A Pilgrim’s Digression

This is a recurring dream.

I am in a classroom with other students. I am a student, too, though I think this is my only class. The classroom is white and lacks desks, tables, or chairs. We all stand. We are all naked.

The other students in the classroom are a mixture of people from throughout my life, both male and female. The teacher is a former boss, a gay man, who is also naked. He is a tall man, bald and muscular, though chubby. I always thought of him as looking like a bouncer in a Dominican friary. “Brother Sebastian, you were ogling the UPS man a little too lustily, you’re outta here.”

But anyway, we are all naked. Why are we all naked? What kind of class is this anyway?

I don’t know. In my dream, there is only this one class session, and the teacher gives us the same assignment every time. We have to come up with a good “reason.” We are not given any indication what is meant by “reason,” but that is our assignment. Clearly, however, the impetus for these “reasons” springs from a post at 42 Dreams, though my dream reasons are not quite the same as hers. Other times I have had the dream all the way to completion, I have heard other people’s “reasons,” but I have no memory of specific examples. In my dream last night, however, the only reason I can come up with is that “I like cats because they are easier to care for than dogs.”

I am worried because my “reason” is singularly stupid. I want something witty to say, something that will make my classmates laugh. Wit is both shield and spear to me. I seem unconcerned that everyone in this class is naked. My concern is that I can’t think of anything better to say than “I like cats because they are easier to care for than dogs.”

To make the assignment a little more challenging, the teacher suggests that we all take a shower together. There is a large shower room which we enter via a door in the classroom. We file in together. There are perhaps twenty or twenty-five people in the class. Inside the shower, the water comes on from different places around the room, and we all stand there in little clusters under the water, men with men mostly, women with women.

The teacher says, “Now, what I want you to do is wash each others bodies. We are going to wash each other, and as we do so we will go around the room and hear each other’s reasons.”

I think to myself, “Well, at least I will hear other people’s reasons and maybe something really funny will occur to me.”

As people begin washing each other, the teacher walks around the shower like a good teacher, observing his students involved in their “group work” and giving direction where needed.

At one point, he calls for our attention and says, “I want you to be sure to wash each other’s most secret, private parts. Don’t forget to wash the dirtiest places.”

Some students don’t like group work and are only making desultory swipes at each other’s bodies with the wash cloth. Other students are really getting into it. Some students are talking on cell phones.

This detail of the cell phones is strange. Some people have brought their cell phones into the shower with them. I am one of these, though I am not using mine. I lay mine on a towel on the window sill and put it on “vibrate.” I am expecting a call from my wife. I don’t know how I expect to hear it if she calls. I don’t know what I expect to tell her, if she does call. “Oh, hi, Honey, yes I’m in class. I’m in the shower with about twenty-five other men and women. I’m washing another man’s bum hole, so I’m a little busy right now. Can I call you back? OK. Love you too.”

I am standing in a cluster with three or four other men, and none of us really want to wash each other.

The teacher comes by and says, “Gentlemen, you need to participate. This is not a solo activity.”

“Can we move into other groups with women?” A man asks.

“Yes, you don’t have to stay in same-gender groupings,” the teacher replies.

After this, people disperse a little more and I am left standing there with another man, who looks at me expectantly. I gingerly wash his thigh with my wash cloth. I don’t think I am really afraid or embarrassed by the nudity or the washing. If I am not really interested in the whole body washing thing, it’s because I want to concentrate on coming up with a good reason. Call it performance anxiety, if you want.

Suddenly, the teacher runs over to a corner of the shower and gives a fellow a smack on the side of the head.

“Get out of that!” The teacher says.

Before the teacher caught him, the young man had just snuggled up behind another man, who was slightly bent over, and was penetrating him anally. The sex act was cut short before it really began by the slap from the teacher.

“This is not about sex, People,” the teacher says. To the guilty-looking offender, he says, “Another outburst like that, and you will find yourself in the office, Mister.”

The teacher comes over to where me and my wash-buddy are standing. He is smiling. “Did you see that? Well, that one’s a virgin no more!”

Unfortunately, before I could hear any reasons, I woke up at this point. My only remaining image from the dream is of watching a smiling, happy man, soap up a woman. The whole shower scene was an orgy of soap, Dove soap to be precise. I remember how the clean, lye smell of Dove soap was almost overpowering in this dream. Is it odd to retain the sense of smell in one’s dreams? Scent is a powerful sense for me, and I find it incorporated in some way into almost every dream I can remember.

The odd thing about this dream is that the nudity is so natural and not really the cause of any discomfort. There is no discomfort about washing each other’s bodies. Despite some racy details, the dream really is not about sex either, just as the teacher said. I have always been interested in nudist colonies, and some details from my reading on the subject have intruded on this dream. In nudist colonies, nudity is not about sex, and in fact if a man becomes aroused, this is perhaps the only time he is expected to cover himself.

I know that a typical man would think, “Gee, I’d be aroused all the time at a nudist colony,” but from what I’ve read it does not work that way. In a nudist colony, one sees all body types and all ages, and this was true in my dream as well. There was not a Barbie doll or a Ken in the whole bunch of people showering together. Washing each other was in fact a deep, communal experience. Indeed, one reason for going nude is to demystify and de-romanticize the nude human body and to demonstrate at once both what we all have in common and our differences. We are all rather chubby, ugly creatures, when we have no clothing to disguise our bodies. But there is something beautiful in that, if only people could see it.

Thus I know the sources of my dream. The meaning remains elusive. I have toyed with the idea that the class was in fact a Religion class. I’ve written here before that William Blake and his wife Catherine were prone to reading the Bible naked in their garden. I believe Blake was even arrested once, when a passing soldier happened to see them during one such nude Bible-reading session. I have always admired Blake for his nudist predilections.

In the Bible, washing another person’s feet is a sign of respect and humility. Additionally, there is something deeply nurturing about washing another person, both for the washer and the wash-ee. It is not necessarily sexual. Ask any parent. You wash your kid every day for several years. It can be the most personally satisfying, wholly relaxing time you spend with your child.

I know that if I have any male readers, they are wondering about the fact that in my dream, I remain with other men and even engage in washing another man. Does this make me uncomfortable? No. I think if I had soaped up a woman or been soaped up by a woman myself, the dream would have just been a garden-variety erotic dream. This dream was different. It was not an erotic dream. It is deeper than that, more important. It will take some thought to plumb the bottom of it.