The other night, I had a dream.
I was lying in bed with blonde woman, a bit younger than I. We hadn’t been together sexually previously.
“I can’t wait to taste your cunt,” I said, and instantly, felt self-conscious about how she might react to the word “cunt.” I became terrified: had I overstepped? Presumed too much? We were in bed together, so I wasn’t presuming sexual availability in excess of what had been established. But we hadn’t used that word together. How would it make her feel? Would she be grossed out? Offended? Angry?
In the event, the use of the word was a non-event. Instead, she asked, “Do you like the taste of every woman you go down on?”
I sort of struggled with the question and said something like, that’s sort of like asking, “Are you attracted to everyone you hook up with? I guess the answer is ‘yes,’ in the moment.”
And then she said something along the lines of, “Well, I hope you’ll tell me if you don’t like how I taste.”
And then I woke up.
At first blush, I didn’t know what to make of this dream. It felt strange to me. The way I think about dreams, I like to imagine they’re never quite as simple or straightforward as they might seem. My own experience with my dreams has taught me that if I scratch at the surface, often I can find some meaning that wasn’t immediately apparent – some wish or longing, some hope or fear that is, if not completely unconscious, at least not yet fully conscious.
So what’s going on in this dream? It’s certainly not news that I like the taste of women’s cunts. It’s certainly not news that I like women who are a little younger than I. It’s certainly not news that the idea of sex with a woman is exciting to me.
One thing in particular stands out to me in this dream: my anxiety about her possible reaction to my use of “cunt,” to my being so forward sexually – and so forward with words. I was genuinely anxious. Had I overstepped? Had I presumed too much? On one level, this is a very familiar anxiety for me. It is, after all, essentially that against which I seek to protect myself with my form of dominance. A sort of insurance policy against offending. And in the dream, that anxiety, though very present, doesn’t really go anywhere. The woman seems unoffended. In fact, she just engages with me on the subject. “Do I enjoy the taste of all the women I go down on?” There’s no more to it than that. She accepts me. She’s talking with me. No harm, no foul. No offense taken.
Maybe this is the wish in the dream: that I would not offend. With my words?
There’s a little interesting backstory here. In recent months, I’ve been engaged in a little dream project with a friend of mine. We’ve shared most of our dreams with one another. This friend of mine is a complicated figure in my life: She’s quite beautiful. We’ve known each other for over a decade. And we are close – close friends, close colleagues. Our dream project has been a delightful, fun space of play for us.
Recently, she had a dream in which I appeared overtly. Not only did I appear overtly, but in the dream, I was the author of a large creative project that seemed to feature some sexual explicitness. A series of books. Now, this friend of mine doesn’t consciously know about this blog. I thought I had told her at some point, but she swears I haven’t. So, I should say she didn’t consciously know. She still doesn’t know much. We haven’t had the lengthy conversation.
But, when she told me of her dream, I said it was uncanny, and I sent her this picture.
A picture that I used AI to modify slightly, but only slightly, to conform to the description in her dream. The only modification was that I replaced the name of the blog on the spine of my books (the one in the URL of this page) with the name she had dreamt.
I recognize I’m taking a long time to get to the point, but my point is this: I think this dream has something to do with my feelings about my friend. And while, as I said, she is beautiful, and there certainly has been sexual tension between us at various times, I actually don’t think this is a dream about sex, or sexual desire, per se. Rather, I think it’s a dream about anxiety, about my concern, about judgment and offending. All of which implicates her, I think, but isn’t entirely about her.
I kind of long to share the blog with her. It would be consistent with the relationship we have, in many ways. Except, well, except for how sexually explicit it is. Our relationship, though close, and though occasionally characterized by sexual tension, has not been characterized by sexual explicitness. I’ve never used the words “cunt” or “cock” in a sentence with her – and I wouldn’t. I’ve never been as straightforward as to say I want anything of, or from, or with her. The closest we’ve come is to acknowledge mutual curiosity and attraction. And in doing so, also to acknowledge the barriers and impediments to our ever acting on any such attraction.
As I said, though, in recent months, we’ve been sharing our dreams with one another. There have been very few exceptions to this: dreams that felt to me like they were somehow too intimate to my marriage or to my family, I didn’t share. Apart from that, though, pretty much every time I have a dream, shortly after I record it and transcribe it, I forward the transcript on to my friend.
Not so with this dream.
I thought about it. I thought about forwarding it on to her. But then I found myself having exactly the same question about the dream that I had in the dream: if I shared the dream with her, would I offend her? Would I push her away? Would I scare her off? Would I intrude? Would I violate her sensibilities? Would it be presumptuous and unwelcome? Would it ruin something? These are all the same concerns I had in the dream about my telling her. And by “her,” I mean not my friend, but the woman in the dream, who, by the way, was pointedly blonde in contrast to this woman’s curly brunette hair.
The way I think about dreams, my experience with them, all this leads me to think that what this dream is about is not my longing to go to bed with my friend, but rather, about my much more generic fear – a fear that locates itself, for the moment, in her, but that isn’t, really, about her: my fear that if she knew the truth about me, if she knew everything, if she knew not just about the existence of the books, but the content of them; if she knew not just about the dreams I chose to share, but all of my dreams; if she knew about my filthy mouth and my filthier mind; well, she might not like me. I might lose her.
And, not just her. But everything.
As, indeed, I did, when I was just turning five.
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