I am not at all sure what the following experience proves, except possibly that my unconscious brain has a wicked sense of humor….
As with most people, my dreams tend to manifest recurring themes. There’s the flying theme, the trying-to-get-somewhere theme, the naked-in-embarrassing circumstances theme, and so on. And in my particular case, these themes often play themselves out at science fiction conventions.
So it wasn’t surprising last night to find that I’d dreamed myself into a convention, and that I had talked someone into letting me take a shower in one of the con’s luxury suites — in which, in the way of this sort of dream, the latch to the bathroom door emphatically Did Not Work. However, a couple of concom folks had agreed to guard said door to avoid embarrassing circumstances…and then, in the way of this sort of dream, inexplicably vanished.
This, naturally, left me in the luxury suite partially dressed, trying to explain to a Famous Professional Writer what I was doing getting ready to take a shower. (Curiously, the dream didn’t cast a specific Famous Professional Writer; this was a matronly lady I didn’t recognize at all, except that she was clearly an FPW.)
FPW: “I have a reservation in this hotel.”
Me: “As do I.”
Pause, freeze-frame, flashback: indeed, earlier in the dream, there had been a sequence in which I’d checked in and dropped off my luggage in my hotel room.
Me: “Wait a minute.”
My conscious brain, as opposed to my dream-brain, processes this, and draws the obvious conclusion.
Me, to the FPW: “I am a complete idiot.”
And I woke up — having, for the first and only time I can remember, gotten myself out of a naked-in-embarrassing-circumstances dream before the nudity actually kicked in.
