JOHN WARREN: THE DREAMS AND THE REAL NIGHTMARE

God, almighty on heaven and earth, life is a bitch! God wants us to stand the test of temptation and stand in the face of evil. But, I wasn’t told there would be this much evil on this forsaken planet. Christ, the only time when I will finally find solace will be when I drop dead. Even then, everyone claims I will face damnation because I am a ”smoker.” Sometimes I just want to tell every one to fucking piss off! Let me be, leave me alone, leave me to my own devices, all of the proposed statements go on.

I wish all of humanity would be subjugated to living in the Antarctic. There, they can all freeze up, or build some sub-terrain an society where they can keep their evil in one place. Let me have the rest of the world, along with all of the Thoreaus, Christs, and Buddhas.

I think about this stuff when I got out for my midnight smoke. The only problem is that it gets my mind going at a time when I should be getting some sleep. I don’t mind it entirely, and eventually I do go to sleep. Now that I am not working, it doesn’t matter, but I always feel bad if I sleep in on a nice day. After a smoke, I go to bed, and will lie there for a few minutes. Without knowing, I fall into a sleep, and then the dreams begin…

For the most part, the include a conglomeration of places I’ve been to. The one I can never forget was when I went to a place that looked a lot like my secondary education building, but had the interior of my University cafeteria and all of the classrooms looked like the press rooms at the Alcott building on 8th avenue. I will see people from different stages in my life, but I mostly see Mike James.

The funny thing about the theory of dreams is that most experts will declare that our dreams are comprised of the things we are thinking about prior to sleep. I hardly think about Mike after my smoke, cause that’s why I smoke! After his bull-shit antics at work, he’s the last person I want to think about. Yet, he’s there in the dream.

One dream, I was driving through what looked like the waste town of Elkhart in the Indiana territory. I remember since I saw many pictures of it when an article was published about a triple homicide there. Any who, I was driving through Elkhart with my Dad who appeared to be lost. Before I looked twice, I was in front of a large yellow brick building with green-trimmed windows. There, was a track field, or a football field possibly, right in front of the building. There were also some large clumps of adolescent children standing in the field. I just remember coming across my old secondary ed. Art teacher and him handing me a cigarette. Then a hand reached over to grab it from my hand before I could take a puff. It was fucking Mike James, clad in that stupid grey suit of his. He took the cigarette and extinguished it with his foot, and I woke up breaking a sweat.

This was an easy dream to decipher, simply because Mike James had spoken with Art Cleaver about banning smoking at my old workplace. They always allowed it in the main court, so long as it wasn’t indoors. But, the smiling bastard wanted to ban it, and I know he was doing it to drive me mad. He probably sensed my dependence on the drug. But, a more obvious reason may have to do with the fact that I had the hots for his wife. Even when they were dating, I always gave her the eye.

Several times I went to the Lowry Club on 18th and 2nd to wind down, and I always saw her with that rat-bastard. There were times I wanted to go over and take her away when he wasn’t looking. We’d escape Gotham, flee to the Dominion of Canada or Mexico. Well, one night my dream came true, in the form of a nightmare…

It was at the Lowry Club, except the place seemed to having everything furnished in white, except for the wood molding and red leather seats. Exotic plants covered the faces of the various guests. A smiling Mike James walks in a tuxedo with tails, and a red rose on his lapel. He walks up to his wife preparing to kiss her, then I grab him from his shoulder and drive a knife into his heart. I grab his wife kissing her as she submits, while Mike lies on the ground with blood squirting from the incision. Then I wake up and ask myself, “was that a dream, or a perverted fantasy.

I can’t count how many nights I’ve spent waking up from those dreams and taking my own medicine for the nightmare: Nicotine. My God, how great it truly is…to grab that first fresh cigarette, or cigar, and to take the first inhalation. How grand it is, to feel the smoke in your nostrils as I exhale through my large nose. The music around me melts into disarrayed frenzies, piano keys out of tune, trombones blasting out of control…it’s truly beautiful. At the point, I am living the fantasy I love…

Then morning comes, and the nightmare that is my life returns. I once bought a pistol, considering the idea of shooting myself, but I began to hear voices in my head, as well as the constant harassment by Nightgaunts made me realize suicide was destructive. I tried going periods upon months without smoking. They only increased my level of anxiety to extremes in which I seldom went outside, or ate. Suddenly, I realized that I had created the nightmare…

I was afraid of going out into the world in fear of meeting up with Mike, only fearing that I may act out my own nightmares. There were, indeed, a few times when I carried my stiletto to work, and I thought about slitting his throat in the bathroom. But, all of that white and lime green tile would look terrible with all of that blood spilled over it.

Those late days in winter, when I spent the afternoons in my flat. I called Johnny Dent, when he was still alive, to buy me tobacco. He was too good to me. I often smoked more than I ate, and there were times when I didn’t even eat enough to go to the bathroom. At least I saved money on my plumbing. However, I laid in bed, in sheets that were full of mites and spiders, watching the sun cast a light as morning turned into afternoon. As the cold air gave way to the late March showers, I remained in bed, and smoked until my throat began to throb with pain.
Upon the advice of Dent, I decided to leave the confines of my flat and go out for a day. It was terrible, especially when I made my way to Lowry club. I think it must have been on instinct, I don’t get around Gotham enough to go to other restaurants. I walked into the club, and there before me were an array of exotic palm trees and bushes laid all over the resturant. I sat down, in view of the bandstand, and on stage came a duo, that bore a lot of resemblance to Mike James and his wife. I don’t know if I was hallucinating, but it looked as though they were staring at me right in the face as they sang along to “How High The Moon.”

I ran out to the balcony and lit up, I was back in Hell again…those bastards were still buzzing in my head. I eventually found the courage to take the train back to my room, I just had a hard time facing the public. Everywhere I looked there were couples, many who looked like Mike and his wife. I eventually found myself in my room, with a bottle of scotch opened as I watched a large number of shot rings forming over my table. I eventually fell asleep.

I was in a dark room suspended over a swimming pool, I looked down and saw a body floating there as the lights from the pool made the body glow with an almost religious reverence. I turned and saw Mike’s wife in front of me. We both didn’t say a word to each other…I then told her, “I’ve always wanted to know how great sex with a woman was like…” The next image I see is the bed suspended over the pool, with me laying down atop of Mike’s wife, both of us are naked, and as I try to make love to her, I can still see the body floating in the pool. The body moves and flips over and its Mike with a knife in his heart. I wake up again asking myself, “What the Hell is wrong with me…”

There are few remedies to calm one’s soul after a nightmare, but Tobacco will do for now. Eventually, I felt it was better to write about it, all thanks to Johnny Dent who pushed it. As for Mike and his Wife, I still see them, and fucking tortures me to see him holding her and smiling at me, then I feel weary about the fact that some scholars believe dreams are revelations of things to come…I hope it happens before this thing gets published.