This Shit

A dream. I'm out of town somewhere with my father. How you can be out of town in a dream I don't know. But we are.

We are staying in a house. Staying at a house because we are not at home. If we were at home I'd say, "We are at home." But we are not.

We're staying at a house. There's some sort of goal or plan or engagement that awaits us outside of the house for which we are currently preparing.

I've glanced into a room across the hall from me and see my father. His hair is damp and a towel is wrapped around his waist. He is wearing his glasses and applying deodorant and aftershave while looking in the mirror.

I am in the bathroom in the hall. The bedroom my father is staying in must have its own bathroom attached. Mine must not. That must be why I'm in the bathroom in the hall.

The thing about this house, well I haven't seen the rest of it, but it's...

Well, it's like the houses some of our relatives had—our relatives from the older generation. My father's parents', uncles' and aunts' houses or condos.

They're clean places, sterile places. There are always tablecloths on the tables and candles lit for dinner at these houses. Children don't and did not live in these homes. Accept maybe in the one unfinished room in the basement where there's always a cabinet near the floor filled with worn-out toys. The toys were scuffed and some were dirty, but nothing else in the house was. And you had to put the toys back in the cabinet when you were done and the matriarch of the house always preferred if you played in that room. Leave the toys in that room. Don't take them out.

The house was like those houses and condos we stayed in when we took trips from Illinois to California or Oregon. We'd drive straight through. But Mom would wrap presents, little games and things, for my brother and me. We got to open one every three or four hours during the trip if we "behaved". Those trips were always during the summer. Christmas was seven months past and five months away. I'd heard friends talk about half-birthdays. Those car rides were half-Christmases.

But I'm not a kid now, I'm my age. We could have taken the trip last week in conscious life. But I know we didn't drive. I see carry-on luggage in my father's room. He'd packed less than he would have if we'd driven. I need to go get my soap and shampoo out of my suitcase.

I know we didn't drive, we flew. But where's Mom? Where's Marco? His name is Mark. Well, his first name is Marcus, but he spells the shortened version with a kay. But I've called him Marco ever since we played Marco Polo for the first time. We probably played it for the first time in one of these wealthy relative's pools. With their kids' kids that were sooo lucky.

But none of that matters since I'm in the bathroom right now. I'm in the bathroom with this terrible kind of wallpaper plastered on its walls. I seem to remember this wallpaper from Grandma's old house. It has a gold background and there are these vine-ish designs on it growing out of the carpet on the ground. Who carpets their bathroom? Older relatives from my father's side do. Whoever put the wallpaper up made sure everything was straight but made mistakes lining the pattern up horizontally at the corners. The vines are green. But there's only just enough blue added to yellow to make these vines' green. Yellow-orange flowers sprout from the vines. The flowers either clash with the background or they match. It's a dream; it doesn't quite make sense or matter.

All the cabinets in this bathroom are stained dark brown. And the mirror isn't just a mirror but four mirror panels that each act as a door for a section of the medicine cabinet. The outside edges of the sectioned mirror are framed in wood, stained the same dark brown. The mirrored doors on the medicine cabinet are the ones that you press in until the little latch inside lets go and they pop open.

And I've done just this to one of the mirrored doors and see the shelves inside and on one of the shelves I see a bottle. I see a plastic bottle. The wedge-shaped kind that stands upright on top of its cap. I see a bottle of green-tea face wash. I close the medicine cabinet door and look towards the other room at my father.

Holy shit. I know where we are.

Now he's sitting on the bed in there and the TV is on in that room. The comforter is pink with turquoise wisps and flowers and flourishes. Are we in a hotel? Dad looks up from putting on socks and looks at me and raises his eyebrows and makes his mouth into a perfectly straight line. I puff my cheeks and roll my eyes and wag my head from side-to-side at him. He looks at the TV and I shut the bathroom door.

I don't want Dad to see me invading privacy. I lock the doorknob and walk back to turn on the shower. Would she let it clash like this in here?

The bathroom is longer than it is wide. The cabinets with the counter on top and a sink built in, the medicine cabinet/mirror above them and the toilet are all on the left side when you face the back. There are towel racks and bars holding damp towels on the opposite wall. At the back of the bathroom is a bathtub with a shower head and a shower curtain. The toilet is between the sink and the bathtub. The shower curtain is either off-white or gold. Everything really does clash in there.

Standing outside of the bathtub I turn its handles, adjust them so the water runs hot as I like it and pull that rod on the faucet. Now water is coming out of the showerhead. I press open all of the mirror panel doors starting at the left and moving in sequence towards the right. All of the doors swing open to the left except the farthest right which swings open to the right. The backsides of the left-most and right-most doors are also mirrored. I walk back to the left side of this contraption and look at myself in the mirror on backside of the left-most door. I mouth, "Don't do this," to myself knowing I will. At least I think twice.

