SINKING INTO IT

A Story

The nightmare was spiky, dense, filled with mayhem, but its climactic horror came when the beloved child tripped headlong into the marina water and sank like a boulder, without a shred of buoyancy.

I was paralyzed. The harbor went 100 feet down and he was well on his way to drowning at the bottom. I’m a weak swimmer. The only reason to dive in would be to save face, to have tried, which probably would mean my dying, too. 

I woke up. O, that lovely feeling of anxiety fizzing away! I'm awake! Safe! We’re all safe! The day has begun!

The next morning, a Sunday, I Facetimed with my grandson. He wanted me to watch him playing hockey on his new Xbox. I feigned interest for about ten minutes, then said I had to go.

The next night, I dreamed of missing my morning class at community college. I was a student, not a professor, and had gotten distracted in pleasant conversation with my wife. The morning was slipping away, it was already too late to get to class, yet I was 18 and my future was sinking on the horizon. Then I realized I’m 71, already with a B.A., retired, with nothing whatsoever to worry about besides global climate change. I woke up while having these thoughts, or maybe I was already awake for them, but either way, How wonderful to have nothing to worry about! I rolled to snuggle against my wife’s warm behind — the clock said 6:12 — and fell back to sleep.

“It’s weird,” I said to her at breakfast, “how the entire goal of my life these days is to have no anxiety. I mean, that’s sufficient. I don’t need adventure, I just want contentment.”

“Would you prefer your sleep to be dreamless?” she asked, and I thought, What an interesting question, unusually so.

“No,” I said, “because when I wake up, the anxiety of the dream vanishes instantly, which I find very pleasant.”

“Whew, not me,” she said. “It stays in my body half the day.”

“Hmm. Poor you. But then again, if you have fun dreams, like flying dreams, or horseback riding . . .”

“They stay too.”

“Then you’re a lucky girl.”

“I am,” she said, smiling from every wrinkle.

I thought for a moment about her orgasms, monumental compared to my little shudders. Lucky girl.

“When I was younger,” I said, “I used to have these intensely romantic dreams. I didn’t always tell you about them.”

“You told me about some.”

“Some, yeah. But some, I thought, would make you jealous. They always involved kissing, and overwhelming desire, though it was never really consummated. Before anything could happen, I’d wake up with a have-to-go-pee hard-on.”

“Poor guy. That’s Coitus-not-even-begunus.”

“Ha! And I’m just realizing now that because I wake up, these days, to pee at around four every morning, I never have those dreams anymore.”

“No more celestial women,” she said. “You’ll have to settle for me.”

The next night I had a bicycle-riding dream. From here to Ithaca, a four-hour drive by car, yet it was effortless on the bike, and familiar, and fun. I awoke with the sad thought that I had never in my waking life had such a ride.

I nudged her awake so I could share the thought.

“No anxiety, no adventure,” she said.

“Yeah, I guess,” I said.

“Come be spoons.”

I sank into it. The clock said 6:16.