In Dreams

I began my night wandering, wind-bitten and worried, knowing where I must ultimately finish, but wishing to tarry for as long as I might dare. All these winter nights I spend wandering. I wander aimlessly through this city of grandeur, catching falling snow on the silver frames of my designer specs. I wander with icy flakes melting in my greying facial stubble and melting on the beautiful shiny silver necktie I wear tucked beneath my charcoal grey corset, the one with the black patches of ornate flower designs running up under the arms. These threads are a way of life––my religion and the modern religion of so many. We wear our prayers and our poetry, we the Parisian youth of the twenty-seventies. My generation.
I wander, bathed in the red glow of display windows where headless mannequins pose in the season’s latest fashions all fresh off the runways and my heart warms knowing I am living in the fashion capital of the day, and wandering further still I overhear through closed church doors the deft words of a preacher’s litany and I wonder, “Hey you, how much are you asking for salvation in there?”
My wandering leads me down cobblestoned back alleys and into whitewashed streets lit by ancient-looking streetlamps, their small electronic fires pulsing behind panes that are frosted over. I wander and I wander. To places where children wrapped in scarves big enough to cover half their faces place their trust and their tiny, mittened hands in the warm, secure grips of those of their parents. I see their flushed faces pass me by on the sidewalks, heading home to sugarplum dreams and electronic blankets, a sweet farewell to the day which has all but gone from them while my night before me has all but begun.
And on all of these different nights, through all of these different wanderings, physical and psychological, I wind up in different places, but tonight I find myself brooding over a goblet of red wine in the recently-opened discothèque Cabaret Mercurion, listening to the live band work their jazztronica while so many androgynously-dressed clubbers work their bodies on the dance floor, so many heels and soles stomping down in time on the flashing blue squares.
But I don’t join them. It’s not that I’m not attractive enough to draw the attentions of the ladies and the gents. I consider my face to be of a handsome design––brow broad and nose long and eyes dark and cloudy like the December sky. And I keep good care of myself: nails manicured and five o’clock shadow trimmed to perfection, muscles lean but well-toned. In fact, some friends bounce my way now, thrashing their feathered dos in the pale blue candlelight of my lonesome little table. Snapping night-glow gum in their mouths which smell of spearmint they say, “Come dance with us, Cadbury. Come dance with us till dawn.” But I politely refuse and say I would rather drink my wine and watch. I didn’t come here to dance, I say. It is not my intention to dance, I say.
So I remain where I am seated while they return to their gyrations and I help myself to another sip of wine. How many nights have I been here already? Or in some other establishment, searching out another fresh face in the dark? When you’re not in control, when you’re not forming new memories, it becomes difficult to keep track of the nights as they go by. The seasons change and the fashions change with them, but in my head my mind feels frightfully stagnant.
The music cuts out suddenly. The club goes dark and the dancers fix their feet to the floor, cold sweat pooling under their arms, disappearing down exposed cleavage, glistening about their temples. Their eyes travel to the stage, as do mine.
Gracefully corpsy as though in a trance, she walks to the fore––the first of the evening’s dreamers. She wears dangerous platforms, black-and-blue laced fishnets and a stylish bowler hat and she looks like a twenty-first century Sally Bowles. A slash of purplish hair is pulled down over one eye, but the lashes of both lids are drawn peacefully shut, glittering indigo in the smoky streams of the overheads.
I feel my bowels tighten as she opens wide her raspberry lips behind the headset mike. I sit there as silent as deep space and I focus on the purple star painted on her right cheek as I wait for the dreams to begin.
The lid of her exposed eye twitches, a subtle movement, and in the next moment a strangled macaw sound escapes her throat––Ara militaris, if I’m not mistaken. Her cry booms over the speakers, resounding within the high walls of the club, and with this nasal release the entertainment is off again.
Her body breaks into a series of pleasingly fluid movements, head thrusting forward like the New World bird she has just vocally imitated. Her feet stomp forward down the catwalk, shoulders rolling back rhythmically, and the band compliments these movements with a slew of angelic breaths from the synth keyboard.
She breaks into song, splicing together words that are French and words that are English, and even some words I’ve never heard before in all my education, pulled I can only imagine from a deep primal human language which exists only in the subconscious. The power of the drug has taken full effect and unbeknownst to the girl, her dreams are flowing steadily into her voice and into her limbs, visceral interpretations of the colors and the images flashing through her head.
I take another sip of my wine and watch as the patron clubbers on the floor follow the girl’s lead and mimic her moves, the high wails of an electric guitar now flooding all of our ears along with her improvised song.
It took one small pill to produce all of this. I can’t say that I know the chemistry behind the making of this miracle drug, but once those ingredients enter her bloodstream, she loses conscious thought and guided artistically by her accelerated electrical brain activity she gives herself over completely to the task preordained by the particular pill.
In her case, stripping.
I feel my own dream pill, smooth and small, between the index finger and thumb of my right hand. Just one small pill to send you serenely into an unconscious mode of activity, peaceful as having your plug pulled. And the best part of all is that she won’t remember a thing when she awakens twenty minutes from now. She will have no recollection of the moment when she unhooks her brassiere before the crowd or the bit where she sticks her thumbs into the elastic band of her stocking to work it all the way down to her toes.
She can wrap herself warmly in her robe backstage without having to feel dirty and she can return happily home to her mama and papa and soundly attend mass with them the following morning.
Guilt-free sinning in one easy-to-swallow express tablet.
Looking down into the depths of my goblet, I can see little rings rippling out––the music pulsing hard and loud now. I search for faces in the wine just as I search for faces in the night. I worry that one of these days I might see one of those faces down there in my drink, mouth twisted horribly open, a silent scream rising to the surface in the form of a single bubble of air. I worry that one of these days all of those memories I supposedly haven’t been forming might come flooding back to me and I will be overwhelmingly racked with the guilt of all I have done.
It’s thoughts like these which worry me the most.
But her act is drawing to a close now and I haven’t much time.
I pop my own dream pill into my mouth and wash it down with the rest of my goblet, then pulling on my fur coat and my black leather gloves, I head out to wait for her in the back alley. Back where the dressing room exits are located.
Out there in the snowy December air.