I know I have been a little hit and miss on posting. Bookface is sometimes more of an immediate way to communicate with family and local friends. Not an excuse, just a fact...
I worked late last night (the store closes at 9pm). Got home around 9.30, grabbed a beer, had dinner with Michael, and flipped on the DVR to watch American Idol... Michael had to work early this morning (and I was off), so I watched all 3.5 hours of Tuesday's and Wednesday's shows while he slept peacefully (for a while in my arms, then later in bed).
I am definitely an 8 hour man. That is, I require a full eight hours of sleep to be functional... So, when Michael got up this morning, he got ready for work, made the coffee, and then I joined him on the porch for a smoke before he left. At that point I had only benefited from about six hours of sleep, so I curled back into bed for a bit...
That's when the dream started. Michael was not in it. The cast of characters were all from my past. My straight life past. Kids, ex's, in-laws, previous co-workers and bosses, all sorts of people I had known (and still know in some cases) from the first 50 years of my life. There was this huge gathering of what turned out to be a family reunion of Tom's first life. At first it was just one or two people I had known. Then it turned into tens, and finally hundreds of people that all knew me from my straight life. They all wanted to know how things were going, they all wanted to know what I was doing for a living, and they all were quite pleasant (even though in real life, some have refused to speak to me)... I had to "Come Out" all over again. I mean to everyone... I kept asking them if they had forgotten about my coming out 5 years ago, and no-one seemed to remember. At first it was a little unraveling for me, very uncomfortable, and disturbing... Then, I woke up for a bit, checked my phone, got a glass of water, went to the l'il boy's room, and curled back up in bed (I had only been re-sleeping for about an hour, and still needed at least one more)...
Not sure if anyone else does this, but my dream picked right back up where I left off. More people started showing up with their kids and others I did not know. We all assembled in some sort of amphitheater in the back yard of my cousin's home, talking to each other, making jokes, enjoying the beautiful weather as the sun started to fade. It was kind of like being at Barbra Streisand's televised concert 20 years ago.
Then the "F" bomb (faggot) was dropped in a joke someone was telling me and some others around me. I looked at this guy, laughed a little at his joke (which apparently was funny) and said something to the affect that "All of us gay men do that"... You would have thought that as I said that, a poisonous gas was visibly streaming from my mouth (not unlike those cherries from Jack Nicholson's mouth, in the Witches of Eastwick). The area cleared, then the back yard, and finally the whole house like a wild fire accross a wildgrass plain. The next thing I know, I am walking along a riverfront and I see a small child sitting in the back of some type of paddlewheeled sightseeing boat. He was all alone and had jumped over to this boat all on his own, no parents anywhere to be seen. I jumped over to the departing paddlewheeler, grabbed this kid, and jumped back over to the dock, only to find that this dock was right behind the house I had been at earlier, and now all the people were back. My sister in law ran over to me and thanked me for finding her son, and invited me to jump this wall (next to the boardwalk) and come back to the party... I told her that "her hair looked really nice" and then woke up...
Weird huh? Might be time to go back and visit my therapist...
Over and "Out" from the dreamworld of Portsmouth, VA
