Bedding the Yakuza

I was at home, hosting a large group of people from various countries. Many of my guests seemed to have some level of importance in the world, but the one that kept my attention was the yakuza boss.

He was an older gentleman, easily in his fifties, with hard lines across his face that told of the stress and work he had put into the life and status he had built for himself. I can't say he wasn't handsome in his own way, though the thought of having any physical contact had haunted me for the past few hours. But, I knew it was inevitable. It had to happen. Lives depended on it.

I had no knowledge of who I worked for, let alone whose lives were at stake. All I knew for certain was that gaining the yakuza's trust was vital and that the fastest way to a man's heart is between someone else's legs. Today, those legs would have to be mine.

Harmless flirting ensued, carefully concealed among social conversations with other crime syndicate leaders. It was nice not having to hide my constant staring, though I did have to keep my lips curled upward to hide my growing disgust. I'd never had to talk myself into sleeping with someone before, and mentally noting his positive traits wasn't making a difference. His hands looked rough, his eyes looked cold, and his demeanor showed that he wasn't interested anyway.

In some way, I feel like he was told to seduce me as well. The idea rolled around in my head, and I laughed to myself at the thought that we were both talking ourselves into this act of trickery that neither cared for. We might as well have talked to each other and decided on a bunch of facts we'd feel comfortable pretending to have weaseled out of each other just to keep our clothes on. Of course, he never said anything, and I wouldn't either, so the slow dance to the inevitable continued.

When I suggested we retire to my bedroom to relax with a movie, he acted as if he had expected it. He simply nodded and excused himself from everyone else, and he even led me into my own room.

I was terrified.

He removed his jacket and laid down on his side, propping his head in his hand with his elbow. I must have looked more awkward than a literal elephant in a room as I tried to lay down beside him. I shuddered every time my leg brushed the comforter just knowing what I had to do. Finally I crawled up in front of him and laid down the same way, but with my head lying in my elbow instead of propped up. We were still inches apart; I couldn't bring myself to press up against him or even get close enough to touch. My skin crawled, not only with the idea of touching this man but also with the fear that my husband would walk in at any moment. Apparently he wasn't privy to the life-or-death situation. I stared at the TV, wondering if I could just continue with the fake plan of watching a movie and perhaps even find a more innocent position should someone stumble into the room and catch us alone.

My thoughts were interrupted when the yakuza boss rose from the bed and rushed out the door. I was alarmed, for sure, but I was also immensely relieved. He came back in carrying a cup of water, in a slightly less rush, and rummaged through a black bag on my dresser. Pulling out a small pill bottle, he removed a few and popped them into his mouth, chasing them with the water.

My heart and mind raced to conclusions, reaching the same one at the same time. Did he just take a Viagra? Is he preparing for this to actually happen? How long do those pills take to kick in, how long do they last for, and is he expecting to enact this for the entire duration? What did I get myself into?!

My face must have revealed my worries, because he held up a hand and tilted his head, as if putting me at ease. "No," he explained, "this is not what you think it is."

And it wasn't. It really, really wasn't. Apparently, as he showed me, it was a stool softener his doctor had prescribed him because his stomach had been hurting lately.

I'm not sure if I was more embarrassed for him for having to tell a stranger about his bowel issues, or for me for the fact that I had brought him into my bedroom when he would have preferred to be in my bathroom, or perhaps for the both of us for letting it get as far as it had. Either way, I was grateful that my legs were not the path to his heart today after all, and with so much mystery gone between us already, I doubted it would ever lead to his heart. Someone else would have to seduce him now, and I couldn't help but giggle with relief.

But, donkey, where are your legs?

This one was quite simple and quick, actually. My husband and I were visiting this pet store (what is it with me and pet stores in my dreams?) but the store also happened to be the owner's house. More like a mansion, really, but filled with tanks and aquariums and wandering animals.

I'm not sure what we were there for, but we had our eye on these two donkeys hanging out around the sweeping staircases in the center of the home.

But not just any donkeys.

No, these two each only had two legs: one in the front and one in the back. How did they walk? How did they stand? How were they even still alive? Who knows. Dream logic strikes again. Either way, we stood there for a while, watching these two donkeys hobble around, until I finally commented on it.

"Well, honey, they look pretty good to me. What do you think?"

"They look pretty healthy. Let's get them."

. . . . . .

...what the what?

Put It Through Hell

The third dream of the evening. It actually seemed to be a flashback of the first dream, taking place during the family gathering. It was just completely independent of the events of that first one.

I was sitting down talking with the family, and Mike and his mom were discussing cooking. She was laughing, saying, "Man! My husband can't cook at all. He can't even boil water right!"

To which Mike replies, "Well, sometimes with the ones we love, their flaws are the things we love the most. They make us love them more. For example, I mean, I seem to recall somebody trying to burn our house down boiling water."

