crazywonderful

In part of my dream last night Angelina Jolie was my girlfriend, no sign of Brad or bairn, and it was basically us interacting in an extremely comfortable, carefree way with me wondering (pretty much constantly) if I was going to get to touch her. Then it morphed briefly into a sci-fi action thing (enter nameless dread) at the end of which appeared my therapist, who wanted to know if I’d do her laundry. Not all of it, mind you, just this one pair of red pants, resting at the top of the duffel bag she handed over. She said she’d let me know about the rest, because S____ (insert five-lettered male name I can no longer remember here) was picky about how his laundry was done, and she wasn’t sure if I’d do it right. I wanted to tell her I could kick anyone’s laundry-doing ass (I hate having my anal-retentively-enhanced skills impugned), and I really wanted to know who Shank or Squid or whoever was and why she cared so much about his laundry but I couldn’t quite manage my questions around the general confusion.
Then I woke up and let me tell you, I got into the shower feeling really glad I’ve started remembering my dreams again. A sex dream about a celebrity I have a thing for that did not include sex, not quite being able to run fast enough or vanquish very persistent, wholly evil alienish enemies and the Wise Woman’s boyfriend’s laundry issues. Made me wish I could thread the loofah cloth in one ear and out the other and give my brain a good scrubbing. This is my subconscious working through its issues? Great.
Given the choice, however, which I sadly never am, I would take weird dreams over fucked-up reality any day. Last Saturday morning I was sitting on the couch with my windows open, reading a book when some random appeared out of nowhere and started talking to his slightly deaf father on his cell phone. You know, usually it’s a walk-by and all I get is one relatively harmless sentence (“Do you ever get the feeling these conversations are a little too personal?” and “Did you get my email? With the sad eyes, and the apologies?” being recent favourites), but this guy was standing in front of my apartment building, walking back and forth across the street in and out of earshot. At first I was just mildly annoyed, because his very loud conversation was making reading my book intermittently impossible, but then he went from talking about the birds he’d seen while on his walk around the seawall (ducks, red-winged blackbirds, all magnificent) to how things weren’t working out with the current girlfriend. Then out of earshot. Back to the book. It seemed like he’d wandered off down the sidewalk, but I got flashes of some kind of travel plans, and then he was walking my way again, talking about teaching in China. “Yeah, so I’ll be surrounded by Chinese people. Of the female persuasion.” So, after he went on (and on and on) for a while about all the 18 year old Chinese girls he was going to be banging, how they (his students, remember) were going to be throwing themselves at him so abundantly that he’d hardly be able to dig his slimy racist misogynistic dickwad self out from underneath them, he concluded, “So if it doesn’t work out with this one, I’ll take a little trip. What’s that? Oh, I said, IF IT DOESN’T WORK OUT WITH THIS ONE, I’LL TAKE A LITTLE TRIP!” And then they were back to the girlfriend problems and he was mercifully listening more than talking so that the paralysis wore off enough to allow me to hobble under my huge burden of disgust over to the sliding glass door. I leaned out and got my first eyeful of the guy, stared at him until he turned his balding, middle-aged self around and noticed me, and then I closed my sliding door and windows. Once again wishing I were braver and in possession of a handy arsenal of witty, devastating one-liners. Where the fuck is Dorothy Parker when you need her?
The whole thing left me feeling torn. On one hand, I thought I might be able to see why it wasn’t working so well with the current girlfriend and I wished her godspeed. But on the other hand, unleashing deluded assholes into other countries just seems so wrong. So I ended up kind of wishing the girlfriend was an asshole too, so I didn’t have to feel bad about her being stuck with such a shit.
But wait! That’s not all! Last week I went in to see my therapist and I was telling her this story, and she shared a similar story from a few days earlier when some drunk had dialled her number without realizing it from his cell phone and then subjected her voicemail to a monologue directed at his friend about all the doable bitches on the beach (“Fucking Nirvana” being one of his phrases that is likely to stick in my head for a while). At the end of this exchange, I am embarrassed to report, I said with my hands over my face, “What I really don’t understand is, how is it possible that there are any heterosexual women left?” Giant pause, and then she said, “Because it’s not a question of choice.” Oh yeah. Right. That same point I make when people ask about me about why I’m gay. So I guess I can stop feeling superior now, and just go back to being really fucking depressed.