Chinese food and fucked up dreams

I was so hungry last night after eating little during the day that I went to the Chinese buffet near my house and ate a painful amount of food. When I got home I had indigestion so bad that I had an awful time getting to sleep, as tired and worn out as I was.

Two very vivid dreams:

The first one had something to do with my having a gorgeous boyfriend and being horribly jealous and possessive of him. That's about all that stuck with me. I'm thinking maybe I couldn't handle remembering more. This may have had some peripheral help from Charlaine Harris's HOT men that she writes for her Sookie Stackhouse series (I finished another one last night before bed). But I think it may have been more about dealing with the complicated tangle of my feelings about Justin. On one hand, I armed myself with a gorgeous boyfriend like his because maybe I just needed to do so, and maybe I was working on my jealousy issues from him having a gorgeous new boyfriend. Dammit, I want a gorgeous new boyfriend. The other part of that in the dream was that said boyfriend brought out the worst in me, and I was fierce and possessive with my affection. In that I think that a) I’m worried that I’m like my father, whose affection is very proprietary and hard to bear up under at times; and b) I’m sure that Justin has probably felt lately that his new boyfriend has brought out the worst in me.

The second dream was much more vivid (it was shorter, and just before I woke up), and stayed with me. For some reason, I was living at home with my Dad and Step-mom again (which would arguably qualify this one as a nightmare, but I digress). I was sitting outside quietly reading at a picnic table in the yard reading, when I looked up to see my father feeding Crooner a saucer of milk on the deck. He didn’t realize I was there. As I watched, he would every so often move the saucer further from the house, and Crooner would obligingly trot further away to keep at the milk. I should tell you that in this dream, Crooner was solid black. He was very thin because he was dying. When Dad realized I was looking at him, he just looked at me and said, “I have to do this. I don’t want him dying in the house.” I was very upset; because of course I wanted him to be able to die at home, especially since he had just gotten settled back in after I moved back in with Dad. I began to cry, and yelled “Don’t you dare stomp at him or get ugly trying to run him off!” An additional element of this dream was guilt that Cindy and Paul really loved Crooner (in the dream), and that I knew they wanted to see him, but that I wouldn’t take him to their house because of the trauma of the car journey and a new place. Cats don’t travel well.

OK, major themes going here.

a) Maybe this dream is about my fear that if I was dying of AIDS, I wouldn’t be able to count on my dad. I know he loves me (see above), and I’m sure if I were dying of something “nice people get” like cancer or something, he would be there for me all the way. But AIDS I don’t know if he could deal with. The emphatic homosexual stigma of the disease would force him to deal with my homosexuality in a very up front way (His glee over my breakup with Michael was fairly palpable. It both returned me to a more juvenile status, and my having a partner was a big ole slap in the face about my being gay. Michael always thought my dad didn’t like him, which he took personally, but in fact I think it was more what Michael stood for than Michael himself that my dad didn’t like.), which he is notably not fond of doing (although he has made strides, I must admit). Also, his new Catholic faith has been notable because of a marked retreat from conventional thinking on many issues (he has announced that he no longer believes in evolution, and is quite verbally anti-abortion, although I admit I didn’t know his views on abortion before the faith change), and his attitude about AIDS has never been particularly enlightened (one comment “I don’t care how many condoms you wear, if you’re swapping spit with them all night, you’re going to get it.”) So honestly, if I had AIDS, I don’t know if he would be able to overcome his own embarrassment (probably) and superstitious fear (seems pretty deep-seated) to be there for me. Since I am dating again, and have met so many HIV positive guys, that is more at the forefront of my mind than usual.

b) This could be me thinking about the Cindy and Paul situation in a different way. I know that Dad and Eve are deeply hurt over not being able to see my nephew Brenden, and Paul has used the excuse that it upsets Brenden to see or talk about them, and they have just gotten him “calmed back down” from the last visit my parents made to Cindy and Paul’s house. The elements are all mixed up, but they’re certainly there.

c) This is my guilt over my fear of hidden racism. I met a guy online recently and we talked and decided to meet. When he showed up at the house, he was black. I wasn’t attracted to him. So I kind of let him know that, and basically charmed him out the door. The guy then sent me an email asking if I didn’t want to see more of him because he is black. I initially felt kind of justified in getting rid of him, because I felt he should have told me that he was black up front. But I didn’t tell him I was white, although he had seen a picture of me. I also usually feel that when it comes to my bed, I have a right to discriminate if I’m not attracted to the guy. I am generally not attracted to black guys. But is this an attraction thing, or is it just deep-seated racism? Having friends who are black, I’m aware, is the usual pap that white people give their conscience so they don’t have to deal with it. I generally don’t think a lot about race a lot in my day-to-day life, but then I guess I have the luxury of not having to think about it since I’m white. I am well aware that how you are perceived very much affects the way you are treated. When I first started carrying a briefcase to work, I dropped off at a restaurant one night on the way home for dinner. I was amazed at how differently I was treated by the staff. Later on, I carried my briefcase to a temp job (mainly because I was used to carrying it, and it had my lunch and a book in it for break time) and was treated very differently by the people I worked with. They thought I was a corporate spy sent by the temp agency or the company to monitor their work, and were very cold to and suspicious of me. The company I was temping for was very impressed with my “professionalism” and wanted to hire me, even though I was doing the same work as everyone else, and probably not in a markedly superior way. Another time I felt this alteration of perception was when I had long hair. On the weekends, when I went out in the morning, I would look pretty scruffy. Long hair, beard, bandanna over my hair, jeans, etc. I began to notice that clerks in stores would be nervous when I went in to buy stuff. If I walked up to an ATM, if a woman was there alone, she would frequently insist that I go first. I realized they were afraid I was going to rob them. I was just flabbergasted. I had always looked so cream cheese and clean-cut that to be casually perceived as a threat was quite shocking to me, but I guess young black men face situations like this all the time. I learned to counteract it by being exceptionally polite. Generally, once someone heard that first deferential “Yes sir” or “Yes ma’am” and realized that I had been “raised right”, they calmed right down. Still, it definitely gave me some food for thought. And apparently I may still be wrestling with discrimination of my own somewhere in the recesses of my psyche.

It was an odd night.

Gentle Reader: I hope all the navel-gazing of late isn’t boring you half to death.