Nights are worse than the days
For the last few weeks, my dreams have been ridiculously literal.
No more the vague dreams I am used to, wherein I enter a strange house to be told by a woman who looks vaguely like my mother that if I turn around three times and turn yellow the world will end for two minutes, and this is necessary.
Now, once I overcome my nightly insomnia, my dreams are filled with entire DVDs worth of deleted scenes and alternate endings, as well as a catalog of suicides, car accidents, diseases and other all too plausible means by which the people I love can dispatch themselves from my life.
Last night, I arrived home at 1:00 AM drained and exhausted but unable to sleep; Cameron had already left for home for the week, so for the night I was by myself.
I ended up watching the movie It's My Party, a movie I had heard about but not seen in which a gay man discovers that he has an AIDS-related brain disease that will quickly make him demented before killing him; he immediately decides to throw a party that night inviting everybody he knows, in order to kill himself the next night before his reason leaves him. The movie throws all the predictable heart-string-tugs in it, and maybe in other circumstances I would not have responded quite as I did; as it was, I absolutely lost it in my living room, sobbing hysterically for about half an hour after the movie was done.
After I finally got to sleep, there in my head were Conner and Chad, telling a group of us that they would be killing themselves the next day and forbidding us from revealing this fact. That night, Cameron and I returned to New York so that Cameron could tend to a few unspecified important matters, planning on returning the next afternoon to bid them farewell. When Cameron ended up being delayed in those unspecified matters, I received a phone call from an impatient Conner, to whom I explained that we would be there soon.
"If he doesn't come soon, we're going to do it without you."
----"Don't. He'll be there. Seriously, you can't."
"We don't have all day."
----"Please, you can't do this to him, it will kill him. It's already killing him that you're doing it, and killing him that he can't tell anybody, can't do anything about it. Please, wait, let him come and say goodbye, this will be too much for him."
There is a long pause on the phone, and I can see his impassive face, can see him stop his pacing momentarily, with Chad sitting on a chair behind him.
"Well, why isn't he already here, if it's so important to him? Why didn't he give up his other plans? If I mean so much to him, why isn't he already here?"
No more the vague dreams I am used to, wherein I enter a strange house to be told by a woman who looks vaguely like my mother that if I turn around three times and turn yellow the world will end for two minutes, and this is necessary.
Now, once I overcome my nightly insomnia, my dreams are filled with entire DVDs worth of deleted scenes and alternate endings, as well as a catalog of suicides, car accidents, diseases and other all too plausible means by which the people I love can dispatch themselves from my life.
Last night, I arrived home at 1:00 AM drained and exhausted but unable to sleep; Cameron had already left for home for the week, so for the night I was by myself.
I ended up watching the movie It's My Party, a movie I had heard about but not seen in which a gay man discovers that he has an AIDS-related brain disease that will quickly make him demented before killing him; he immediately decides to throw a party that night inviting everybody he knows, in order to kill himself the next night before his reason leaves him. The movie throws all the predictable heart-string-tugs in it, and maybe in other circumstances I would not have responded quite as I did; as it was, I absolutely lost it in my living room, sobbing hysterically for about half an hour after the movie was done.
After I finally got to sleep, there in my head were Conner and Chad, telling a group of us that they would be killing themselves the next day and forbidding us from revealing this fact. That night, Cameron and I returned to New York so that Cameron could tend to a few unspecified important matters, planning on returning the next afternoon to bid them farewell. When Cameron ended up being delayed in those unspecified matters, I received a phone call from an impatient Conner, to whom I explained that we would be there soon.
"If he doesn't come soon, we're going to do it without you."
----"Don't. He'll be there. Seriously, you can't."
"We don't have all day."
----"Please, you can't do this to him, it will kill him. It's already killing him that you're doing it, and killing him that he can't tell anybody, can't do anything about it. Please, wait, let him come and say goodbye, this will be too much for him."
There is a long pause on the phone, and I can see his impassive face, can see him stop his pacing momentarily, with Chad sitting on a chair behind him.
"Well, why isn't he already here, if it's so important to him? Why didn't he give up his other plans? If I mean so much to him, why isn't he already here?"