The other night I had a dream where I pity fucked an awkward, unattractive man from Instagram who then proceeded to stalk me through a jungle. We wound up in a KFC together where I ordered a fish burger which he fucked into my cunt. He then lifted me into a curled up ball in his arms and offered my KFC fish burger vagina to the other customers who were entirely disinterested. I was mildly embarrassed and repulsed which really, is about the level of discomfort I’d perhaps feel in such a social situation. I’ve experienced worse.
I’ve been paying more attention to my dreams lately as I become close to someone who seems to enjoy hearing what happens inside my head when I slumber. This experience reminds me of a lover I once had who liked it when I would describe the kaleidoscopic images of crabs, coral, rubber toys, insects, cutlery and so on which plays in my head when I am exhausted, overstimulated and falling asleep. He would keep me half conscious, insisting that I use words to let him into the psychedelic theatre embedded in my skull. It made me feel special, like I had something to offer. Currency, he made me feel like I had currency. Shame about the time he was so drunk and tried, very clumsily, to rape me. It wasn’t traumatic, he was too drunk and utterly unsuccessful but it hurt my heart nonetheless and ended that connection we had.
But I do like it when people care about the things inside my mind. Like the time my husband heard me sleep talking and he was so smitten with what I said that he stayed awake reciting it in his mind until he had memorised my words to share with me in the morning: “The cliché of an old man sitting in a bathtub, eating a gobstopper and just watching you.”
It makes me feel so much love, it does, when they so badly want to inhabit my grey matter and see the world from my perspective. Because that’s how I love, too, greedy to climb inside, greedy to share and see what it is that you’re looking at and how and why.