Dreams, eh?  They’re just stories, right?  Stories your own brain tries to tell you while you aren’t paying attention.  They don’t really mean anything.  That’s what you’ve got to tell yourself.  Over and over, you’ve got to tell yourself that, that they don’t mean anything.  You have to.  Because if they did actually mean something.  If those stories your own mind was trying to tell you while you weren’t paying attention, if *those* stories meant anything, anything at all….

Like the one you had where everything had extra legs.  Little sort of barbs and spikes sticking off all those extra legs.  Your mother, with three arms and mandibles like a crab and compound eyes.  Your sister who had an extra bit sticking off her bum and a great big stinger dripping something noxious that pitted the floor.  Your ex-girlfriend from six years ago, the one you really liked who it turned out liked your best friend better than you, and you had to pretend to be happy for them when they eloped, and then you had to hide the gladness when they had the incredibly vicious divorce the following year – and you knew, you *knew* you’d dodged a bullet, but you still couldn’t get it out of your head that maybe things would have been different, would have been better if it had been you and not him.  Yeah, that ex-girlfriend.  In your dreams she has wings like gossamer and silk and eyes that sparkle in any kind of light.  And poison fingernails and teeth like needles.  What kind of story are you trying to tell yourself?

My favorite is the one where I’m stuck working at that place I quit working at over ten years ago.  Except I’m still there.  Everything is changed, except that it’s exactly the same.  The dread.  The helpless, hopeless anger.  The leering customers, and the managers who seem to think that you are some kind disgusting fluid receptacle.  The stairways that no longer lead anywhere except back in on themselves.  The endless empty shelves that you can never fill.   The computers that never, ever work, no matter how much the customer yells at you.  Free of that hell for ten years, and that’s where I want me to go?  Really?

Or how about the “good” ones?  Like the ones where you can fly?  Or swim forever without having to breathe?  Those *are* good, eh?  Until you wake up, and you can’t do those things any more.  What the hell are you trying to tell yourself there?  Why weren’t you paying more attention to *that* story?  What was that all about?

That’s why I don’t sleep any more.  I just drink.  Alcohol, you know, it’s good for the soul.  If you poison yourself deeply enough, you can’t think.  You can’t tell yourself stories.    You can’t dream.  And then your soul will be free.  Right?  It’s got to be right.

At least, a man can dream.