Unholy Mary (and names I should never mention again)
1: Mary (Portrait of a Dream Girl)
I laid back on the couch not paying much attention to what it looked like, and whether or not there was something on it or what color it was. I was vacant of details in those days, and maybe still now. My mind was always somewhere else, performing life functions on a subconscious level. As far as I was concerned there weren’t even any walls, just the ceiling obscuring my view of the sky, and the couch, and my meandering thoughts, and the psychologist. This was my first appointment.
“Once you’re ready, I would like you to tell me what is on your mind.” the psychologist asked, of course; It would be facetious had I said it.
“Dreams” I uttered almost immediately after, vacantly conscious.
“Remember Waylon, these sessions are free. Relax, take a moment.”
“Listen, Doc...” I propped myself back up on the couch and glanced at him, “Can I call you Doc?” I thought polite to ask, after the fact.
“You can, my attention is yours.” he kindly replied before I fell back in the couch and continued on being somewhat of a pigheaded jerk-face. I was there to heed his advice after all, anyway...
“Doc, I could lay here for a couple of minutes and act like I’m taking my time, but the fact of the matter is I’ve had more than too much time to think about this...” I really did “...and I’m going to tell you the same thing one way or another, no offense.”
“None taken. Tell me about your dreams then.”
I had uttered it so easily a moment before though I still didn’t really know how I felt about them... Then I continued. “After all this time? Where to begin... For starters, I wonder whether or not they all mean something, and how they work” I said ponderously before looking Doc in the eyes, asking “Have your dreams ever came true?”
“Never. I don’t often remember my dreams after I’ve woken up. The few that I do remember have simply remained dreams, nothing more.” I didn’t believe him...
“Seriously? That’s a shame.” ...However, I played along.
“I don’t think so at all, especially if those dreams were to interfere with my daily life and become the cause of mental anguish.” which mine were, frequently.
“Good point, Doc.” I was starting to see why he was a psychologist.
“Please continue, how do you think dreams work?” he then asked me.
So, I said something along the lines of “I still come up with different thoughts each time. Its difficult to say... Lately, I think that when we dream our minds drift away from conventional thought and feeling, then slip into some sort of oblivion, floating through the void from which all things begin and end.” Yeah, something like that...
“Interesting, and then what happens?”
“In that nothingness?” Anything and everything I thought... “We forget our woes, our hopes, and leap forward at a blinding pace, in color, in black and white, in shades of grey. I think we visit alternate times, possible histories, and unexplored areas of consciousness, somehow ending up in places that seem strangely familiar...” I’d had so many unusual elaborate dreams by then, vivid ones that still felt real when I awoke, dreams with reoccurring themes, dreams that I wasn’t sure I’d even woken from.
“Do you think this is a dream Waylon?” ...Why would he ask that? Was it?
“I don’t know. Is it? Are you a real doctor?”
“There has been some debate on that.”
“On what, this being a dream or psychology a profession?” I honestly didn’t care.
“The latter.”
“Whatever, its all science, same as religion” I thought, or didn’t, but said anyway.
“Interesting, we’ll get back to that. For now, tell me about your dreams.”
I took a deep breath and gave in to Doc’s suggestion. Sinking in to the cushy psychologist couch, I thought for a moment. “Of the many dreams, there is one that I’ve had many times in many different ways, one that I can not escape, that I can never forget, and that I may never understand. It all started when I was somewhere around the age of twelve that I had this specific dream for the first time. In it I was excitedly making my way along a dirt street in a developing urban neighborhood, trying to put together in my mind where it was I might be. ‘Where am I going and why am I moving so fast?’ I thought as the foreign terrain became vaguely familiar, ‘This is MY street.’ As it occurred to me I lost my balance, stumbling utterly about but not completely falling over. I returned to a upright stance then, my heart pounding from the rush of avoiding a possibly life threatening tumble to realize that I was standing in front of my house, and that I had nearly made an absolute fool of myself in front of a very pretty girl who seemed to have materialized there at the end of the driveway from out of nowhere.”
