You know those dreams where you have to pee and you spend the entire time searching for a bathroom but then the surfaces are made of slime and it's too disgusting to sit down, or the door is locked, or the walls turn transparent halfway through and you have to leave or there are monsters in the tank all of which turns out to be actually great since then you have to WAKE UP to accomplish your goal?
I just realized where you think this is going but you are wrong. The point is that besides saving you from wetting the bed, these dreams are anxiety dreams. Similar to the dreams where you have to write a test but you show up in your pyjamas without a pencil and the classroom is across campus through a labyrinth, or the dreams where you are late for your flight and can't find your passport and discover the airport was moved to another city and your car won't start so you have to steal one...
How can you be certain it's an anxiety dream? There is no resolution. You never catch your flight. You never locate the classroom. You never find a suitable restroom.
Last night I dreamt that my impossible quest was about cake. I was on my way to a party at a hotel but I had forgotten to bring anything and got lost in the corridors. I ended up taking a long series of flights of stairs and at the very bottom was a broken water fountain holding up a half eaten Black Forest cake.
To one side was the hotel kitchen; staff bustled in and out of the swinging doors, carrying in dirty dishes and pushing full carts out to the elevator. On the other side was a row of five computer poker booths manned by patrons with bottomless glasses of lager, who, other than their playing hand on the digital screen, looked like they hadn't moved in several years.
The cake was moist and fresh but sat at an angle in the fountain so the cream had collected on one side, making the whole thing lopsided. I figured it was being trashed. Next to it sat a knife and three clean plates. I stood there for half an hour, waiting for the hubbub to subside long enough for me to sneak in and cut off some pieces to bring to the party.
Just as there was a lull in activity, the cake moved a fraction of an inch and imploded, falling into the fountain. I was horrified. All that fresh cream and moist chocolate wasted. I went back up the stairs determined to find the party but instead found one of my friends, a tall fat gamer named Jesse. He looked more like a retired lumberjack than a computer nerd. He carried a beer in one hand and an ipad in the other, managing somehow to carry on playing his game while drinking beer, walking through the hotel and holding up his end of a conversation.
At one point he also succeeded in groping my breast in a friendly non-threatening way all without putting any of his accessories down. When I shook my head he shrugged and said, "a guy's gotta try, you know?" I said no, I did not really know that, but he was so amiable and nonchalant that I couldn't muster any outrage.
I told Jesse about the fountain. He wanted to see it so I re-traced my route down the stairs. Lo and behold, a new cake sat there, entirely untouched. It was even more lopsided than the first. Now I was less sure it was trash and considered that the place was just so busy that they had taken to setting cakes on any surface available.
I still wanted slices of cake and now it was a matter of stealing it, rather than a noble effort to prevent waste. Again, I waited for a break in the steady stream of hotel bussers and bellhops. Now there also were a couple of homeless people lying on the carpet, which was littered with candy bar wrappers and empty packs of cigarettes. Jesse and I moved in slowly, like cheetahs fixed on prey. He was surprisingly graceful for such a big guy. I mentioned it and he said, oh, yeah, he took ballet as a kid. People are full of surprises.
We were inches from the target when it happened again: the cake shifted, and the four tier pastry came down like it had been hit by a wrecking ball. Jesse and I locked eyes, shared the same thought. We dug into the top of the cake, bringing up handful of somewhat intact double layered cake and set it on plates. I grabbed a slice and shoved it into his mouth. He threw the piece he was holding directly into my face, and I reflexively closed my eyes.
When I had cleaned up enough to see again, Jesse was gone, along with the two plates of cake we had salvaged. A fresh cake sat in the fountain, this time inside a cardboard box. I took the knife and carefully cut a perfect wedge, setting it onto the last plate. I turned to go but at the top of the stairs I looked carefully at what I had acquired. Like all the cakes before, this one was lopsided. I had cut mostly a wedge of cream.
I turned to go back, thinking I could cut a piece out of the opposite side and balance it out. I lost my footing and the cake went up into the air; when it landed the cream sprayed off the plate in all directions, settling back down like a melted snowman in a puddle around the plate. I realized that I had all the cream from the cake in that piece. Even if I went back down the stairs, the cake would be completely dry.
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