Dream Time: A New Meme
I've discussed the fact that I have certain recurring themes in my dreams: The return to childhood places and touchstones; the search for something that has been left behind. They are usually rooted in a very keen sense of geography. Many take place in Queens where I spent my adolescence. Just as many take place in southern Virginia and North Carolina where I spent summers.
To these, I would add a new one: The search for a cash machine. It is very much as it sounds. The search for enough money to return to a bar where a party going on, so that I may purchase a drink or drinks. I had it for the first time that I can remember two nights ago, but, I have a feeling that it actually predates that. I have had many dreams where I find myself walking the streets of the Lower East Side and Greenwich Village and this is how this dream began. The dreams often involve stopping by a restaurant or dropping in on a bar and then devolve into a search. Sometimes the search is for someone at a party; sometimes it is for something I lost at the party.
More often than not these "search" dreams involve finding my way, like Hansel and Gretel, back to the site of the original gathering after exiting it for some reason. The reason became clear in the dream I had the other night. The reason involved the search for a cash machine.
I cannot emphasize the importance of the invention of the cash machine which made its debut in the late 1970s just as a self-conscious gay sensibility began to erupt all over the east side of Manhattan. Thanks to Stonewall, the name given to an insurrection by male transvestites patronizing a bar off Sheridan Square in 1969, police officers were forbidden from harassing homosexuals for exercising their right to drink in public establishments. Bars popped up or gay men "turned" favorite watering holes into places that openly and notoriously catered to gay men.
And, what more essential ingredient to becoming a public drunk than ready cash? Yes, a few of us had credit cards, but they were cumbersome, not universally accepted and, more importantly, credit cards lacked the personal, tactile feel of paper bills left on a bar or on a waiter's tray when leaving a tip. The only problem with paper money was the reluctance in New York's high-crime era, to carrying large quantities of them. The invention of the cash machine and the swift proliferation of them by Citibank meant that carrying a lot of cash on your person was no longer a problem.
Out of cash? Wait a minute, I'll be right back. And so the search begins.
To these, I would add a new one: The search for a cash machine. It is very much as it sounds. The search for enough money to return to a bar where a party going on, so that I may purchase a drink or drinks. I had it for the first time that I can remember two nights ago, but, I have a feeling that it actually predates that. I have had many dreams where I find myself walking the streets of the Lower East Side and Greenwich Village and this is how this dream began. The dreams often involve stopping by a restaurant or dropping in on a bar and then devolve into a search. Sometimes the search is for someone at a party; sometimes it is for something I lost at the party.
More often than not these "search" dreams involve finding my way, like Hansel and Gretel, back to the site of the original gathering after exiting it for some reason. The reason became clear in the dream I had the other night. The reason involved the search for a cash machine.
I cannot emphasize the importance of the invention of the cash machine which made its debut in the late 1970s just as a self-conscious gay sensibility began to erupt all over the east side of Manhattan. Thanks to Stonewall, the name given to an insurrection by male transvestites patronizing a bar off Sheridan Square in 1969, police officers were forbidden from harassing homosexuals for exercising their right to drink in public establishments. Bars popped up or gay men "turned" favorite watering holes into places that openly and notoriously catered to gay men.
And, what more essential ingredient to becoming a public drunk than ready cash? Yes, a few of us had credit cards, but they were cumbersome, not universally accepted and, more importantly, credit cards lacked the personal, tactile feel of paper bills left on a bar or on a waiter's tray when leaving a tip. The only problem with paper money was the reluctance in New York's high-crime era, to carrying large quantities of them. The invention of the cash machine and the swift proliferation of them by Citibank meant that carrying a lot of cash on your person was no longer a problem.
Out of cash? Wait a minute, I'll be right back. And so the search begins.