I'm on a holiday. I drive up the North Coast toward the redwoods. Stop in a small town to explore an informal street fair--house after house having yard sales. One rented cottage has... MY FAMILY in it. What a coincidence! I don't see my relatives but I know their car and their gear.

Next door, two cute blonde teens are selling stuff on the lawn. They look very similar--twins? I ask "Hey... is the Wayan family staying next door?"

"Yeah, the Wayans rented that cabin from us,"

"...and there's an extra room on the side for a brother they said might show up..."

"That's you, huh?"

I look through the boxes of stuff my family's selling off. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of sex magazines. My family's selling porn? Of course, it's not in their OWN town, so none of their friends'll know. I wonder if they rented this cabin just to unload this stuff.

I pick up a box and carry it into the house. So I have a room here? Yes. Name-plate on the door and everything! They really expected me... I go in, close the door, and look at the sex images my family's selling. First one I pull out's a Playboy, with glossy airbrushed dolls. A lonely world where no one ever touches. The next is a lesbian sex magazine showing couples: emotionally warmer AND sexually hotter than the straight mag. SO hot I get an instant erection--and start tearing my clothes off!

But intuition flashes a warning. Or is it just old fear? My parents opened doors without permission, we never had much privacy... but that was years ago, and THIS door locks!

It IS locked, isn't it? I get up naked to check. Yes. Locked locked locked.

My sister Althea knocks. I yell "NOT NOW!"

She pushes at the door anyway--and when it won't budge, she SLAMS through it, batters it open! She walks over to me and looks down in amused disgust at me: masturbating in the corner of a bare room surrounded by sex magazines. Looking down at me.

For a moment I feel ashamed, then look back in equal disgust and say "I told you not to come in. If you don't like what you see, it's your problem. I don't want to see you now. Go away."

She says, eyes still glinting, "Come out and have dinner. We went to a Thai restaurant and saved the leftovers for you. There's elephant meat, and..."

I say coldly "No thank you. Close the door when you leave." And point to it.

She goes out, but leaves the door a crack open! Furious, I go over to it and find it WON'T close now. She broke it when she burst in. Three hinges, and the two upper ones both tore loose. They're more like spiral binders than standard hinges, they might be bent back into shape. I try for a while, but can't.

So I start to dress again, to leave. Don't want to stay after that double insult--not just the door, the dinner. I wouldn't eat elephant even if I could digest Thai peppers. Why not dolphin while they're at it--or "long pig?"

I cross the hall, seeing none of them--no, hear shower running, Althea singing. A little devil on my shoulder says "Go in and jam her shower door open and see how SHE likes it!" But the little angel on the other side says "That's petty--and a waste of time." Can't deny that.

So I just get in my car and leave. For good.

Elephant!

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• The sex magazines = sexual models inherited from my parents. My dad's were very Playboy; I think my mom is a closet lesbian--she's very down on men, and seems to feel women can do no emotional wrong... My family's hand-me-down beliefs still linger unconsciously... at the expense of reality (like the twin girls doing the yard sale, who were quite cute and friendly, even a bit flirtatious).
• My scornful sister = an attitude inside me of "Put on a social mask and be accepted. Don't get caught being deviant." This isn't her real-life behavior at all (since our parents were unreliable, us siblings tended to work together) but in my dreams she often symbolizes practicality because when we were little she was the super-practical one. While I'm the kind of doofus who puts a dream like this on the Net.
• The room reserved for me = what my family values offer me. A bare cell, no privacy, fantasy relationships, and leftovers laced with the meat of exploitation.
• But the door was like my friend Dawn's broken back door! Is the dream warning that because of my family's training, I let my FRIENDS violate my privacy TOO?

World Dream Bank homepage - Art gallery - New stuff - Introductory sampler, best dreams, best art - On dreamwork - Books
Indexes: Subject - Author - Date - Names - Places - Art media/styles
Titles: A - B - C - D - E - F - G - H - IJ - KL - M - NO - PQ - R - Sa-Sk - Sl-Sz - T - UV - WXYZ
Email: wdreamb@yahoo.com - Catalog of art, books, CDs - Behind the Curtain: FAQs, bio, site map - Kindred sites