I miss having beautiful women on a regular basis and I've even considered putting my ex-girlfriend back on her pedestal.
Then I recall the horrible bitch owes me enough money to escape from here and that puts an end to that idea.
I'm set up in opposition against my flat. Everything is rationed in this anal country. It's better to keep you idle and miserable, away from the friends and employment you want than to undermine the sacred cow of the property market. Which letting you move where you can be successful and happy might do. You're expected to slave for everything and without connected friends how do you break through into the heaven of your dream job anyway?
Even travel is rationed - if you don't work you can't afford to escape the suburban ghetto and reach the bright lights. I dream of jumping trains frequently but in reality I get caught because the railways are full of cops and ticket inspectors looking for bombs. How is that my country can afford to wage a war but can't find me a place to live where I could be happy and free of the ignorant wankers in the local pub who harass me?
I hate the local wankers, I hate the government, I hate market economics and I hate that stupid ugly cow.
The dream catcher was always taunting me. I fondly remember my days of London clubs and warehouse raves. I daydream about living them again. That's why the dream catcher played me spooky beautiful techno as I confronted my demons - the evil twin keystone cops. The first dream being nothing but setting me up for this fall. It's like in Clockwork Orange when Alex is being conditioned, shown atrocities while drugged, with his favourite classical music playing all the time.
My opposition to my flat and my longing for the big parties and beautiful music was played out in the mother of all building dreams. I had a big building of my own in this one, a huge multi-levelled affair which I'd filled with guests. We were holding it against the very police who stubbornly refuse to give me that holy grail of a housing letter.Hold on a bit, I'm out to scavenge some tobacco from the pavements. There's nobody even to ask for a cigarette out here. If I had a big building like in my dream tobacco wouldn't be a problem at all. I really hate this place. I'll be back shortly. Now it's night it's, the best part of the day. You can walk around this place unseen and see nobody. Scrounging tobacco is my secret shame.
See, I wasn't long at all. I'd have been even quicker but there was a weird car hanging around. That'll teach me to go out before one, I saw people, it wasn't pleasant at all. The sky, on the other hand, was nice, there was a bright full moon partly obscured by a strip of dusty cloud. That's about the only good thing you can say about the country, the landscapes can be quite nice and the sky is more vivid at night. Though this isn't the real country, more a suburb a little too far out from town.
The bored obnoxious wankers had obviously been down the pub tonight. I now have lots of their debris - tiny little nicotine bullets to abate my addiction until tomorrow when I get my pitifully small sum of unemployment money. I found a nice fat joint end outside the local shop. There wouldn't be any problem at all finding joints in the building from my dream.
We were holding that against the local police, the squatters and I. We'd dug an elaborate tunnel system out the front and we were easily capable of holding out for a long time, perhaps indefinitely. However, the police left and gangsters turned up with guns. A faction within my building were also armed and I soon realised this was getting way too intense for me. So, true to form, I sought a means of escape. I grabbed a submachine gun and headed through the tunnel system into the building.
I found a trusted friend and we went deep into its lower levels. There were parts of it I hadn't even explored before. I came upon a girlfriend of mine, naked and covered in others' semen, lots of it. I felt like I'd been kicked in the solar plexus, the very life in me almost forcibly being drawn out my body as I realised I'd been cuckolded, and how badly. I discarded the woman behind me without a backward glance.
Again, as in the prison building dream, I began to hear beautiful techno piping through the corridors. I instinctively followed the music echoing round the tunnels. I found myself in a grand pristine speakeasy illuminated by blue light and a pulsating strobe. It contrasted vividly with the rest of the building, which was basically a very squalid squatters den, with litter, empty bottles and cans everywhere.
No wonder my building antagonised the local police, bigwigs and publicans so much. You could basically do as you pleased within it, in bold contrast to the town's streets, pubs and clubs. There's nothing worthwhile to do there either, so I just get drunk with the people on the streets mainly.
In the speakeasy, right in the depths of the building, I found an enemy from town at the bar. He grinned at me impishly and with a sweeping gesture enticed my eye to feast on his speakeasy, which it duly did. The place was beautiful, the music was beautiful, there were beautiful naked women gyrating on huge beds in tune to the music. Strobe lights pulsed catching they, their wild long hair and nakedness in a series of freeze frames.
