A Rose in the Rain...

"I want to live darkly and richly in my femaleness. I want a man lying over me, always over me. His will, his pleasure, his desire, his life, his work, his sexuality the touchstone, the command, my pivot. I don’t mind working, holding my ground intellectually, artistically; but as a woman, oh, God, as a woman I want to be dominated. I don’t mind being told to stand on my own feet, not to cling, be all that I am capable of doing, but I am going to be pursued, fucked, possessed by the will of a male at his time, his bidding..." - Anais Nin

By Patrick Alcatraz

Editor

FORT WORTH, Texas - In one dream, I am born on a bed of cold cuts, there atop a thick slice of Salami and under a slab of Swiss cheese, doing my damndest to get the Hell out from my Deli moment as the light in the room is switched-on and I at last see my maker's face. He approaches and announces that my arrival is premature and that I must, at once, be returned to the great celestial incubator in the far sky. I say, in baby talk, "But...how can that be?" And I hear in response, "Your time is on the move, but it is as yet not here. My desire is that you wait a century or two." He goes on to promise that my wait will be worth it. I bawl and feel the cheese and hoagie bun fall back on me, the room's light fading to black.

In another dream, my woman is baking in the kitchen when I arrive from my job in construction to say I won a football pool and we can blow-off her dinner and make for our favorite Italian restaurant. She wipes her hands on the old apron and stares at me, saying, "I've been slaving like a goddamned Yugoslavian washerwoman all afternoon to prepare this supper for you!" Hmmm, I say in reply. She stands tall, points at my dinner on the dining table and waves her left arm in a welcoming manner. I nod and then watch her turn around to see that she is not wearing clothing on her lower body. The buttocks are familiar. I reach for my wallet and prepare to get the cash I'd won. She deserves it, my brain tells me. I eat like a guy who's been cracking sidewalks and digging ditches all fuckin' day. And then, after din-din, she takes me by the hand and trots me to the bedroom, where she fucks me so that I stay fucked. "Do I say it tonight?" she asks and I say, yes, of course. She says it in the dark: "Give me more, sir..."

They say a romantic can dream up scenes like a motherfucker. They say love does that to the human spirit, throws him and her into an emotional spiral that ignores anything else going on in the world. I know that to be true. I know it like I know the most accepted fact to do with humanity. My teachers in elementary school, supported wildly by nuns from our church, taught me that it takes extra effort to be a good person. My women have taught me that taking and not giving is not part of the deal. Dreams are great and some people say they have some however-loose meaning in your life. To that I say, Quien Sabe, mi amor. I wish I knew for sure. Goddammit, I wish that like I wish nothing else under the zillions of stars overhead. My dreams normally saddle me with a tremendous amount of guilt. Who knows? Perhaps they are based on fact, on things I have actually lived and experienced, on people I have known, hurt...and lost.

I remember one woman telling me she had one recurring dream: seeing a rose in the rain. She moaned and groaned that she had no explanation for it. I ran some things across my brain and couldn't come up with anything to help her. A rose in the rain? What in the name of Mary Magdalene could that mean? As a younger man, when I'd graduated from college and taken to my writing career, my principal dream was of me strapped aboard a falling airliner. The doomed fucker never crashed, at least not in my dream. My then-wife said she thought it meant I was about to leave my job. Who knows?

A rose in the rain. What the fuck could that mean?

I still do not know...

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