluded that it was a scorpion, I wasn't sure. Its tail seemed to be tucked really close to its body.

I tried to get a closer look at the scorpion. It was at the right side of the kitchen, about to hide under some of the cabinets. But it was fidgeting about, moving very slowly. I was worrying that it would panic if I got too close, that it would unfold its tail and sting me.

The scorpion did seem to get panicked. It moved out from under the cabinets and started to move toward me. I got worried and backed up, toeing my way back to the living room area. The scorpion seemed to follow me for a bit. But then it kind of seemed to forget about me.

I was sitting on a stool, keeping my feet up a couple rungs so that the scorpion couldn't reach me. But now I wasn't so sure the thing was a scorpion, especially since the light was so dim -- maybe getting dimmer.

I tried to look closely at the scorpion, but my eyes were really fuzzy and grainy. The scorpion now seemed to have big, buggy eyes popping out of its head. The eyes were like cartoon eyes. They were egg-shaped, and they seemed to be made out of a lot of little beads or eggs.

I decided that the best way for me to judge what this thing was would be for me to catch an image of it on my phone. But the thing seemed so far away that it was hard for me to get a good view of it on my phone.

I took my stool and walked around, through a small hallway made by the back end of the kitchen wall and the wall with the front door on it, to a second entrance to the kitchen. I set my stool up in that entrance. It seemed like the scorpion was coming that way. I would get a better view of the scorpion, I figured, once the scorpion got over here.

Dream #2

I was walking to "my job." I was apparently outside, on some street. But I felt like I was on a stage, maybe even down in some basement. On the left side of this stage-like street was "my job," some brick-walled, big-windowed building like a restaurant.

As I was about to head into my work, I saw my old best friend R and his wife L standing in the doorway with a few other people. I wanted to avoid meeting with them, as I didn't really want L to know I was working here. So I figured I might go into the shop on my right, the one across the street from my job.

But somehow I decided to go talk to my old friends instead. They asked me where I was going. I told them, "To work." Somehow I knew that my friends were putting on some kind of show on the first level of this building. I worked in the basement.

I knew that my friends wanted me to take some part in whatever they were doing, something like a concert. I didn't feel like doing it, and I was using work as an excuse. I knew I could probably get out of work, if I really wanted to. But I wouldn't try.

I started feeling bad. I knew my friends would think I was just being lazy, especially L. I told my friends that I could go to their next event. They told me their event was taking place at some other restaurant. I actually felt a lot better about going to that event. It seemed better to go to some other restaurant than to have to do the event in the building I worked in.

Dream #3

I was outside on a sunny day. I was in line for something like a waters slide. I was with a family: at least an attractive woman and her little girl.

We were all walking up a colorful-plastic-coated, metal walkway, up a few steps, and then up another small staircase to our left. From that point, we were led beyond a curtain, into an indoor area. An attractive woman was ushering us into this area.

As we were going up through the line, a woman (somewhere) was telling us about some really good vacation deal. The deal was $585 per person, and it was for a family of five. In addition, the vacation people were giving a $500 discount to people signing up for the vacation.

I had some idea that this whole water slide we were in line for was somehow a part of whatever this vacation deal was. I was thinking the vacation deal may have been for spending a number of days at a water park.

But I calculated in my head, as the woman ushered me beyond the curtain, the expense of the trip. Five time $600 would be $3000. Minus four (!!!) times $15, or $60, would be $2940. Minus $500 would be $25--.

I told the woman I was walking with, "We can't do that. It's too expensive. Especially for just water slides." I was talking to the woman like I was her husband. But I also felt like I was disappointing her, so that I could never be her husband. I wondered whether she'd try to go off and find some better man.

The water slide seemed like a regular water slide as I first approached it: a plasticky flume with water flowing down it. But as I got closer, it changed. It was more like a series of ramped conveyor belts. I'm not sure where the water was. I knew that a person would slide or walk down the ramp a ways, and that a brightly colored, plasticky, boat-like vessel would come up to meet the person and take him on the rest of his ride.

It was about to be my turn. Behind me in line were a bunch of young, very attractive women, like college girls. They all seemed to be talking kind of friendly, almost like they were trying to be friendly with me personally.

But now we somehow knew -- possibly because the ushering lady had told us -- that the water slide wasn't working for the moment. There was some problem with the little boats. They weren't being sent out. We had to wait until they were being sent out for the ride to start back up.

But the woman I had come here with had already gone down the slide. The first conveyor belt ramp went down about twenty meters. It was then intersected by a horizontal conveyor belt, which ran from right to left. The boats may have been supposed to meet people at this point. Then there was another conveyor belt down.

The woman stood on the horizontal conveyor belt. She looked up to me, kind of confused, wondering why I wasn't coming down and why she wasn't going anywhere. The woman may have been wearing a wedding dress.

Possibly because I didn't want to look ineffectual in front of the pretty girls, I yelled down to the woman that the ride was stopped because of the boats. I told her it should be starting again soon. But the woman still seemed to be uncomfortable in her situation. So I may have decided to walk down the conveyor belt to stand with the woman while we waited for the ride to restart.