Moisturizers, that mouthwash and toothpaste mixture, tweezers, Q-tips, Kleenex, that deodorant also infused with green-tea, Sudafed, that acne stuff that burns at first, that lotion, that lilac-scented spray.

Holy shit. I know where we are.

I've looked through the first three sections of the medicine cabinet. I don't want to keep going. My stomach is empty. My stomach is full of nervous and nothing. I'm having trouble swallowing. I have a ball of air in my throat. I don't want Dad to see me doing this. I don't want to keep going.

---

You know...that's the thing with dreams. I'm not sure I want to tell you the rest. That's my unconscious. My neurological privates. Vulnerable, open, exposed. Fleshy. Open to attack. You sometimes dream things you don't even want to tell yourself about. That's all the shit. The brown shit that embarrasses you. That's for me to know and get over. I defeat it myself or create an identity that doesn't have or think this shit.

But you've come this far so I'd better deliver. Otherwise you may not ever listen to one of my stories again.

I mean I've told you that I haven't talked to her for months. And that I'm over it. And I am. I'm not lying to you. I'm not that. I guess there's just a little bit of shit left over in the unconscious that needs to be cleaned up.

---

There are four mirrored doors that cover four sections of the medicine cabinet, and I've looked over the first three and closed their doors immediately after. And the mirrors are fogging up and it's humid and I'm sweating.

And my father knocks on the bathroom door.

All of the muscles in my body, below my chin, flex simultaneously and I swallow the lump in my throat and I bite my tongue. He knocks again.

"We gotta go in 20 minutes so you should get out soon."

I lean my head behind the shower curtain, careful not to rustle it, and yell, "Yea OK."

I am looking at the mirror on the third door which is shut. I stick my tongue out. It hurts, but there's no blood. Nothing serious. I look at myself in the eyes and grit my teeth while inhaling through my nose. Then I raise my eyebrows and open my eyes wide and curl my lips into my teeth. And I'm making this face at myself. And my self is making this face at me. And I stop looking at myself and glance over at the shelves exposed by the fourth door. And I see them.

That deodorant, that hair pomade shit, that Chapstick, that face wash, that shaving cream, that after shave. These are products I use or have used in the past. But I know these are not mine. They're his. They're hers. They're theirs.

Holy shit. I know where I am.

I slam the fourth door shut. It is loud. The entire cabinet shudders. Things fall down inside. I expect a knock. It comes.

"You all right in there Steven? You really should hurry it up."
"Yea, yea. I'm almost done."

I look in the mirror and notice that my hand is clasping my cheeks. I'd better be sure to put everything back in its proper place. They'll know I looked through. And that's what they'd expect. They'll make that suction-click sound pulling their tongue from behind their front teeth and they'll say, "I can't believe him," and they'll widen their eyes and part their lips after the em for effect.

Holy shit.

The shower's still running and the steam is billowing out from above the shower curtain. The steam runs across the ceiling with little smoky legs and feet.

I start from the left again and open all the mirrored doors. Click-click. Click-click. Click-click. Click-click. A couple of her things fall out. Most of his things fall out of the fourth section. Their things fall out onto the yellow Formica counter and some fall into the sink.

Another knock. I expect it.

"Come on Steve! What's going on in there? We really have to get going pretty quick."
"Nothing, nothing. I'm almost through."

I realize each "nothing" must catalyze his suspicions. I put the things back where I think they were and I can't remember their exact places and they'll know and now I'm touching THEIR things and what AM I doing?

They were nice enough to let us stay here on our trip. Where are we going? Why are we here? Why is my shit in these cabinets? That's not my shit. My shit is still in the suitcase.

I'm doing my best to re-place everything correctly, but I don't remember where it all goes. I'm found out. I'm fucked. I'm not actually found-out in the dream, that's just the sense I have. All of the mirrored cabinet doors are closed. Everything is standing or lying down in the cabinet. Not everything is exactly in its original position, but everything's close and everything's there.

I step into the shower. Just to wet myself so it looks like I've been in the shower. I get out. I dry off. It’s a dream. Skips and jumps. I'm following my father out the door of the house. Now I'm awake. Conscious.

---

Now don't fucking psychoanalyze me—I'll take care of that myself. Just don't to my face at least. Well, I guess just don't do it right now. I mean, I told you the whole story for a reason. Obviously I want your opinion at some point.

What the fuck is this thing? I think I'm disrupting her stability in some mystical way? Fucking self-involved narcissist.

I mean, SHE wasn't in the dream. It was just me and the idea of her and the idea of her with the other. Consciously, I remember the relationship like I remember a trip to summer camp. I'm only remembering the good parts. It's not like I want it back, but I do remember it and get tender. Not crying but saying, "God damn. That was pretty great at the time." But for some reason there's still this shit in my dreams.