Dream Songs
by Kimo Therapy
It was past 3 a.m. and we’d been lying there listening to new songs play old rhythms on the quiet radio. It was wonderfully windy outside and she lay beside me pouring her love through the gentle levy of our two clasped hands. Making love to her was wonderful, but sometimes it was the discussions we got into afterwards that really served as the creamy filling — for me at least.
I always used to think it odd that she insisted on taking a shower after sex. It had to happen — sometimes even before the great intellectual discussions about life, nature and the human condition began. In any case, before she fell asleep she had to shower. “It helps me sleep,” she would say.
Some think it is a great misfortune to sleep with a psychology major. “They’re all messed up in the head, man,” my best friend used to say. I saw it as an added bonus to what every relationship should possess: communication. I can’t say for sure, however, because my current sample population consists of only one precious specimen.
“I remember my mother always taking long, steamy showers late at night,” she said. “My dad would come home late, all drunk and stumbled while making a loud ruckus.”
“He drank a lot, huh?” I prodded.
“Yeah. Sometimes it was nice, because he’d get real emotional and tell me how much he loved me and he’d want to hold me all night. But other times he would get really mad and throw things around in the kitchen. I remember one time he broke the broom by smacking it against the kitchen table. The handle just smashed into splinters; the brush part flew into the air and came down on my cat and scared her out of the house for the night.”
“So did he ever hit your Mom, or you?”
“Not me, but he used to hit her and yell a lot. It was like he was really mad at something, but my Mom really never did anything wrong. Weird, huh?”
An old Joan Jett rock and roll song came on the radio. “I love this song,” she sighed. I sang along, “I love rock and roll, put another dime in the jukebox, baby...”
“What kind of boyfriend do you think someone like Joan Jett would have?” she asked.
“Oh, I don’t know, a guy like John Travolta’s character in Grease, maybe?”
“Yeah,” she replied, “real greasy and cool.”
Curiosity roiled through my mind. “So do you think your Dad ever sexually abused your Mom?”
She paused before answering that one. “Well,” she said, “I’m not sure — but something was going on in their room when the door was shut.”
Being a foolish, fraternal male, I defended her father: “Well, they could have been getting it on, you know?”
“Yeah, I suppose,” she replied. “But I just don’t know. I sometimes think that there were times when I knew he was sexually abusing her but at the time, I didn’t understand that that was wrong and that I could do something about it.”
“I think you’re right,” I said. “It’s like when you were a child and saw a dead animal for the first time in your life. You didn’t understand what it was doing or why it wasn’t moving. It wasn't until you made the connection with something you've personally lost in your life that you understood the finality and harshness of death.”
“Yeah, that is weird. It makes you think about what you are really going to remember by the time you’re 80,” she remarked.
“Nothing, probably,” I laughed. She laughed too; then we shared a long silence, broken by more radio commercials. There are so many radio commercials.
“They are trying to distract us from the beautiful sounds in life,” she said. “It sometimes makes me want to go out and buy a CD player, but I guess it’s good to hear what all is going on outside my bedroom window.”
My thoughts were elsewhere; I tried to focus on what she’d just said but couldn’t. “Do you ever remember being abused by him?”
“Of course not,” she said, rather annoyed. “Listen, I have already told you this many times: I have not been sexually abused. I’m fine! I’m normal! There’s nothing wrong with me — quit worrying.”
“Who’s worrying?” I said. “I’m just curious about your past that you don’t even remember. Many of us can’t remember anything before the age of about five. Some of us can recall their 3rd or 4th birthday but for the most part, it’s just a messy cloud of thoughts, emotions and vague imagery.
“I mean, really — can you tell me if you remember having a good time when, say, for example one of your relatives picked you up and held you too tight when you were like five years old?” I continued. “I can’t. In fact, there is little I remember before I was eight years old. The things I do remember were big-deal things, like Christmas, 4th of July, my cat dying, or planting my first radish seed and waiting for it to do something. These memories are instilled in me because they had profound meaning and preconceived relevance at the moment of the conception of the memory.
“Wouldn’t you say that for most of us, before the age of about ten, sex and our bodies have little profound meaning or representation for us except that they were there like everything else in the vast, strange world, just there? As young children, we wouldn’t have known if sexual abuse was wrong or even how we were to classify it. If our abuser was acting like it was a normal everyday affair and it wasn't hurting us, we probably wouldn’t remember it any better than we would remember going to the store with our mother on a random young summer day.”
“What are you talking about? I don’t know about you, but I would know if was sexually abused!” she insisted. “Come on, I’m not stupid. I would be like, ‘what the hell are you doing to me, stop that!’ and plus, what's the point in digging up my past if I can't even remember it?”
“I suppose you’re right,” I conceded halfheartedly — but I couldn’t resist adding, “Still, you have to admit: there is that small, tiny, minuscule chance that you were subtly abused, and you just don’t remember, right?”
“I’ll entertain your stupid idea,” she said, “though it seems unlikely.” She looked at me; “You OK?” she asked.
“Fine,” I said. “I’m tired… I’m going to fall asleep soon.” I yawned.
Slowly, the night faded and random dream songs began to dance in my head. I was dreaming of a multi-colored leopard getting hosed down in front of circus freak performers in a dirty, open field sloppily sewed together with brown, dead grass and trashed out paper plates and Dixie cups.
There were many strange creatures gathered around supporting the tallest freak, who was aggressively bracing himself against the intense water pressure emanating from the fire hose. There was a bearded lady resting on a fold out picnic bench, while lying on top of the table was a man with no arms and legs who was rolling a cigarette with just his face. There were several wild-game animal trainers standing about, all wearing the same, light green safari outfits but with brightly yellow colored wide brimmed hats shielding their eyes.
Near the edge of the field just before nothingness, stood world famous Siamese twins donning Raggedy Ann outfits while unobtrusively shuffling their feet to a faint melody blowing in the wind. The circus performer holding the fire hose was the freak that had his entire body pierced with hooks, hoops and needles. He had them all over, even on his face, and he didn’t seem to mind at all; maybe he even liked it. He even had weighted balls hanging from pierced hooks going through his genitalia.
The wind blowing on the open field eventually made its way to my lover’s apartment where it pounded its fists on the double-paned bedroom window. I opened my eyes to darkness and vaguely heard the shower turn off. A few minutes later I felt the sensation of a warm, wet wave of body heat pressing against my chilled back; all the while I stood there alone with that beautiful leopard, soaking wet and trembling in the wide-open field.