First Dream: I’m back in the COO’s weekly meeting, taking the minutes and fading over my laptop (meetings put me to sleep even when I am asleep). Keys blur. Words crash into each other. I bite my lip to stay conscious, tilt over the side of my chair, and balance on one ass cheek.
The COO stands behind me, reading my screen, glowering. He says, “These minutes are supposed to be the sacred road map of our decision making. Look at that sentence. What I said was ‘I’m talking about a flagrant breach of etiquette.’ What you typed is ‘I’m walking along my favorite beach in Connecticut.’ Not only have you obliterated my meaning, but you’ve put me in swim trunks in Connecticut!”
“It’s a first draft. I’ll hone it,” I say.
The COO has discovered my secret: I don’t want to be in charge of words; I want them in charge of me. I’m useless to him now. I wake up, relieved to remember that I’ve already escaped.
The dream leaves me groggy. At the gym, I swim my laps. As I get out of the pool, the young woman sharing my swim lane says, “You swim pretty quick for a—” and catches herself. In the locker room, men in their eighties and nineties stagger around naked as if both proud and stunned to still be around. I admire them, although they remind me of how lucky I am not to be able to see my own ass.
Second Dream: I sit before the Head of HR. “The guard says you’ve been harassing him. Remember: HR stands for Hit and Run, and I can take you out in a heartbeat,” she says.
“All I say to the guard each morning is ‘How’s it going?’ Monday, he answers, ‘It’s Monday, that’s how’; Tuesday, ‘It’s going’; Wednesday, ‘Halfway there’; Thursday, ‘One more day’; Friday, ‘I made it.’”
“In other words, you’re murdering him, which is against company policy,” she says.
She is not a friend. I have to go. I wake up and ask myself, why are my dreams out to get me?
Douglas Collura lives in New York City
