chapter 3
Saturday
Saturday, my day off, had gone by at its usual dragging pace. Alone in my apartment, I contemplated the boxes I still hadn't unpacked after three years, the picture frames leaning against a wall, still unhung and in need of dusting again. Somehow I almost felt that if I didn't move on with things, didn't change things, it would be like less time had passed since Rob died.
Alone of my brothers, of my family, he had seemed to understand me, to support me, as nobody else would or could. He had accepted my sexuality as a part of me, something natural. Mother tried so hard to accept it that she was overwhelming; always trying to set me up with any gay man that she met, or giving me clippings from newspapers and magazines about anything vaguely homocentric. It was exhausting when Rob was alive, more now that I was facing it without his support. Father was just as bad, but in a different way. He pretends I have no sexuality at all. He's given up asking me about girlfriends or when I'm going to get married, but he sure doesn't ask about boyfriends.
Eventually there comes a point when even I can only sit alone in an abandoned-looking apartment for so long. I ran some errands, got groceries and paid the bills, then hit the gym, in a self-punishing session that left me sore, exhausted, and capable of sleep.
The road was dark, and the wind sharp and cold. To my left black cars, each one identically black and shiny, passed at frightening speed. To my right, the shoulder dropped off sharply into shadow.
I was walking the same direction as the cars, their speed mocking the exhausted staggering of my steps. I stumbled, fell. My eyes turned back to look the way I had come, into the river of headlights, each one spaced perfectly with the one after it.
"A dream." My own voice whispered into my head. I felt my sleeping body, so far away, twitch between the sheets. Part of me wanted to leave, to wake, to erase this place and these cars and this road like shaking an etch-a-sketch. Knowing I could take control again eased that urge though, and the road was pretty, and the night not so terribly cold after all.
Now, knowing it was a dream, I was less afraid of the dark edge of the world, less pushed towards the unknown destination for myself and everyone else. I sat and rested, appreciating the beauty of the road. I looked up to see if there were stars or the moon, but they sky above was grey, lighter than the road, but what can you expect from dreams.
I should have known better than to trust a dream with roads. I saw the red car and felt my guts clench as I rose to my feet. There was a squeel of tires as the perfect order of the black cars disintegrated, all of them moving too fast and too close to maintain anything less than perfect order. One swerved to the left, and the front of the red car crumpled down and in, the back of it flipping violently over the nose.
"Enough." I thought, and felt my flesh-arms twitch. Car after car slammed into the tangle. They were all different now, mini vans and sports cars and old pickup trucks. A child's hand reached through an open window of a crushed SUV. "That's from a movie." I told myself, building distance. "This is a dream, and this is enough."
I fell into my body with a gut-wrenching twist, my mind reaching out for anchors to the real world. Cars outside my window, not crashing, not burning. The neighbor's radio. The pillow under my head and the crimp in my neck. I held these things, clung to them in my head until I knew the dream was gone.