Dear Jenny

Germantown/Louisville October 2012

I had a dream with you in it last night . . . 

Okay, don't break a sweat here.  It's been a long time since we talked, I know, but this isn't any kind of dormant weirdo desire or anger stuff.  We had our time, it was over, we went on our own separate ways.  No ill will, no angst, no unfinished business.  No lingering "what ifs".  I don't think either one of us regretted the time; matter of fact, I'd say I enjoyed it, and I hope you feel a little the same way.  But, like I said, don't let this letter concern you re: my state of mind.  

And really, it was you, but it wasn't you.  Identity slides all over the place in my dreams.  Like, I "know" the person in my dream is X, but really it's Y identified as X in the dream.  Or it's X with dramatically different physical traits, or a barely recognizable version of X physically and/or personality-wise, and so on.  And then, the identities start shifting and sliding around; or more accurately, the identity remains, but the attributes of X's identity shift and flash almost randomly.  Strangely, it's usually just the women in my dream that have kaleidoscopic identities.  I'm not sure if that's a tell or not, but there's very little I hate more than half-assed psychoanalytic dream interpretation.  Well, okay, there's a lot that I hate more, but let's just say that it pisses me off.  Interestingly, when I tend to have dreams about women I know without the dreamy shifting identities, they tend to be quite, uhm, colorful.  I end up obsessing about them for just a little bit after that.

Anyway, you were pretty close to you in this dream, the you that I was dating about the time we split up.  Except you were dressed like some 90's butch grunge lesbian, with black jeans, black rock T-shirt, and the kind of square flat-billed slightly over-sized baseball caps that the kids wear today.  You were wearing it low over your brow, and you had the remains of that asymmetrical haircut you wore when we first started dating tucked into the cap.  You might have even had a wallet chain, if I remember . . . so, yeah, very unlike you. We were at a party, or I was at a party wondering where the hell you were, since you were supposed to be there with me.  I'm running all over hell and back, house to house, having these little scenes and conversations, and all the while I'm wondering where you are, and occasionally asking people, but trying to not look like I'm looking for you, because I was afraid you might be off with somebody else, and I didn't want to be a sad sack or a cuckold or anything.  We were sort of dating, but pretty much done, like the end of our relationship in real life.  After a while (and several little encounters that were at the same time bizarre and mundane, like only dreams can be), I found you.  When I asked you where you were, you were kind of mumbly and evasive, and I had a hard time figuring out what you were saying (again, unlike you, and more like me when I wasn't in the mood to be communicative), but after I asked you to repeat yourself a few times, and after giving me an annoyed look (one of my tics!) you said, low but clear, "I found a new job".  "Great!" I said.  "But you're not going to like it, because it's in London" you say.  Which, to me, was very odd: we both knew we were on the way to splitsville (dream subtext), but here you were being concerned with how I felt about it.  After a couple of minutes (dream time), while you hemmed and hawed about moving to London, I figured out that you were really trying to decide if you were going to ask me to go with you.  This was a surprise, since my first thought when I heard about London was that it would be your graceful out, since our thing was clearly waning; I was actually touched that you were considering taking me with you, and I said that I would go, but only if you really, really wanted me to go.  As soon as I said that, I had a little pang, because I thought maybe you were trying to get me to let you off the hook by refusing to go, but instead I decided to go with my own feelings instead of gracefully uncomplicating the end of our relationship.

The dream ended not to long after that, without any resolution.  I remember also as some point inappropriate nudity was involved, but I figure everyone has inappropriate nudity in their dreams on account of some pop culture collective unconscious, along the lines of how everyone says aliens kinda look the same after they see them. The thing that was interesting, though, is how similar to the end of our relationship the dream was.  I knew your attention was wandering long before the end.  It was a bit of a shock to me when the topic first came up, when I went up north with you to drop you off at the hospital.  I don't think either one of us really acknowledged it then, but that was the dawn.  And we hung on for a bit too long, with you wanting out without really having the will to end it, and me not giving you the easy out you wanted.  The end was a simple acknowledgement of the way things were.  And, like I said, we went on our way, no unfinished business.

The cool thing about the dream was that it was like a little visit with you.  Sort of like if I had bumped into you on the street after not seeing you for a couple years, and we went to have lunch together.  No muss, no fuss, no uncomfortable intimacies on either side.  It's been a long, long time since I've seen you (I think I actually have seen your husband more recently than I've seen you, the one and only time I met him).  The nature of social media means that I am, in some small way, connected to you, but it's not the same thing, of course.  I have sussed out that you have had some serious health issues lately, and that seems pretty deep.  I'm not going to probe you on that; it's a heavy deal, and there's no need to share those depths with me, since that would mean bringing them back to the surface.  Everything I hear about your husband tells me he's a great guy, and I'm sure you have all the support you need.  We had our intimacy all those years ago: there's no point in trying to go back there again.

Well, this has been a bit of a ramble, and perhaps a bit odd.  I suppose I could tell you other things, like the fact that my second marriage is going quite well, or that I've gotten kinda fat (well, you can probably see that on facebook).  I could talk about middle-aged things like blood pressure meds and bifocals; I could tell you that I'm still playing the same kind of music that you disliked all those years ago; there's lots I could say, but this is going to be it.  I dropped this on you because I thought you might be amused by it (I'm guessing your sense of humor hasn't changed; that seems to be the one constant for most people as they age).  I don't expect any real answer to this letter.  As I've said, we had our intimacy, now we don't.  Just know that I'm sending good thoughts your way, that I'm doing well, and that I hope you are doing well also.

Regards,

B-