A Lucid Dream

June 2005
Chiang Mai, Thailand

The air conditioner hums in our little room at the guest house. We are napping. Simon and Daniel lie together and I am alone because I am sick, feverish. I am between sleep, feeling calm, weary, accomplished that I had survived my previous night of violent delirium. I sink into a dream but this time only, I am aware of the movement of my consciousness.

Daniel, Simon and I are flying over a pastoral landscape in a World War I Caquot dirigible. As we float above rolling, verdant hills and sparkling lakes, our minds are consumed only with our mission: to find me a girlfriend.

We touch down near a rocky cove with roiling surf, and I disembark to begin my quest. I arrive at a rocky outcropping, like a puppet theater. From its base erupts a Buddhist shrine, like the set of an opera with wooden blades of water, the color of fire, moving mechanically back and forth. Between the jagged scenic waves, jump fish, wooden, the color of maroon Chinese lacquer. The fish have familiar faces. From the center of the shrine emerges Sarah, a senior year crush. Petite and pouty, her fawn-brown hair is done up in crimson chop-sticks, and she wears an elegant kimono. Her hands make the signs of Thai theater and her teeth are metal and gnash aggressively. The fish have Sarah’s face and gnash their jagged jaws like the prehistoric ocean. I remount our dirigible and fly away, warm and smiling with the self-awareness my dreaming.

“Guys,” my real mouth says while my dream eyes were keep close watch on the approaching wraith. “Guys, I’m having a lucid dream.”
“Hmm. That’s cool,” says Simon. “What’s it like?”
My real eyes flutter open. “I don’t know. It’s pretty crazy. I’ll tell you about it in a sec.” I fall back into the dirigible. But there is trouble! During the mere seconds I allowed my focus to drift to the interior of our sticky, Thai room, my dream world experienced a grave rupture. The dirigible was on fire, thick smoke billowing from the balloon.
“What the fuck was that?” says dream Simon, frantically trying to quell the flames.
“I don’t know!” I say. “I’m sorry. I was just checking in with you guys.”
“That’s your biggest flaw,” says dream Daniel. “You think that you’re treating people nicely and fairly but really you’re just doing more damage.” Upon hearing this, I am destroyed, my core of self decimated. But at the same time I am quite a bit larger than the two of them. With my giant hand, I zip up the flaming damage on the dirigible and we fly on into the horizon. Extinguishing the fire was as simple as closing a tent.

Now there is a misty corridor. A tall figure approaches me. “This,” I thought. “This will be the girl for me.” This girl is none other than Maya, a seven-foot tall, blonde mirage of a girl who laughs at everything she ought to. We approach slowly and I know that if I reach her, she will be mine.

Real me stirs, and I hear Simon say, “Do you guys wanna get some dinner?”