“Who was she?” Doc curiously asked.
She was an anomaly. “I don’t know. It all unfurled so fast for a dream so memorable. All we did was smile, myself for an obvious recovery, her from the humor of it, and then together because our eyes were doing the rest of the talking. It was completely innocent, and then there was this flash that could have been sparks of dreams from my lifetime to come and I woke up peaceful and happy...” At that point I was staring deeply into the stucco pattern of the ceiling like it was outer space, swirling with stars and distant life.
“Well for what its worth, it sounds like a dream of reassurance” said Doc.
“Exactly, which is where the problem begins” I sighed.
“With a spin of positivity? With the possibility of love and happiness?”
“With the idea of it” I thought as the words simultaneously came out of my mouth before becoming completely spacial. My mind was lost with that, just an ocean of consciousness flowing in different directions. Who was this girl? Could she be real? Would I know her if and when I met her? What would her name be? Was this the girl I was meant to be with, or did it mean something else altogether? “Honestly, I must have imagined life a millions ways since then with the idea of her, like life was ours to create. I would have been happy with any life if it brought me to her, whoever she was, and who for the sake of this story I’ll call Mary”
“This is a story now?” asked Doc.
“I suppose so... Isn’t everything? The world after all is a stage ‘they’ say, amongst many other things. Everything we learn is from stories, from they say’s.”
“They do say many things. All quite true, however this session is about what you have to say. Tell me more about these dreams of yours. Tell me about Mary.”
“Mary, she was just an idea then, my muse, a hope that there was a sweet and little less than innocent girl out there waiting for me, somewhere, at some point in my future” I explained with deep thoughts brewing. I had imagined her mostly as the sexy nerd type, that she played Dungeons & Dragons, was socially awkward but still outgoing, and that she enjoyed all of the same media and activities that I did, but I left that out. “She was encouraging, and adventurous, and she was everything else I could ever hope for in a woman.” I thought about her often, Mary, in so many different ways. In the universe of my mind Mary and I would go on zany adventures, fight monsters together, climb trees and swim in lakes. I imagined that her love could give me super powers, like flight. Once, we had mind-altering sex in the sky. Sometimes she would resemble actresses I fancied, or cartoon characters I would most certainly go pen-in-ink with, were they real, or I cartoonified. Sometimes she took the form of girls of exotic races both human and alien. You read that right, it’s an infinite universe and I wasn’t ready to limit the possibilities as to where Mary might be. “She would be intelligent, compassionate, imaginative, quirky, and beautiful, and we would fit perfectly, and live happily ever after. Lame romantic bullshit, right?” I said, while turning my head to look at Doc, who in some ways resembled Doc Brown from Back to the Future, one of my favorite movies. I started tripping out a little then, and I wasn’t even high, yet.
“I wouldn’t say that entirely. The future is uncertain, and the possibilities endless.” said Doc, cementing in my mind that Doc may have once owned a Delorean.
I was a semi-firm believer that good things came to those who could wait, and that dreams came true, maybe not entirely how we interpreted them but they could, and we would never know when. You could say I had faith in my dreams, that I was a hopeful romantic, which just made me even more hopeless. I was okay with that, thinking somewhere in the world I had a girl named Mary and all I had to do was wait, so I did, and she was always there on my mind. She was worth it. She was the kind of girl you would wait to get married to for sex, even though everything about her would make you want it, and I did. I didn’t even have sex for the first time until just before I turned twenty-five! The fact that I was brought up Catholic may have been partially responsible for that, but the truth is I waited because I appreciated the concept of love so much that despite the fact I didn’t think sex before marriage was wrong I still wanted to save myself for her, for Mary, whoever and where ever she might be.
“You’re right Doc, anything could happen...” Strange, how they do.
***Story Omitted/See Review***
