An Uncomfortable Dream

Saw Danny Boyle’s new film Trance last night. I want to talk about it because it pissed me off, but I suspect anyone reading this likely also wants to see the movie, and literally anything I might have to say about it will spoil some aspect of it. It is a movie that can’t be talked about with anyone who hasn’t seen it. 

In any case, the movie infiltrated my dreams, but mostly through set pieces, in a grand meld of the three main characters’ homes. And also, I suppose, through Vincent Cassel’s seductive vigor. I swear, you can get a nose full of his pheromones from the movie screen. He is, despite being many things I don’t normally find attractive (small mouth, aggressively masculine face, narrow head), probably the most potent symbol of masculine eroticism that I can think of. 

So my dream was set in a large, spacious, heavily tiled, modern home, like the homes in the film. Dark, but inviting. Lots of slate, glass tile, subtle lighting.

It was Andy. We were lying in bed together, fully clothed. He’d slimmed down a bit, lost the borderline too much doughiness of his midsection and accompanying fat deposits in the chest region (that were never actually too much, especially when he’d lay on his side and get furry cleavage. I always found that to be quite a lot of fun to stick my finger in, and we’d laugh) in favor of more toned musculature. I was enjoying feeling his form through simple jersey, he was solid, and warm. We had just reconnected, I was unsure of what I wanted, scared that becoming physical would be too much for me, but he suggested we take a shower together. I went downstairs with him, to the enormous, fully slate tiled bathroom, with two stairs you had to walk up to get into the glass-enclosed shower, which had, tellingly, multiple shower heads. He stripped down, and I admired his ass, but felt too shy to disrobe myself. Feeling frightened, I made an excuse, and nervously talked to him as he showered. I thought about his large, straight, prettily-perfect cock that always got so hard I’d joke that one could crack a tooth on it, just as he made some reference to it, trying to entice me to join him.

And then, by some dream trick, he wasn’t there any more, and I was alone in the room, steam from the shower still lingering. I called out for him, but there was no answer. I opened the still-closed shower door, but he wasn’t there. His clothes were gone, he was gone.

I sat there a while, my heart racing, feeling abandoned. I left the room, and went upstairs. He wasn’t in the bedroom we’d been in before. But the house was quite big, and there were many other rooms to investigate. All of which made me nervous, because I knew there were other women in the house. Perhaps he’d given up already, and didn’t want to give me time to figure out what I wanted. Maybe he’d moved on to another woman. 

All of the women in the house were immediately beautiful, in the right light, and this house was designed to always present that light. Women who worked as strippers, as escorts, as erotic masseuses. That wasn’t his type of woman, I knew, Andy prefers intellectual, academic, music-obsessed, earthily plain-pretty girls that you’d never notice in a crowd. A physically unfettered woman, who wakes in the morning the same as when she went to sleep. While I am quite intelligent, I am not academic, and while I am music-obsessed, it was never the right music, and while I am pretty, my prettiness is altogether too unusual to be his type. 

Conversely, the women in this house were over-sexed sea hags, who wake in the morning groaning like kracken, yawing sharply until coffee, cigarette, and thickly applied makeup were had, but one never knows what might draw a person to another, so I entered each semi-darkened room, afraid.

The women were fucking one another, viciously, animal grunts and growls, processed over-styled hair and too much perfume putting out puffs of product that made me want to sneeze, and by the third room, I’d found only one man in bed with them, a man I didn’t know. They all tried to get me to join them, even after they complained that I’d interrupted them.

Defeated, tired, I went down to a room I knew to be sex-free, a basement rec room, with florescent lighting and tan carpeting, where people were putting together puzzles, playing board games, drinking beer and laughing. It felt like a last resort, and even as I knew it was more likely I’d find Andy in the rec room, I needed to abate my fear by confirming he wasn’t with any of those women.

The room had about a half-dozen men in it and only one girl, who wasn’t one of the terrible women, and all parties were lazing about doing the aforementioned game-playing. There was a big, tan brick fireplace all the way at the back of the room, the kind one finds in crappy suburban homes built in the 90s. My eye was drawn to it, as I stood in the middle of the staircase down into the basement. No one looked at me, and I scanned the room, again looking to the fireplace, which wasn’t lit.

And that’s when I saw him. Not Andy. Chris. Laying on his side, on the floor, just in front of the fireplace, wearing a polyester patterned shirt that was white, with blue and red print, clearly from the 70s. He was idly flipping through a magazine, which, if I’m not mistaken, was an issue of Highlights. Yes, the kids magazine. There were other books strewn about him, and they too seemed child-oriented, as in things from the late 70s, early 80s. Our childhood years. 

I cautiously walked toward him, and when he saw me coming close, a wry smile formed at the corner of his mouth, clearly in spite of himself. “Hi,” I said. He stood up, and remained a few feet from me. I motioned for us to walk outside.

We stood on the grass, which was not yet green, as spring had not yet come, next to a river that was barely more than a creek, but rushing with water. He looked at me, down at me, standing tall, but not imposingly so, and said he thought it was too soon that we were meeting, that we weren’t ready. But he still had that wry smile. Despite himself, he was happy to see me. Just uncomfortable, and confused. My heart was racing, but not with fear, just excitement. Andy wasn’t right. This was right. I recognized that the second I saw Chris. I wanted to kiss him, to touch his skin, but I resisted trying, because I knew he wasn’t ready. “We live in the same house,” I said, “I couldn’t avoid you.”

He acknowledged the fairness of this statement. “But I was looking for Andy, I thought we might be reconnecting, but it didn’t feel right. He lives here too.” Chris’s features darkened, just slightly, with a twinge of jealousy that couldn’t be helped. He made motion to his shoulder, indicating the length of Andy’s hair. “Long, dark, wavy hair?”

“Yeah,” I said, “with kind of a darkness around the eyes, a little sunken, Slavic looking.”

Chris nodded. “That guy.”

“But it’s not right. He’s not what I want.”

And we continued to stand there, awkwardly, uncomfortably, but understanding it was better than anything else.