I. "You"" Is My Husband in My Dream.
You and I were on a Ferris wheel at an amusement park and the children were with us, but they were much younger. The car we road in was damaged; the lap bar kept detaching itself from its clasp with every revolution of the wheel and it seemed certain we would be thrown from the car to our deaths. I fought to keep the children in. The interminable ride was filled with terror for me, and each revolution of the wheel brought with it an unforeseen shock, as when one rides a roller coaster and it crests a new hill, then plummets. I saw that your mother sat in the car in front of us, alone. She turned her head and told me reassuringly, in the voice of experience, that the only hope was simply to close my eyes. She said that would make the ride less terrifying and it would seem to be over sooner. She said that was how she had managed. I was angry at you, since it was clear you knew the ride was not safe, yet you asked the children and me to go on it with you anyway. It seemed certain you knew the restraining lap bar was broken as you helped me into the car.
Then I dreamed I had separated from you and the small children lived with me in a trashy house with aluminum siding, like a trailer, on a military base. I was afraid that you would come and kill me and destroy my house because I had left you. I dreamed you followed me to art school then, that you tried to joke with my teachers about football and they didn't understand you. Then you told me you were going to the dance studio for a while "to try out a few steps." I thought, Why are you doing that? Dance was something that was mine alone. I wanted to leave the school, but the only way out forced me to pass through the mirrored studio in which you danced. I crept along the wall and tried to be as small and unobtrusive as possible so not to attract your attention.
The little children and I left the house so that we would not be in danger from your rage. I saw a bus stopped down the street and we ran for it. The children slowed me down. Another woman, also in her forties, ran, too, and was able to catch the bus just before it started off. I yelled to her to ask the bus driver to wait for us. My purse spilled over as we ran and my checkbook and the few dollars I had in the whole world spilled out. I had to backtrack a few feet to pick them up. Meanwhile the bus departed without us and something inside me knew for certain there would never be another one. Something inside me knew it was the bus that led to life as an artist. I closed my eyes and wept.
II. Dream of June 11, 1997.
I am reading a book called Flirt, but it is a serious psychology or philosophy book by a noted expert -- Jung? -- not something frivolous as the title implies. I only recall what was on one page: a list of half a dozen items, the first of which was
(1) Parallel encounter.
Then Mark, although he doesn't look exactly like Mark at some points in the dream -- more like an actor who's been cast to play him because he's the same physical type -- are in San Antonio in a big civic building, perhaps a neighborhood recreation center. Some kind of charity event or auction involving children is going on. There are dozens of young Hispanic children boisterously running around, and I remember brightly-colored, inflatable pool floats in the shapes of animals -- a hot pink crocodile or alligator -- as something either for sale or somehow decorating the festive setting. I feel happy to be there, like it is a fiesta or something, a friendly social environment. In one room with a stage and rows of folding chairs a nice, non-art world Hispanic father there with his children positively critiques a past performance of mine as if he and his children had been there when I'd performed in this space at some time in the past.
Mark is drinking beer, which is available from food and drink vendors' booths. He's been drinking heavily. Then we are in a big empty room in the facility, alone. We get into a fight, which escalates to the point that he breaks the beer bottle from which he is drinking and begins to slash me with it. I get defensive wounds in my palms and beg him to stop. When he won't and it becomes clear that I have to defend myself, I find a metal shard on the ground (the blade from a palette knife?) and begin to stab back with it, also severely wounding him, primarily in the hands. When I have wounded him severely, he finally stops coming after me. Although I am seriously wounded myself, I think, "I have to get help for Mark," and notice a telephone in the room. It's a beige, push-button phone, but the buttons are all wrong. There are only combinations of numbers (3-13-17 or 17-78, for instance). Since there are no numbers 9 or 1, I can't figure out how to operate the phone to call 911 for help. Although I am wounded I think I will live, but fear Mark will not unless I can get him medical attention right away.
Mark disappears from the room while I am trying to operate the telephone and I pursue him through the halls of the building until he goes outside. I follow him next door to a shabby room filled with garbage -- like a flophouse or crack house -- and then I see the room is attached to an elementary school. A passerby tells me the name of the elementary school and then I feel relief because, since I now know where I am, the ambulance will be able to locate us.
There is another man lying on the floor of the flophouse and he is dead, but he has no visible wounds, as if he has overdosed. I try to keep talking to Mark, to make him comfortable on the floor amid black plastic bags of garbage, to assure him I've sent for help. Despite the wounds on his hands he raises his shirt and tears his own torso open vertically, beginning at the navel. I have the eerie realization that his navel has a tooth in it, as if it is a mouth and will speak. When Mark rips himself open a torrent of white wine pours out of him, but no blood. And then he dies.
I know I will live on despite the terrible wounds Mark had inflicted on me.
III. A Bad Dream, January 28, 1996.
Even though in the dream, as in real life, Mark and I have been together fourteen years, I dream that I have to get married. The emphasis on marriage in this dream is bureaucratic, like some Soviet institutional policy, a regulation like filing one's income tax. I am neither happy nor sad, just resigned to the fact that it is required. Without any emotion at all I take out a straight razor and slit my own throat, but the blood does not flow outward where others are aware that I am bleeding to death; instead, it flows internally. I am conscious throughout the dream that the loss of blood will eventually kill me unless I seek medical intervention. To cover up my terrible self-inflicted wound I wear a neck scarf or a pearl choker throughout the dream.
I go to a kind of storefront, as directed, where middle-aged matrons in white uniforms and headdresses like nuns or nurses sign up a hundred brides on a first-come, first-served basis. The pads of paper the matrons write upon are double columned, so each woman who signs up is eventually randomly paired with another bride-to-be. The matrons explain this pairing with another woman will "make the wedding easier and less time-consuming," that the Justice of the Peace will see us two couples at a time during the ceremonies. The matrons pass out lists of of things each bride must accomplish before the wedding ceremony; this list consists of errands and gifts that must be purchased for various family members.
The only time Mark is with me in the dream is when I set out to accomplish some of the shopping errands. I become separated from Mark while shopping, and when I meet up with him again, he has a present for me -- this is one of the tasks on the list. He gives me three pairs of stockings or tights as a gift; they are all unusual colors and textures. One pair is like woolly chain mail, and I remember thinking that although they are beautiful, they aren't something I would have chosen for myself. I don't think they will match my clothes, but I don't tell Mark that. I think again of the mortal wound I have inflicted upon myself, but I don't mention it to Mark or start traveling to the hospital emergency room.
The next scene of my dream is backstage at the place where the weddings are to be performed. I arrive late, with gift-wrapped packages in my arms and Natasha's cherished doll, Cookie, who is all dressed up in a blue organdy and lace party dress. The backstage area is crowded with the other brides, who now also wear the white nun/nurse uniform, and all the brides' mothers. There are no men present at all, as if only the women are required to report to get married. My mother is there, sitting at a table weeping, alarmed, evidently that her daughter is late and fearful that she perhaps isn't going to come at all. When she sees me enter she jumps up and runs over to me and stops crying, relieved that I have finally arrived and happy to see me. I do not mention to my mother, either, that I have a self-inflicted fatal wound to my throat, and she does not notice it. I think I can't possibly have much longer to live with all the blood loss. And then, a noise outside the bedroom window startles me and I wake up from the dream.
