At Last, the Naked Dream

When I tell people I kept written accounts of my dreams for a couple of months, the first thing they tend to ask is something along the lines of "did you have that no pants high school dream?" The answer used to be no. Last night, however, I took a groundbreaking subconscious foray into the land of nudity. I hope you enjoy it.

I had just spent hours on the telephone, making calls and getting appointments with the ophthalmologist and the mechanic and, strangely, a shoe salesman. I knew that stores were very, very busy, so the only way to get shoes was to make an appointment first.

It was very hot as I sat at the telephone, half in the sunlight from the window. I looked at my left arm in the sun. It was a tan that looked more like roasting meat, and the skin was undulating with steam. My other arm was pale and doughy as usual. It's too damn hot this summer.

Anyway, so I made the phone calls and I had to go out to my appointments. When I hung up my telephone and left the dorm, oddly enough, things looked less like Oregon and more like the middle of some desert somewhere. The air was clear, the land was flat and dry. Also, it was a very dark and sudden night. At least it was cooler.

I went to the garage first and left my car there. I picked up a loaner car to get me to my next two appointments. It was a single seat, three-wheeled car in an attractive shade of lime green. It was much smaller than my Bug, with about enough room to sit comfortably and a small back seat that would fit a couple bags of groceries.

Once I started the car up, I realized that it wasn't very easy to control. When I was in kindergarten, there were small, low to the ground vehicles one sat on and propelled forward by violently turning the handlebars left and right. Someone had gotten the brilliant idea to engineer this system into a car. Instead of a steering wheel, there was a yoke that belonged in an airplane. There was only one pedal, and it was made of thin sheet metal and took up all of the foot space, so any foot movement would trigger it. It was sort of an accelerator, but not really.

Getting the car to move, stay in one lane and stop at appropriate times was like piloting a cross between a sewing machine, a bumper car and a unicycle. It was really annoying, but not enough so that I felt I could quit. Besides, I didn't think I could turn around too accurately.

I checked my watch. I was going to be late to my shoe appointment! I tried to drive the car faster, but that was not going to happen. That's when I noticed that the unipedal system was really just a big piece of metal stuck over a regular brake and accelerator (no clutch) pedal, so pushing down on it would trigger both. I pried it up at the next red light and threw it in the back seat, after which the car handled much better.

On the floor, there was also a large knife switch, its handle coated in red plastic. I couldn't figure out what it did, so I finally decided to flip it. I waited until there weren't any other cars around, though. It didn't take long, as it was apparently awfully late at night.

I flipped the switch and did NOT suddenly start moving forward at tremendous speed. Instead, the ground sort of fell away, I was squashed to the floor and there was an odd whooshing noise. It took me a while to figure out that the car was being propelled into the air, straight up. By the time I had figured that out and picked myself up, the car was no longer going straight up. It was going straight down. That wasn't good.

The car hit the ground and I blacked out. When I woke up, I was on top of a dewy, grassy hill covered in daisies and the sun was out. It wasn't as hot, though. The car was nowhere to be seen.

Also, I was naked. I got up and looked around - I was on campus, a couple of blocks from the dorms. There was the normal amount of foot traffic wandering through, but I didn't feel particularly embarrassed. I was mostly annoyed.

I had to walk over some gravel and some suspect dirt to get to the dorms. Also, I didn't have my keys or ID. I hoped I could get in okay.

I just looked straight ahead and pretended nothing was wrong. Nobody seemed to be staring at me, so I guess it worked.

When I got into the elevator (it usually takes a key, but someone else was getting in on the ground floor), I was surprised to be joined by a young Bill Murray in a suit. He greeted me by name, surprised to see me there. He seemed to think he'd been one of my teachers in junior high. I made polite conversation, and he didn't seem to notice that I was naked.

It took a while to get up to the fourth floor. I got off, and walked out of the elevator into a birthday party, complete with clowns and balloons. It wasn't for me, though, so I walked through it carefully and ended up in my room again, where I got my bathrobe and went to take a shower.

When I got back, I checked my answering machine. I had a lot of messages.