Other things are too fake to be reality.
This was neither.
It was a normal Tuesday in the life of a busy musician, and he just couldn't stay awake to save his life. Classes had been so boring that morning that he almost fell asleep drooling, mouth agape from exhaustion. After several rough hours of class, he had lunch with a few friends and biked half-awake back towards his apartment. Nothing out of the ordinary, right?
Hitting the bed, everything went black.
As the house lights undimmed, the musician woke up in a very strange setting: a house with the television on. Wait a minute, "this isn't my apartment," he thought to himself. The street was reminiscent of the suburban town in which he grew up. Each of the two-story houses uniform, with the same type of grass surrounding each house. It seemed like a very surreal, yet normal mix of his childhood environment coupled with his current college environment- It was as if the overlap of the two chapters of his life, childhood and college, made it seem like he had lived there for all 19 years of his life.
Then there was him.
The dream took a weird turn, with weird unexplainable events that can't really be described- like how many dreams are.
Merely three houses down and living with his parents, he went to the same college, and though he didn't have the same major, he became good friends with this musician. Trips with groups of friends to this person's house became more frequent, then daily, then exclusive.
Exclusivity at its fullest.
Suddenly, it was more than just a friendship- it was more.
The dream accelerating quickly to its climax, it was all of a sudden apparent that the musician realized that not only his environment had changed, but his relationship status. He was madly in love for the first time ever. He had someone to share his life with. He cherished every minute of it and confided with no one else. Their friends didn't know, his parents didn't know. In act, no one could have guessed it.
The stage went black again, indicating the start of a new dream sequence.
In this final scene, the musician awoke to see himself standing at the front door of his friend's house. He looked into the living room, at his friend's mother, who gave him a very indignant look. It was as if daggers were shooting out of her eyes. The musician quickly ran upstairs to his friend's room, only to discover that he was not there. What was there, was the sleeping bag and clothing left over from the night before, when he had slept over. "Wait, I thought I took these home in the early morning before we went to school," he thought to himself.
Suddenly, there was an angry yell from the living room. I ran downstairs to see my friend's mother screaming up a storm. She had finally cracked and unleashed the fury that had incipiently stared me in the eye when I had walked in.
"What the hell do you think you're doing?!?" she shrieked out loud, "You.. you... you.... I don't want my son hanging around a FAG!!" She waved her hands maniacally, in disgust, first up and down and then towards the front door.
"You no good dirty people, get OUT!! NOW!" She stormed into the kitchen and cussed up a storm.
The musician, shocked because the dream had not even alluded to his friend's mother up to this point, ran up the stairs to his friend's room to grab his belongings. His friend was right behind him, equally upset, but significantly calmer. As the musician grabbed his clothes, he turned around and looked his friend in the eye. His friend gave him a sorrowful look of pain that was enough to break even the coldest Russian soldier's composure. At this point the musician wanted to cry, but couldn't. It was moving too quickly to be reality.
"I'm sorry," said the musician's dear friend, "but you have to go."
Without another word, the musician burst out the front door, never to return again. He trudged over the freshly mowed grass of the neighboring yards, his belongings trailing on the ground from a heap in his arms.
Suddenly, everything went black.
The musician awoke abruptly from his nap- his nightmare. He looked around at his college apartment: the bed, the sheets, the pillows, the mess. His mind grasped words to comprehend what had just happened, but there were none. He sat dazed on the bed for a few moments, then got up to stare in the mirror. Was this reality? Was this life?
A story with a climax but not a resolution.
A nightmare in an alternate realm, a reality in another.
Don't talk of love
Well, I've heard the word before
It's sleeping in my memory
I won't disturb the slumber of feelings
that have died
If I never love I never
would have cried
I am a rock I am an island
Hiding in my room, safe within my womb,
I touch no one and no one touches me.
I am a rock,
I am an island.
And a rock feels no pain;
And an island never cries.
-Paul Simon
"I am a Rock, v.3-4"
