It was just fucked up.
The first thing I remember is being introduced to this strange girl, who apparently was unwell and had a variety of issues. I don’t remember where I was at that point, or who introduced me to her, but she seemed very disgruntled and agitated, and had this whole spiel she was giving me about injustice and her curiosities. She kept talking and talking, and her voice became increasingly louder but from farther and farther away. Eventually, she asked me if I had ever wondered about things. Then she just started stating the same questions over and over again. What is the universe? Why am I here? Why are you a thing? I understood that they were rhetorical questions.
I was planted into this really bizarre, darkened model of a city. All of the colors were wrong. The buildings were the most hideous blue, solid and with no proper windows, and the sky was dark grey with intermittent red lightning. It looked as though something nuclear had taken place. Where were all the people?? On a large, circular marquee above me, the words of the girl’s disembodied voice began to scroll across: What is the universe? Why are you here? Why are you a thing? What is the future? Obviously, I couldn’t answer any of those questions, and I was starting to become really scared. There was something inherently sinister about the environment that I was in. I could sense danger, and the questions she was asking me were not intended for my own benefit or to spark my personal curiosity, but rather to suggest how soon I would meet my demise.
Every time she would get to that last question, these little joker-faced icons would scroll across, and red letters would form a series of keywords like “Greed. McDonald’s Corporation. Absolute Power. Phony Politicians.” I don’t think those were the exact words, but those were the exact ideas expressed. It was either a warning…this girl was trying to warn me. Or it was just her own personal commentary, a recounting of what had already transpired; of what had led to the downfall of this particular civilization; of what had essentially turned all of the buildings blue and the sky dark grey.
I walked further down this spiral ramp and at the very center of the city was this massive, larger-than-life woman, towering above all of the buildings. She seemed to be writhing in terrible pain, and her torso was wrapped in black cords. In the background, I could hear two men discussing her in a way that sounded like she was a patient of theirs, under close observation. I sensed that I too was under surveillance. They referred to her with a nickname that I can’t recall now, but it was something like, “the titling woman.” They warned me to steer clear of her, and not to be influenced or deterred by her very obvious, very public suffering at the city’s center. I spun around a few times, and kept walking.
The next thing I know, I had walked onto an open field somewhere. I don’t think I was in the creepy blue city anymore. I saw a person and impulsively tackled them. I think I was looking for answers, but neither of us was actually speaking. There were people lined up red-rover style on either side of us. One of my co-workers kept kicking water at us from yards away. I didn’t understand how the water could reach us from so far away, but it did each time. I got up and kept running. I came up onto a loading dock for a large naval vessel. There was a group of men, all dressed in white uniforms, who were trying to board up a large doorway with random objects. They were taking apples, oranges, tennis shoes, anything to help obstruct this doorway. The head officer was shouting to a crowd, soliciting more objects. He kept saying something about the purpose of blocking the door. It had something to do with finances, but I don’t remember what it was that he was saying. There was one female officer present in the group, and she turned to acknowledge me.
Then I’m back in the open field and these two men are commanding me to begin self-stimulation. In fact, one of them had taken it upon himself to try to masturbate me, but that wasn’t working. But as I was viewing this from outside of my body, I noticed that it wasn’t even my real body. It was a male’s body. I was young teenage male (probably between 15 and 17 years old), and for whatever reason, these two middle-aged men were insisting that I quickly jack off. I agreed to give it a go and took over what the one man had tried to start. I was this young guy, who was vigorously masturbating in front of two men. My thoughts at this point were completely weird. Since I don’t have my own penis to reference from waking life, I think my subconscious kind of fucked up on the whole male sexual response pattern thing. (I could feel that I was developing an erection, but every time I looked down, the damn thing kept getting smaller!) I also noticed that I was missing a urethra. A lot of things about this didn’t make any sense, but I continued on anyway. It seemed like the right thing to do.
I don’t know if I ever finished though, because all of a sudden I was running again. But I had run into a trap. When I backed up, it turned out that the trap was actually a goalies’ net. Two goalies grabbed each of my arms. I was smack in the middle of a sprawling game of women’s soccer. I had a simultaneous aerial view and ground view of the game, as I tried to run for the sidelines. I briefly found myself pushing a cart of water bottles and Gatorade. I think I had tried to get by under the guise of a team assistant, but if I came too near any of the players, they would turn their offense onto me. I could hear another disembodied female voice overhead instructing someone at the far end of the field to harm any girls who tried to run away. I assessed that none of these people had my best interests in mind, but I couldn’t seem to devise a clear way off of the playing field. I don’t remember exactly what happened after that.
I woke up with my eyes burning, as though I had opened them right in the middle of a sandstorm, or onion-chopping.
Analysis: I want to take a moment now to quick analyze this dream before I lose proximity to it, and before I lose perspective. I’m going to go ahead and guess that this was a castration narrative (surprise surprise), but told in reverse. I suspect that those recurring two men were kidnapping teenage boys and forcing them to experience the last natural climax of their lives before castrating them and casting them off into this weird blue city/soccer field universe as tortured and confused ‘females’. But for some reason, I met the damaged females first, and then became the castration-bound boy later (only to revert back to female, and try to escape). The obstructing of the naval vessel port with random objects was likely the closure of a bodily orifice. Maybe that’s where my urethra went…
Over the past year, I have been developing increasingly worse pre-menstrual symptoms. I never used to have this problem, but I think that my underlying emotional turmoil has made it so. I’ve talked to my doctors about it, and am working to get that resolved, but it does make me afraid to begin the descent into madness cycle over and over again each month. In addition to this, I’m currently battling some fierce work-related anxiety and a mild fear of success, the latter of which is frequently linked to women in the workplace.
Those things coupled with the fact that I watched an episode of Skins UK earlier, and had fallen asleep this evening to the shrieking and moaning sounds of Sherlock Holmes Mysteries wafting through the house, and voila! — a freaky post-apocalyptic castration narrative is born.
Liberal Milk 