A Pilgrim’s Digression

In my dream, I am at a reunion of classmates. The reunion encompasses people from my early Elementary School days in Point Pleasant, West Virginia, to my High School days in Parkersburg. The reunion is at the home of my first friend, in Point Pleasant. The house is exactly as I remember it circa 1981 or 1982, and even in my dream I am a bit awestruck by how my subconscious has brought back the most minute details of that house, from the leather La-Z-Boy my friend’s father used to sit in all the time, to the green color of the carpet, to the Atari 2600 on top of the large, console TV sitting on the floor in the living room. To a small child like myself, trailer-raised, that house always seemed huge; and in my dream, it seems abnormally expansive as well.

In my dream, I am an adult, though younger than my current self, and I am in a house frozen as it was nearly twenty-five years in the past. Around me are many of the people from my school days. Everyone seems to be ignoring me, however. They know I am there; they hear me speak to them, but they do not speak in return. They all look at me blankly, sometimes contemptuously, as if the dog had suddenly spoken (my friend’s dog is there, too; his name was Chewie, as in Chewbacca, and he is some sort of shaggy shepherd mix).

Among those at the reunion are a boy from my High School class, named Scott, and a girl with the quintessential eighties name of Stephanie. She is not really “Stephanie,” however. Her face is that of another girl whom I was interested in at the time, named Vickie. Scott, Stephanie, and I are roommates, apparently, and I gather from hearing them speak that we are looking for a new place to live. I tell them about a place I saw for rent just down the street. They ignore me, and I feel foolish. Later, Scott and Stephanie go out and look at the place, without me, and when they return they tell some other people that they have rented the place I recommended. I am happy, at first, but then I discover that they have left me out. I am not in the plan.

This part of the dream requires a bit of context. Scott was a kid I knew fairly well from band; he played trumpet, too, as did Vickie/Stephanie. I both loathed and admired him for being everything I was not, which was, chiefly, confident with both girls and boys. Once, when he found out I was interested in Vickie, he made a point of telling me she had sucked him off in a bathroom of a hot dog joint where a lot of the kids went for lunch. It was a lie, not to mention a slander on the girl, but I believed him at the time, and it really stung. It did nothing to dim my affection for the girl, however; in fact, my affection may have increased after what he told me. Yet that incident has remained vivid in my memory, and to this day I can still hear the malice in his voice as he tells me non-chalantly that he already had her, and in a particularly disgusting place. How I hated him after he told me that story! He went into great detail in describing the incident, as well, and for a long time afterwards these pornographic details were seared in my memory. Many times I pored over each detail with something like self-loathing, like a monk punishing himself for some imaginary sin.

Back in my dream, I am feeling pretty low at this point. My old Point Pleasant friend has been strolling from one group of revellers to another, chatting them up. I interrupt him and say, “I need some shampoo. Do you have any?” Without saying anything, or even really tearing himself away from the conversation he is engaged in, he waves me towards the sun room or enclosed patio off the side of the house. There I find one of those wire frames that one hangs over a shower faucett to store soap and shampoo bottles. There are two bottles of shampoo in the wire basket, both still wet as if only recently removed from the shower. One is a generic brand of regular shampoo and one is a name brand shampoo for male baldness. In the dream, it is not a recognizable brand of baldness shampoo. I choose the generic brand.

I go back to the party. My friend’s Dad is sitting in his La-Z-Boy, his daughter Ann on his lap. At the time I knew her, Ann was in Kindergarten, and in my dream she is only a little older. She sleeps on her Dad’s shoulder. Her Dad is wearing dark sunglasses. I look at him, but I cannot tell if he is awake or asleep. He does not move or indicate that he knows I am staring at him.

I have no one to talk to at this party. My old friend acts like he doesn’t know me. Everyone else ignores me or holds me in contempt. My Dad is there, however, and I am relieved. I go over to him. He says, “This party S-U-C-K-S, sucks.” I say, “No kidding.”

He says, “Aren’t you glad you came, though?”

“I don’t know,” I say.

He says, “No, now you do know.”

“What do I know, Dad?”

He does not answer.