Flying Dreams ("Horrible Marriages" Collection)


"I keep having dreams about beautiful things; flying, finding love, visiting mysterious and beautiful cities..."
"Maybe you ate something..."
"Childhood crushes come back, grown women, large eyed, asking about me. Don't you have dreams like that?" 
"Never. Mostly I'm eating peanuts in a bar, and the bartender can't find me. He's got my beer and I'm dry mouthed and really need that beer."
"That sounds like some kind of lacking too."
"Sometimes I have dreams about wrestling alligators. I think they're alligators. They could be crocodiles. I'm not sure it matters."
"I've never wrestled any kind of animal in my dreams."
"I wrestle them about three times a week."
"How does it turn out?"
"The other night I woke up as a big one was about to chew my face off. I went to punch it in the snout. I woke up just in time to see my fist heading for Gloria. I was laughing when I punched her in the head."
"Oh dear."
"She wasn't happy being punched out in her sleep. She saw me smiling too. I tried to explain it."
"How'd that go?"
"Not so well."
"Sometimes I'm flying around naked, just over the tops of the trees. It feels wonderful, natural -except for the 'I'm-flying' part, I suppose - but then I'm aware that people might see me. For some reason it seems awful and wrong that people might see me flying around in the sky naked."
"Your a stranger guy."
"Birds fly in the sky naked. Whales float in the ocean naked all day long, for their entire lives. They float and look up at the stars and eat a bit here and there."
"Yeah, how's Samantha and the kids?"
"The kids are good. Good."
"Samantha?"
"We kill each other two or three times a day. When we're not killing each other, we're trying to convince each other to commit suicide."
"Nice."
"But the kids are good."
"How long you guys been married?"
"Two hundred and fifty six years, this coming June."
"That's a long time."
"Sometimes I fly up over the coast, touching the clouds - I pick up speed - and before I know it I'm in another country, pleasant places, open air markets, cities of tunnels, giant, impossible buildings..."
"You’re still naked?"
"No, no. But I get fearful, I can't find my way, or I've realized I had my children with me and now they're gone. I panic."
"Can't you just enjoy it?"
"Doesn't seem to be an option... There are no choices - sometimes there are trains. I have to get on one, make a decision, but then it's too late. Too damned late."
"That's pretty awful."
"What's more awful is waking up and not being able to blame any of it on Sam."
"That might be funny if it wasn't so lame."
"Yeah, that about sums it up. Anyhow, how's Gloria now?"
"Not bad, not bad. The black eye is clearing up. The swelling... She's talking to me again."
"Glad to hear it."

The end 


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