I think I’ve bought more juice in gas stations than in the grocery store, in quantity at least. Not quantity by amount of fluid, surely, but definitely quantity in number of bottles. This is where I arrive after waking from a dream.
I tend to dream often of gas stations, particularly gas stations in the middle of nowhere. Gas stations with a serious lack of sundries and food items on the shelves. An old pack of Snowballs, maybe. A bottle of grape juice, seemingly with the consistency of motor oil, covered in dust on the rusty grate inside an old cooler. I never seem to know what I want or why I’m in one of these places, but they are a regular stop in my dreams.
I should know better than to pay much attention to my dreams. Doing that hasn’t really taken my anywhere fruitful. There was that one dream – some of you know the one – that sent me into a quest to find this raven-haired woman that so significantly affected me in a dream. When I awoke from that one, I was so devastated to having realized it was only a dream and not real life that I cried for half an hour. And it isn’t like there was anything important about whatever sort of relationship I had with this woman in the dream; it was platonic, but somehow exceedingly important. Why I decided it needed to be real, why this subconscious sleep-induced fantasy meant so much to me, I have no clue. But it sent me looking for her. And then I found her – or someone I believed was her – and I of course fell for her. Within weeks, this relationship – one that went no where at all – was over, and now we are only tangentially friends.
And then years later, another woman who fit the description came into my life. Again, I fell for her. Again it fell apart. We, at least, have become and have remained good friends, though with all sorts of drama and caveats attached to the friendship, almost entirely from her end. Ah, the many times I’ve waited fruitlessly for her to visit or to call. And was she the woman from that dream so long ago? At this point, why does it even matter? Especially now that Karrie Anderson has come along.
Okay, as far as I know, Karrie Anderson does not exist. Karrie Anderson works at a rip-off of a Taco Bell restaurant. Before that, she worked at a White Castle rip-off (Brown Castle). She is the manager. She had very short hair, a sandy, reddish color mostly hidden by her hat. She has freckles, lots of them. She has a lovely smile and a great sense of humor.
I was walking down the street with some friends, trying to get away from them, really, so I could go get myself something to eat. They wanted McDonald’s, and I wanted anything but McDonald’s. They wanted to drive, even though it was only a couple of blocks. I hate that. They rolled down a window as they passed me and asked if they should stop at the gas station to grab some chips and dip or some other munchies. I said I didn’t eat that stuff (and I do try very hard to avoid that stuff), and I kept walking.
I don’t remember wanting to eat at this particular Taco Bell rip-off joint, but I certainly did go inside. I might have been cutting through the place to get away from my annoying friends. I worked my way up to the front of the place, and the lovely Miss Anderson (I didn’t yet know her name) looked up at me (I was floating) and said, “You have a very handsome face when you’re hungry.”
This floored me. Literally. My feet were again planted. At the time of her statement, I was, in fact, talking on my cell phone to some other woman, someone I was interested in at the very least. But when Karrie spoke to me and I looked at that wicked smile and the light in her eyes, I was stunned and completely stricken. I stuttered a “Can you hang on a sec?” into the phone, and then hung it up. I asked Karrie what her name was. She told me “Karrie.” She lived somewhere south of here, maybe Flint, maybe closer (but not much). She went to school down there somewhere.
“I have never done this before,” I told her, and it is true both in the dream and in real life, “but could I have your number?”
“Of course,” she said, and gave it to me. I asked how to spell her name, “With a C or a K?” “With a K,” she said, and I typed it into my cell phone. My phone decided for me that her last name was Anderson. Her number started with 225, so perhaps she’s a Verizon customer as well.
We made plans to get together the following night. I would go to her, and I would take my overnight bag because somehow I knew I wouldn’t be coming home that night. Or at the very least I’d bring my toothbrush.
I woke up shortly after this, while I was considering where to carry the toothbrush. I would be wearing a sport coat, surely, and would maybe stick the toothbrush in the inside pocket. No reason to worry about toothpaste; she’d have some. She’d have to have some with a smile like that.
And when I awoke, I was not devastated to be awake, though seldom do I have a dream where there is any specific connection between me and the other people in the dream. But there was enough of a connection for me to grab my phone and text her name to my email address, so I might look her name up and see what turned up.
I don’t know why I am an optimist about such things, because I clearly should know better. It’s a kind of desperation, I suppose. A sad, pathetic state of affairs that would send me on yet another pointless quest. But nevertheless, there I was, texting the name of a person I dreamed about to myself. And then getting myself out of bed at 3 in the morning and sitting down in front of my laptop to write about it, about her, about the juice.
Someone once told me that one theory about dreams is that we are somehow everything in our dreams. In other words, whoever we dream about, whatever we dream about, everything and everyone is a version of ourselves. This theory annoys the piss out of me. I don’t believe it for a second. It’s psychological mumbo-jumbo, some therapist’s explanation to some sick individual who insists on following his dreams (in the literal sense) in some reckless fashion. I suspect dreams are somehow representative of our subconscious mind, a way of allowing us to experience things we desire. In my experience, when not under the crazed dreams brought on by melatonin or tequila, this seems more likely. I dream of playing music or writing on a professional level, things I would really like to do and be successful at in real life. And in this case, in the case of Karrie Anderson, it is my subconscious mind searching for a relationship with some cute, interesting woman, which sounds more sad and desperate than I think I am now that I’ve written it down.
But it won’t stop me from writing about it. Nor will it stop me from looking her up, especially before I post this for the world to see, because if Karrie Anderson exists, there’s no way I’d tell you her name. She’s mine. I don’t want you going after her first.
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