Sickened by the extent to which my enemy had cuckolded my building I levelled my submachine gun at the sound system and was about to blast it to hell in a fit of pique. I couldn't bring myself to fire. My building had completely seduced me. Though I had a broken heart on account of missing the party.
I exited the speakeasy without even looking at my enemy and my trusted friend followed at a discreet distance out of duty. I asked him if he'd known about the speakeasy but he could only reply weakly that there were parts of the building he hadn't visited for a very long time. I knew the building had seduced him too but I couldn't bring myself to embarrass us both by drawing it into the open.
Even that humble little joint end I scrounged in the village was nice once I'd rerolled it. If you'd have asked me four years ago if I'd ever scrounge cigarette ends from the pavement I'd have been offended and replied emphatically no. Drinking on the streets you associate with people with different values to your own. Their values can gradually obliterate your own if you're not too careful.
There isn't enough money for bills, pubs and clubs on the dole - it's a choice between these things and food. It's really starting to get me down and I've been caught stealing and on the trains recently. If you'd have asked me a couple of years ago if I'd be caught stealing I'd have answered emphatically no, like I said, if you aren't careful other people's values can erode your own.
Back in the building dream my formerly trusted friend and I found the only exit, a secret tunnel that emerged into a church where a service was going on. I balked at the thought of exiting that building and leaving that beautiful speakeasy behind me for a church. I did so anyway to escape the carnage. Do you see, the dream catcher was taunting me?
My mother knows how unhappy I am out here in this alien suburb and her answer is for me to convert to religion. It's a totally vulgar impossible solution. It's so naive and displays an absolute ignorance of my character on my mother's part. Now perhaps you understand the full extent of the dream catcher's incessant goading of me, how it has laid bare all my hypocrisy and self-deception. There were two dreams where church was a viable exit or source of shelter and I'm happy to say I overcame the dream catcher on the second occasion. It was a rare and treasured victory.
Another regret is an ex. I mentioned I've been tempted to put her back on her pedestal recently. I sometimes imagine what life would be like if I'd heeded her advice to calm down and get a job sorted out. If I'd have managed to stick it out with her. I imagine a family, a job and taking responsibility might be a solution for my problems.
Of course the dream catcher upset that apple cart too. I was operating a high rise crane, the sort they use to build skyscrapers, that tower above city skylines. I was back in the city too. At first my job scared me but after a while I started to enjoy it and even to enjoy the deep blue clear sky, the sense of being above it all up here in my crane, alone, active and free.
Then my family turned up - this awful woman, like none I've ever known in the carnal sense, with a bunch of straggling noisy kids swarming round her like a noisy bad odour. The woman was screaming frivolous verbal assaults at me and interrupting the tranquillity of my labour. The kids were running around berserk, also screaming, near the edge of the crane. I had to run around and fend them off the edges else they'd plummet to certain death. It was then that I remembered I'm scared of heights and equally scared of responsibility.
The hopeless ideal of meeting a true love, settling down and making a family was revealed starkly as yet another delusion. I awoke, my heart still racing from the sheer terror of it. I caught one of the dream catcher's sad, beady eyes peaking out at me from under the dirty laundry.
It was shortly after that dream catcher left me, with more questions than answers. I've racked my brains and what does it all amount to? The only conclusion I can draw from all the dreams is that I can't be anything other than what I am, but that can't be right. Much as he goaded me I miss my dream catcher. I feel he left me with only part of the jigsaw puzzle.
I feel like I've been mentally castrated, perhaps he really was just a scissor monster and only that? A legacy bugbear, a vestige of childhood.
I know there's something more than this for me out there. For instance now I've met you, darling. I know we only just met but it feels so right.
What do you mean, you're leaving? No, don't leave, you haven't even touched your sandwich and lager. Come on, the kitchen's not that bad and I'm sorry but I wasn't expecting a visitor, it'll be cleaner next time you come and I'll get wine - what do you like, white or red? No, wait, don't go, I've still got some nice old tunes, bollocks to the woman upstairs I'll play them anyway.
Oh, alright, bollocks to you, go then and don't come back!