.
It Is All Over

I was so exhausted when I went to sleep last night...

The clock on my dresser said it was 3:35 am, so I had only been to bed roughly an hour and a half, but now I could no longer sleep. My body ached from tiredness, but all I could feel was anger and frustration at the world. It seemed as if everything were going wrong, my students were being pushy about grades, they were suggesting I was too "hard" on them, an idiotic co-worker had just enacted a Departmental policy that meant a sh*tload more paperwork for me every damn week. Add to this my wife was ticked off at me about some minor indiscretion, a couple of my kids were being loud and foul-mouthed, and the cable television had gone out. Even the dog was contributing to my sour mood by being ill and vomiting great chunks of foul-smelling meat byproducts all over the carpets, the beds, and nearly every damn place I walked as I got up out of bed and went downstairs to my study.

I thought that maybe a good stiff drink would help me relax so I could go back to sleep. Because of the end of the semester flurry of activity, I had not kept the bar area in my study well stocked... supplies had dwindled to damn near zero. In fact, the lone bottle left, a fifth of Chivas Regal (not even my preferred whiskey) had at most only a shot or two left in the bottle. As I walked over and sat the bottle down on my desk, my foot must have caught the tip of the end of the tail of one of our cats that was sleeping under my desk and he let out a loud caterwall that startled me causing my hand glance slightly against the neck of the bottle. This caused the bottle to tip off the edge of the desk and it went crashing to the floor with a carcophony of shattering glass. More anger and rage began to well up in me. I let the moist glass fragments lay in their splayed pattern across the hard travertine flooring and I walked to the other side of my desk and sat down hard in my big leather office chair. I glowered, looking at my pipe rack. I reached over the front row to the back and selected one of the pipes I had inherited from my father after he had passed away. I needed to feel a bond with him now, his memory would help me to relax. Having the tactile memory by holding his beautiful pipe would sooth my raw soul.

As I filled the bowl of the pipe, I did start to feel some of the harsh emotion subside. Unfortunately, I realized, I had left my lighter upstairs on my dresser. Luckily however, I had a few utility lighters in a drawer of storage at opposite side of my study, by the bookshelves. So I slid the lovely pipe into the pocket of my robe and was just starting to stand to walk over to the drawer, when the cat whose tail I accidently stepped on came out and rubbed against my leg. Instinctively, I leaned over to pet him and scratch his cheeks.

[**SnAp!**]

I both heard and felt the noise in my pocket and knew immediately what had occurred. I reached into my robe pocket and pulled out the pieces of the pipe, the shank had snapped clear from the bowl in a splinter of briarwood. My rage at the world then exponetially elevated in my mind and I suspect my blood pressure shot up at least 30 points, and became so enraged again that I grabbed a whole stack of student work I had been grading and flung it violently across the room. Pages flew in every direction. As I threw the papers I happened to glance out the window and remembered that I had left my truck parked at the curb because some friends of my wife had their vehicles parked in the driveway when I had arrived home. More anger, more rage as I stomped out of the study down the hall, through the kitchen and out the back door. Once there, I continued to move with heavy footfalls, move across the yard to the street. Halfway across the yard, I put up my hands in a sign of further aggravation as I had not picked up the damn keys. Curse words of a variety I typically do not use, began to be uttered under my breath as I walked back to the house. I grabbed the keys off the counter, and headed back to my vehicle.

As I approached the front of the vehicle, I saw, from a bit of residual light from the moon, a small rectangle of paper apparently attached to my windshield. A damnable parking ticket!

I roared! Every neuron in my superego and ego must have shut down at that very moment as my id-fueled rage exploded from me with such vehemence and rancor that I was not fully aware of what I was doing anymore. Without any conscious decision making, I was uttering explicatives at the top of my lungs, and I had reached into the cab area of my pickup truck and went under the seats and pulled out the Ruger revolver I had and gripped it tightly pointing it at the sky while hollering such foul language as had never been uttered from my mouth before. I aimed at the moon and shot four times at it, brass bullet casings expelled after each shot. Suddenly something snapped back into place and I realized how out-of-control I had been, and I quickly started my truck, moved it back into the driveway, and ran inside back up to my bedroom. I quietly undressed and slid back into bed without waking my wife. Of course I did not sleep, but I pretended like I did.

