Oh the troubles I've seen... dating

For a good part of my several dreams last night I was a guy dating a string of strong-willed women.

In my first dream series, I was literally a man.  I dated girls who were brown, with sleek black hair and lots of attitude - one was an ex-con, one had a fondness for throwing crockery to make a point, and another had grown up in Alaska, and learned to gut fish before she could walk.

I showed up at the doorstep of this woman, the one originally from Alaska, after inheriting her family bar in a poker game from a frequently-incarcerated brother.  It was winter in North Dakota, and as I approached the snowy front steps of the two storey blue house, she opened the door and brushed past me without even asking why I was there.  I had to call her back and explain my presence.

Even then, she didn't cry or fight, which would certainly have been the response of the daughter of the foreman of the Peruvian mine company where I'd spent the last six months as cook.  The mine had chronic fluid leaks which is to say that periodically and without warning, a wall of the mine shaft would burst open, gushing forth foul black liquid.  I eventually couldn't handle the sense that I was gambling with my life every day I went to work.

This girl simply fixed me with a long stare, told me it wouldn't be the first time, and, "anyway it's OK; you won't last a week."  My already-number fingers and cheeks tended to agree with her but I was feeling stubborn.  Anyway she was wrong.  I lasted three months before getting on a plane to Hawaii and swearing off frostbite and women altogether.  It turns out sarcastic, hard-working, tough girls, while initially a nice change from fiery, Latin, plate-throwing daddy's girls, can also be emotionally unavailable, callous and, in their own way, entirely self-centered.

My resolve lasted all of fifteen days but that might have been due to the fact that I had found a job working at a halfway house for women.

Recently a good friend said she had not realized how masculine I could be.  This came as a shock to both of us, as my personality is pretty mild and while not uber girly, my dress and demeanor is certainly not even androgynous.  I have never been mistaken for a man, which is definitely not the case for many of the queer women I have been close to.

I fell back to sleep at around 630 and woke up in my dream, as my female self, in bed with my wife and my best friend, a man I'd known since high school.

My wife and I lived in a gigantic condemned building at the side of a crumbling ravine at the edge of a desert in Somewhere, Arizona.  It was winter, which is to say, the temperature was not the scorch-you-to-death-without-air-conditioning typical of AZ summers.  Days were pleasant, nights chilly.

I had a diary hidden in the house in which I wrote many private things; I was consumed with paranoia that someone would find it so I kept moving it to new locations and then forgetting where it was.

I went for a long walk outside on a Saturday and ran into a middle school class on a field trip.  They were crossing the raised boardwalk next to the only water source on the property - a huge sinkhole wide enough to resemble a small lake.

Several kids on mopeds - our neighbours' sons - were out riding the dunes.  They waved and shouted to the class.  While everyone's attention was diverted, the only male chaperone, a tall thin man dressed in khakis and sporting a whistle on a neck chain, got too close to the fenceless edge of the boardwalk and fell ~50 feet.  He entered the water with a huge splash and was not seen for several breathless, tense minutes.  I wanted to help but couldn't swim.

When he emerged, dripping and exhausted but essentially OK, I set about herding our cats, who had escaped from the house in the morning, back home.

It is morning.  I am female, I am in my bed in my house which is a modest 3 bedroom rambler and not  in the least bit condemned.

The sun has been up for hours, trying to work its way into my eyes, while I stubbornly resisted, but it is the trash being collected at the strip mall behind our house - the sound of glass bottles clinking as the whirring mechanized arms of the garbage truck lifted the recycling bin into its mouth - which has finally severed my remaining connection to the many plots unfolding all night.

I feel like I have left several novels only half read.  But, it is time to work.