I instantly divert my full attention to the conversation. "Oh, hell no. Please do not tell this story."

He just laughs and continues telling the story that he tells over and over about the time I tried to boil eggs and ended up forgetting them on the stove. Hours later we come home and the house is full of smoke, the smoke detector is going off, the propane burner on the stove is still turned on, and the pot is still sitting on the burner, but it's completely bone-dry. The inside of the pot is black and there are bits of charred egg not only in the pot but all over the kitchen. They had completely exploded.

He turned off the breakers just in case (before we knew it wasn't an electrical fire), I turned off the stove (once I found it on), we opened all the doors and windows and started clearing the house out...but it was only after the smoke had cleared somewhat that we realized the smoke killed my bird. Literally, smoke inhalation was the cause of death of my favorite cockatiel. (We buried her an hour or so later in the front yard, though I'm not sure if she's even still there anymore since the cats and dogs love to dig.)

But, he was telling this story in the dream and I was fighting him along the way, because I hate when he tells the story; it makes me look stupid and forgetful. In my defense, I was pregnant at the time, and you know you don't really have all your brain cells at that point. In the dream, of course, I was kind of laughing as I told him to stop, so I wasn't completely serious. I guess I was just embarrassed.

I remember asking, "Why do you love to tell that story so much? It makes me look stupid. How did that make you love me more?"

This is where he came in with something completely profound, and I wasn't expecting it out of him. He says, "The things we love people for are not the things they're best at, but the things they mess up. We love people for their mistakes and their flaws, because they are challenges and hardships we work through together, and that brings us closer. It's like making a sword. You don't harden your metal with flowers and candy. You forge it in fire and beat it with a hammer and put it through hell. That is how you make something stronger. And it's the same with relationships. It's the hard things that make it what it is, that make it last."

And I just thought that line about forging needs to be in a book somewhere because it's beautiful.

Unrealistic Property Lines

Mike and I were going camping down by the lake. It was our lake, but for some reason it was massively huge and there were islands in the middle of it. I thought that was very strange, because they were HUGE islands, so our lake must have literally been gigantic.

Anyway, we were down by the lake and we were on the back side, up the bank a little ways, and we had a lot of trees around our little clearing. There was a kind of lean-to under the trees; I'm not sure what it was made of, but it appeared to be constructed between a small cavern of tree roots and wrapped in thick canvas. The front entrance was open save for some tree limbs that reached down over it, so it didn't exactly have any real privacy. If anyone were directly in front of our entrance, they could see right in. It was only private from the other angles.

So we're in this little lean-to, and we have a bunch of camping supplies with us to last the night. Mike suggests we take advantage of our alone time (wink wink) and at first I was hesitant (outside, in the dirt, under a tree, with a wide-open doorway? Umm...) but as it turns out, my delayed response worked out for the best. A few minutes later, a giant ship flew overhead. When I say giant, I mean something out of Star Wars (I actually think we might have these in real life, too, though). It was one of those triangular ships with a top fin that sticks straight up and the two wings can fold up to the top when it lands.

This giant ship flies directly over us, very low to the tree tops, and lands on the largest island on the lake. It's really close enough to paddle a boat to in just a few minutes, that's how close it is. I was getting worried about it, but Mike said, "It's okay, it's pretty far away," But then a second one came and landed in the mud on the bank next to us, just a few trees away. I'm freaking out, saying things like, "Oh my God, they're on our property! What the hell is going on here?" I was very grateful that  most of clothes were still on (nothing "revealing" had come off). I put my pants on and climbed out of the lean-to behind Mike.

He walks up to the men coming off the ship that landed on the bank to tell them they're on the wrong property, and my paranoia is going haywire imagining us being killed for "seeing too much." It had a very "high-level military" feel. But they just referred us to the overseer of it all, so we got into a small boat and crossed over to the island. Once there, we went to a small building where the overseer was said to be waiting for us.

This guy was a tall, light-skinned black man with a shiny bald head, very similar to the man on the TV show Scrubs. He was leaning back in a reclining couch when we walked in, yelling at a guy for touching him. "Stay away from me! Don't touch me! You know the rules!"

Mike tried to talk to him and get his attention, but the overseer refused to listen. Mike tried to tell him, "Hey, man, you know you're on our property? What's going on here?" but he wouldn't have it.

"Stay away from me! I don't know who you are! Don't touch me, don't come near me, get away from me! Security!"

Finally I got fed up with it all. Fuck this, I thought, and I walked right up to the guy and shoved my hand in his face, as if to shake his hand. "Good evening, SIR," I said very pointedly, "I'm going to have to ask you to get your ships off my property."