At daybreak, I was nervous as hell about all the crap that had transpired only a few hours before. Did anyone see me? Did any of the neighbors awaken and report the gunshots? Was I safe, or would the police be arriving at any moment?

As I glanced out the window of my bedroom, I could see my neighbor, Margaret, standing in her yard and peering into the roadway, where my truck had been the evening before. She walked over and picked up two of the spent casings and carefully put them in a small plastic bag.

Sh*t! My body began to shudder from fear. I was now positive she would be reporting the incident to the authorities. Even if she didn't know it was me, the reported gunshots would lead to an investigation and it was pretty damn likely that my fingerprints were on those casings from when I had loaded the revolver! My mind raced again and I ran off and threw on some work clothes and headed downstairs without talking or eating and got into my truck and sped to the University.

Quickly I got to my office and closed the door behind me. I sat down and the tears welled up in my eyes. I sobbed such deep, gasping sobs, that for part of the time I was worried I could not breathe would cause myself to have a heartattack.

It must have been at least an hour that I sat there and sobbed, but eventually my sobs gave way to short gasps and then finally to a quiet of sorts for my body. There was a knock on my door, which of course sent my heart racing as I feared it was the authorities, but when I opened the door, I saw it was only my work/study student, Lori. Her eyes were bloodshot and it looked as if she had been crying. In the back of my mind, I simply said "Sh*t, how the hell do I look?!?"

Lori didn't do much except to sit down at the extra chair in my office.

"I'm so sorry!" she wailed, the tears beginning to flow down her cheeks again. "I have to tell you..."

It literally felt as if my blood had ran cold in my veins. I was afraid she was pregnant.

Damn, damn, damn, damn!! I started to curse in my mind. I had only been intimate with her ONE time! The affair with her was perhaps four, no, actually it was now fully five weeks ago. It was a single time. I regretted it then and the level of regret was now reaching even greater heights.

I stammered out, "Are you pregnant?"

She looked at me and started to utter this unearthly wail, more tears streaming down her face.

It took several minutes, but then she was able to utter, "No! I'm not pregnant.... I am HIV positive!"

I grew weak in the knees and the room seemed to spin about me. Even though I could not see it, I could sense that I was fainting and could feel my legs and lower body buckle under me as I fell to the floor.

|Beep|, |Beep|, |Beep|, |Beep|, |Beep|

... and I did not feel refreshed when my alarm clock went off and I awoke this morning.

The above is a literal and true retelling of the dream (nightmare) I had last night. It is as factual and detailed as I can recall. This dream (nightmare) was one of those types where everything seems so utterly real that you have a hard time discerning *if* it *was* real or if it was a dream. It took me probably a good 10 minutes before I was calmed down enough to evaluate how preposterous the feelings I was experiencing were. Here are the facts of my life in comparison to the above dream (nightmare):

1. Yes, I was exhausted.
2. No, I did not awaken at 3:35.
3. No, I did not shoot at the moon.
4. I do not own a revolver or any handguns (I only have two hunting rifles, for deer season).
5. I have never had an affair on my wife, nor would I ever.
6. I do not have a work/study student named Lori (I have one named Melinda).

So, although I am relieved none of the things I wrote about were real, my physical body felt all that emotion and stress during the dream and I am utterly exhausted and beyond tired today.

What do I attribute this rather atypical dream event to? I am not exactly sure, but I have a sneaking suspicion that part of it is due to the sloppy, foot-long turkey, ham, and pastrami sub I ate when I arrived home last night at around 10:30pm from my spring class. The fact that I also lathered on a very heavy layer of garlic and red pepper humus across the entire sandwich probably did not help either, and the half of a full-sized bag of BBQ potato chips may also contributed to my general malaise. I also had a huge piece of my wife's chocolate cake just before I went to bed at roughly 2am.

And.... what the hell does this dream mean?

PipeTobacco