last night was
raw. the worst
insomnia i've had in a while - i tossed and turned all night, nothing was comfortable. i smoked as many cigarettes between 3am and 11am as i do when i go out drinking.
but slept a little, and in the middle of one
snooze there was this
strange and tenuous dream. i had to concentrate hard to keep it.
i walk into this place
downtown i've been to exactly once, the
midnight sun, but i get inside and it's a
cathedral. at first i think i'm there because my ex-boyfriend,
alex, is marrying his girlfriend. in the dream they are
engaged, and yuppies, not dating, an alcoholic and a former junkie. then i get confused. i'm not sure who i'm there for. i stand in the aisle, and wait. people walk past the altar, and i try to make out faces, but all i see is
tuxedo after tuxedo. i'm fidgeting, trying to see the bride, and then i think i do, but it's not the bride, it's the
groom. and the groom is
a boy i used to sleep with, but not alex. his collar is unbuttoned and i think,
oh no, i've missed it.
defeated, i fall into a seat in the front row, because it's empty. he sits down next to me, and begins to
undress, glaring at me. the
pews are like big old thick
movie theater seats, and i can lean back into the row behind, so i do. and i fell asleep. in my dream. then i remember the front row is supposed to be for family. strange, no one
getting married had any family. this leads to an aside revelation about
hipster kids and the lives they keep secret from the people most likely to see through their
facade.
so i fall halfway into the row behind me, but i fall onto an old man who is sleeping and end up tangled in his camel-colored overcoat. i manage to free myself, and crawl over the seats to a few rows back, leaving the groom behind, taking off his shoes. and i see that there's a big open circle in the middle of the pews, and
the boy i'm sleeping with now is there in a yellow folding chair. and i get confused again, wondering if i'm getting married, or if
he's marrying someone else, too. but i look back again and it's not him, it's my mom, and she's sitting next to a
casket. the wedding is over and they're having a
funeral now. and all the decorations are still light blue, with white flowers.
everyone in the
church is asleep in the pews, waiting for the next show to start. all of them are old men or the hipster kids i see around town. but
she starts yelling at me, in the middle of the church, with everyone sleeping: 'i have to leave soon!' i wonder why she didn't come over and say it to me. i can see she feels uncomfortable, because she thinks i'm participating in some
performance and she doesn't know when she'll be able to talk to me. i pick up my purse and go over to her. she sends me back for her black purse, the one she had when she and my dad were still married, which was lying on the floor, at my feet.
she takes her purse and a suitcase and runs away up an
escalator, leaving me standing by the casket.