At first the guy kind of leaned away from me, but I guess I was exuding enough confidence, because he actually acknowledged my existence and shook my hand briefly. "Okay, so this is your place here? I don't think we're on your property, but we can check the property lines and we'll figure out how to situate this so that everybody's happy."

I was fine with that, because I was pretty sure I knew where our property lines were. I was fairly certain at that point that we had actually leased out the islands for their use, but that the far bank was ours.

My view changes to a bunch of different maps; GPS maps, Google maps, hand-drawn maps, etc. All kinds of amazing maps. They each show the lake coming into view or being drawn out, starting close up and panning back, showing dotted lines for the property lines and circles around the islands to show where it was his, but then...it showed a section of the bank being cut out to indicate it was also on his side.

I wasn't sure where along the bank we had been camping; I had been pretty positive we were on our own property at the time, but seeing that part of the bank cut off really dug into my confidence, because it made me worried that I had confronted somebody when I was wrong, which is a huge fear of mine. But that's where it ended.

Just Come Home

In the first dream of the night, my family and I were all sitting in a quaint little house, the whole family shoved inside—brothers, sisters, mothers, grandparents, etc. I sat with my husband and mother-in-law, talking about their lives. Nothing major. Mom, of course, was talking about moving back to her house, though none of us seemed to think she would.

At the next table over, my sister-in-law Danielle was telling her younger sister, Jessie, that she had dropped out of college. It was one of those world-stopping lines that seemed short and harmless enough until the brunt of the meaning hit you. I stopped listening to Mom and my hubby to pay attention to the details Danielle was about to disclose.

She went on to say that her kids were growing up in front of her eyes and she was never there to see it. She was missing out on school events and hobbies and fun stuff, and school was taking up so much time that she just didn't want to miss anymore. So she changed her mind, dropped out, and said she was going to try again in a few years when her kids weren't so busy or so active; when they were old enough that they didn't need her as much.

Mom couldn't believe that she would drop out (apparently she was listening, too), but we all understood her reasons. She had to do it.

I don't remember what else happened during the gathering, but at the end of the night, Mom was crying. She said she just wanted to come home, and that she was tired. I remember very vividly putting a hand on her shoulder, looking into her eyes, and saying, "Just come home."



I guess the point of this was that you have to do what you have to do, even if it's not what you want to do, and that sometimes, people believe in you and push you to achieve your dreams, because the only one holding you back might just be yourself.

The Apocalypse that Wasn't

I don't remember why the world should have ended, but the whole group of us knew it wouldn't be worth living in. There were at least eight of us, and we were all huddled together in this small room. In the center sat a collection of black boxes, the largest of which had a red segmented display counting down from ten minutes. I looked at those numbers and I knew this was it. The world was ending...my world was ending, at least.

My husband hadn't noticed the countdown yet. For the first half of the timer, he stood against a wall talking to one of the guys about something in a book or magazine. The timer was already nearing the four-minute mark when he pushed away from the wall and came to wrap his arms around me. When he did finally notice the bomb, he said it very casually, as if he had instantly accepted that we would die there, two minutes from that moment. Or maybe he only accepted it because I seemed to have already.

He held me tighter and I pressed my cheek into his chest, tears streaming down my face. I began babbling, clearly not ready to die. I remember saying, "There's still so much I haven't done yet." I looked up into his eyes, the timer ticking away beside us, and told him, "I'd rather spend a lifetime of uncertainty fighting to be by your side than only two minutes of surety, knowing we'll die together."

In the last thirty seconds, we ran. We couldn't take it, we needed to try. We locked hnds, the two of us, and we ran. We made it into the next room and dove down to the floor beside a bed just as the bomb went off. Miraculously, the explosion had stayed contained to the room. Horrifyingly, on the other hand, all it had done was mangle our friends. They were nothing but piles of limbs and bloodied torsos. We crawled around to the other side of the mattress and covered ourselves in pillows and sat there for a while, just in case something else would happen or there would be another explosion. We were happy though, because whatever came next, we would be together to figure it out. And we would be alive.

Mike and Roger

In my dream last night, I found myself torn between two people. Two men who both seemed to want me but who were very different people.

They were both very handsome and kind. On the one hand, I had Mike. He and I ended up in the same apartment somehow and I offered to help with some things, cleaning and such, and after joking and laughing he asked if I was interested in going out. I thought he was extremely handsome and fun and of course I said yes. I feel like 90% of our conversations were perverted or sexual and kept light. Nothing deep, no long conversations. It was nice to feel connected but detached. I felt free. I also felt like it was a waste of time and I was constantly nervous because I didn't feel like he really wanted to be with me, and wasn't sure why he even asked.

