"Dude, you were trashed last night," she says. I am sitting
on an unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar room, quite possibly in a
hotel, that evokes memories of the huts from Gilligan's Island. There
is another person in the room -- a man -- whom I don't really recognize
but he treats me like a friend and I am not alarmed. He nods.
This
is strange. I don't feel as though I'd been trashed the night before.
No hangover. No headache. No unpleasantness whatsoever.
"Yeah,"
the guy pipes up. "I can't believe you got married."
I
can't imagine what my face must have looked like at that moment. They
sit down on the bed and start to weave a sordid tale: we are in
Niagara Falls for some reason or another, and for some other reason
Niagara Falls has slowly turned into Las Vegas. They explain that,
after a night of partying, we met a small group of guys that included a
sportscaster. And then he and I, drunk as hell, wound up in an
all-night chapel and got married.
I freeze. I don't remember
getting drunk and marrying a complete stranger. I don't
even remember going to Niagara Falls. The memories only start in that
hotel room.
Maybe I've been kidnapped.
But no. As they keep
recounting the events of the previous evening, things start to make
sense. Memories return in flashes, only allowing me to slowly piece
them together like a very bizarre
puzzle. I suddenly remember the people of whom they speak. Faces
become unblurred, and I can place an image to the one guy they keep
talking about but can't remember what happened.
"I can't remember what happened," I say.
"You got married," they both say at the same time.
It suddenly occurs to me that I have a boyfriend back home. Panic. I say nothing. What is there to say?
Someone
else enters the room then, and the way the other two act towards him
suggests he is one of the people we encountered last night. The fact
that they immediately stop mentioning the topic they've been all too happy to talk about until his
arrival suggests that he doesn't know.
"Where's Elliot?" the woman asks, glancing over at me with an expression that reeks of "That's your husband."
"He
ran off and got married," the guy says. The two people in the room with
me laugh nervously, then look to me to see how I'm going to react.
They're trying to follow my lead.
"That's nice," I say. They laugh nervously again. I still don't believe I got drunk and married this man of whom they speak.
"Yeah,"
the guy continues. "He asked Brian to marry him last night and they
decided to do it right away."
He seems disinterested in telling the whole story and is looking for
something in the hotel room.
My companions have gone from nervous to downright alarmed.
"He's
marrying..." the guy starts and then trails off. The other guy glares
at him with a look that says "What are
you saying, you monster?" The first guy is not criticizing, mind you, just confused that the guy in question is marrying someone else so soon after apparently having married me (apparently), and without taking the generally common step of ending said marriage first.
He leaves the room not long after. I start to lose track of time.
The
woman can see that I'm not convinced. She heads over to the bureau,
returns with a piece of paper and hands it to me. Sure enough, it's a
marriage certificate and, sure enough, there's my signature. Eep.
I most
definitely didn't consummate any marriage, and up until that point I
was more worried about living with the guilt and what everyone else
would think when I got home than anything else. Besides, I could easily
have it anulled, right? Right.
Except now this guy was running
off to marry someone else, and I had no idea how to find him, and if I
didn't find him and get this thing sorted out in time I'd find myself
an accessory to bigamy!
Can you get charged for that? Is there even such a thing?
It didn't matter in the end, because that's when I woke up.
This
dream came about as part of a three-hour nap I took yesterday after
getting home from work. I have no idea what it means, so let's see what
the experts have to say about it (all from www.dreammoods.com):
- To dream that you are
planning
your own wedding to someone you never met is a
metaphor symbolizing the union of your masculine and feminine side.
It represents a transitional phase where you are seeking some sort of
balance between your aggressive side and emotional side.
- To
see a hotel in your dream signifies a new state of mind or a shift in
personal identity. You need to move away from your old habits and old way of thinking. Or you feel the need to
temporarily escape from your daily life.
- To dream that you
are on vacation indicates that you need a break to recharge your
energies and revitalize yourself. You need to break out of your daily
routine and do something different. Alternatively, it represents your
achievements. You are giving yourself a pat on the back and feel
deserving of a reward for your hard work.
There is, unfortunately, no entry in the dream dictionary for "doing unwise and foolish things in a drunken stupor and the remorse and panic that follows." Meh.
Two of the
symbols apparently represent a need for a break and a change in
routine. Fortunately, I'm off to Montreal for a few days in two
weeks.
I just hope I don't wake up in a strange hotel room with
two people I've never met who produce indisputable proof that I've
married a stranger in a drunken stupor.
Submitted for DreamQuest 2007.