SONI: Strange and terrible dreams in the City of Boston

A few days ago, I had a very strange dream. Some of my recollections are a little hazy, but the first thing I remember was landing in Terminal C at Logan Airport from an unknown destination. Upon my arrival, I found the place crowded with Asian people who weren’t allowing any of the planes to take off. There were thousands of them, all blocking the gates and preventing travelers from catching their flights. The weary travelers were sleeping on the metal chairs and floors. Some were sprawled out on the baggage claims. There was hardly any place to walk around.

I navigated carefully through the sea of sleeping bodies until I made my way out and onto the T.

I got off at Boylston where I was greeted by a Peruvian flute band playing a sad song they called ‘La Muerte Peluda.’ I was stopped as I tried to leave by a rowdy group of Caucasians protesting the passing of Proposition 8 in California. The crowd was cheering the speaker on.

‘What do we want?’ he yelled.

‘Equal rights!’

‘When do we want ’em?’

‘Now!’

Others stood around waving rainbow flags and picket signs that read, ‘Gay is the new Black.’ I inched my way to the exit but was stopped by a bearded man wearing a wife-beater and a NASCAR hat.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’

‘I uh . . . love the gays,’ I told him with a smile. He softened, patted me on the back and told me to carry on.

By now the confusion was weighing heavy, and I was desperate for an explanation. I walked over to a man in front of me, but as I approached him he turned around and spoke.

‘Welcome, good sir. I am Professor Virgil. I will lead you through your journey through’hellip;The Inferno!’

‘No you’re not,’ I interrupted, ‘I know you. You’re Dean Elmore.’

‘Yeah . . . yeah, you got me,’ he replied dejectedly, ‘And besides,’ he said, ‘this is only Purgatorio.’

‘Do you know what all that was about?’ I asked.

‘Oh, the Gs and Ls and the bis are calling for equal rights.’

‘But why are they all white?’

‘Nonsense!’ he exclaimed, ‘You anthropologists, nothing but a bunch of colorblind bigots!’

I begrudgingly dropped the issue and continued my inquiries. ‘What about that stuff at the airport?’

‘The Thai? They say Obama bought votes. They’re asking him to step down from the Office of the president-elect. The nerve of the guy.’

I stroked my ‘stache. His explanations had some kinks, but I took his word for it.

‘Well, he is the dean,’ I thought.

We continued walking until we got to 575 Commonwealth, the HoJo. From a distance I could see Molotov cocktails being thrown from the top floor study hall and people screaming and running on the street below. I looked up and saw that the sign had been changed. The numbers ‘575’ had been replaced by ‘HojOberoi.’

Dick Cheney was standing below dressed as The Penguin, sporting a black jacket and a black umbrella, pounding his fists in the air yelling, ‘Celine! You can’t have it, you bastards! We need the oil! Wah wah wah!’

‘What is he screaming about?’ I asked.

‘It’s the Canucks,’ replied Elmore, ‘They’re holding Sarah Palin hostage in return for Alaska. You see, they’re playing the Russians against us. Apparently Putin has a fetish for brunettes and he really wants to get his hands on her sweet . . .’

He trailed off, and I got distracted by the labels on the crashing beer bottles. ‘Molson Ice, Labatt Blue . . . they must be Canadian,’ I thought.

The next thing I knew I was sitting in the GSU behind Aesops sipping a caramel macchiato and watching CNN. Elmore had bounced, and I was left with the voice of Larry King blurting out the latest headline: ‘A panel of Blue Ribbon terror experts released a statement today saying that although the recent attacks in Mumbai were carried out using traditional methods, terrorists in the near future are likely to use large-scale bioterrorism. Citizens are urged to maintain a healthy degree of skepticism.’

‘Well,’ I thought, ‘I guess that means no more drinking from the faucet. From now on I’m only drinking Dasani.’

I ended up making my way to a ramshackle apartment building on the outskirts of Allston. The party was hippie-themed. They were charging $5 at the door and live music was playing from the basement. The keg was in the kitchen, but there was a mad swarm around the tap, like beasts around the watering hole.

I decided to take my chances with the jungle juice downstairs.

‘Is this stuff any good?’ I yelled to the girl next to me.

‘Umm . . . It’s like, really good!’ She was double-fisting a red cup and a can of Pabst and she was having trouble looking at me straight. ‘You know, you’re pretty cute for a Mexican.’

‘Thanks. . .’ I turned toward the juice with Solo cup in hand. It was an electric pink, and I hesitated for a second before plunging my cup in to the vat. What the heck, I thought.

I milled about the house making small talk with random acquaintances.

Soon I began to feel strange. The Christmas lights decorating the basement ceiling slowly began to pulsate in time with the music, and any reflection of light scattered into thousands of kaleidoscopic rainbows before my very eyes. All senses filtered through my cerebral cortex at once, blending and oozing into one eerie amalgamation. My thoughts raced from confusion, to unease, and finally, to fear. The panic crawled up my spine like a faint shiver.

I skulked to the bathroom to get a drink of water. I was sweating profusely. I tried to gain some composure by looking in the mirror but I was immediately struck by a piercing horror. The skin on my face was slowly melting before my very own eyes!

‘Oh no. . . oh no,’ I began mumbling to myself, ‘What happened? Wait. The bioterrorism attack! The jungle juice, it must have been laced with a mind control serum!’

Anyone who has ever experienced fear in its most raw form will know how truly soul-crushing and physically painful/unbearable it can be. Even in a dream. Your temperature feels like it has risen 20 degrees in two seconds, your heart plunges to the bottom of your stomach, and there’s a burning acidic feeling in the center of your chest. There is no way to control it and therefore no way to stop it.

I made a mad dash for the exit, busting out the back door and in to the cold Boston night. I didn’t know where I was and I had nowhere to go, so I just started running.

I ran. I ran past the Comm. Ave. Running Guy, past the Jesusfreaks outside of Planned Parenthood, past drunken college kids and past drunken hobos until I finally stopped in front of a towering billboard of Barack Obama.

I looked up breathing heavily as the sounds of the city passed me by. He was framed within a large ‘O’ looking serious, head turned to the side, with the word ‘Change’ next to him. I meditated on the image for a second. Then he looked at me and smiled.

‘Change. . . is coming.’ His voice was deep and determined.

He said it again, ‘Change is coming. Change, is coming!’

I inched back slowly as I felt the anxiety return. He pulled out a hand from behind the ‘O’ and slowly pointed and extended it down toward me.

‘Change!’ His smile had manifested itself in to an evil grin and he wouldn’t stop saying the word ‘change,’ louder and louder, until it bellowed through my ears and into my brain.

‘No . . . no please, Nooo!’

The horror of the dream had shaken me, and I found myself waking up underneath the glaring lights of the Mugar Library basement breathing deeply with sweat on my brow. A solemn grad student was staring inquisitively at me from over her laptop. I stretched, scratched my crotch and gathered my things. I was already five minutes late to class.

‘But what does it all mean?’ I asked a friend on the way to class. ‘Maybe my dream was some deep allegory of or for modern society. I mean, there’s terror and anarchy all over the world, maybe my mind is just struggling to make sense of it all’

‘Maybe you’re right,’ she replied, ‘Maybe. But you’re probably just crazy.’

I stroked my ‘stache. ‘Probably.’