At one point we had to take out the trash (it was a lot). We were staying by the beach and we looked over the balcony to see if there was a good place to burn the trash and one of the neighbors looked over at us and commented how he had just burned his trash earlier and pointed out a good place. We went back to the apartment to get it but I said I needed to change first. While I was in the bathroom changing, a stranger came to the door and was teasing me, saying that he knew I was 'having fun' in there because he could see my feet under the door and he knew I wasn't dressed yet. I played it up and took a while longer to get dressed, until the guy had left a few minutes later. Finally, I came out and went to the beach where Mike was. I told him about the guy and we laughed about the joke, about what he had thought I was doing.

When we left the beach and went back inside, friends started coming over. We were having a party. By some miracle, every time he would do something he would ask me to join in. He'd put his arms around me or he'd corner me against a wall and press himself up against me and ask if I wanted a drink or if I wanted to 'make some' (I had no idea what he meant by that but his eyes were seductive and I instantly said yes). At some point though, another guy came up to me.

I don't remember his name, just that I called him Roger. I don't think that was his real name, but the two of us had played a game where we make up names and he had ended up with Roger. He was really sweet and directed all his attention to me every time we talked. He seemed genuinely interested in me. He looked like Mike crossed with BJ Novak. We laughed about his crazy ex who would write on his windows about how she couldn't connect to his WiFi or something. It didn't register until later that he had been warning me that she would do that if she saw me, because he was interested. This guy really stole my heart, but Mike had my body. At least, he had it if he wanted it. Throughout the entire dream, Mike never even kissed me. It was like he claimed me because he wanted to, but I was just a puppy following her master.

A girl had gone up to Mike and hit on him, and I heard him invite her along and flirt with her. I was a tiny bit jealous, but the overwhelming emotion I had was one of not caring. It was like somehow I knew we weren't exclusive or something. I wanted to be, but if we weren't I couldn't force him to be. I think I knew that it just wasn't serious. So I turned back to Roger and we laughed and talked. People were getting ready to head out to go do whatever it was Mike had asked me to do, when Roger asked me if I wanted to stay and watch a movie or something. He may have even just outright asked me out. I don't seem to remember exactly what he had asked. But I know I was torn.

My options were Roger, this sweet guy I really connected with, or Mike, this fun, hot guy I lusted after. I wanted to stay with Roger but had already committed in some way to Mike. I felt giddy and excited about spending time with Roger, yet I had a loyalty and real want to also be beside Mike. Mike had brought me into his world and made me a part of it. I clung to a gift from him (a piece of sausage I think?) debating. I really did like Mike. I didn't want to lose him.

I knew both guys were waiting on me, and I found them in the bedroom, which was dark, both sitting/laying on a large bed. I stood between them at the foot of the bed and just broke. I said I couldn't decide between them. They were both awesome but any decision I made would hurt one of them more than likely, so I didn't choose. I laid down between them and stared at the ceiling.

Mike spoke up. He sat up and was working on his laptop, and said it wasn't a big deal. He said he was just gonna pull out of the choice to make it easier. Without ever looking at me, he said, "We have the book anyway." On his screen was the cover image of my children's book he was illustrating for me. I was grateful not to have to choose on my own, though I knew that was the choice I would have made anyway, and it did feel better knowing it was his choice so I felt like I hadn't really hurt him. I could tell by the vibe I got that he really was upset though, like he felt that things always happened this way for him. He was putting on this unfeeling front but inside he was hurt. In truth I was hurt too. I felt like he had never really cared, that I was just a toy he was done with, though I knew that wasn't true because we had never done anything.

Roger had been silent during that, and finally I looked into his eyes. He seemed very patient, like he was waiting for me to affirm that I chose him. I told him how he made me feel, and how Mike and I, we were friends. All we had really done was took out the trash. (To which Mike laughed, but it was true.) But Roger and I, we had taken out the past. We had talked about who we were and who we wanted to be. We connected. Roger and I got lost in each other for a few minutes, during which time Mike left to go with his friends.

We went to the living room, which was lit up, and Roger took his place on the couch. We both seemed happy. I was in a recliner. He told me he had a last name now (in our name game, he had never chosen a last name). He said what it was (I didn't hear it) then said Junior. I laughed and teased him about being a Junior, and moved over closer to sit beside him on the couch. He looked into my eyes and I felt that spark, that feeling that said I was where I was supposed to be, and he leaned over and kissed me.

It was amazing. Hours seemed to pass in those few seconds, and though only our lips touched, I felt like we were closer than I'd ever been to a person. When we finally separated he didn't even move. He looked lost in a daze, and all he could say was, "Wow." It was more like he had breathed it, it was barely audible. I told him I was sorry I didn't have more to offer, and he told me not to worry about it. He had everything we would need and he would take care of me now that I was by his side. I woke up as the dream version of me curled up to fall asleep in his arms.