The Last Time

I dreamed I was in room and the room was in a house and I climbed through the window of the room but I wasn’t outside, I was in another house, because the first house was inside another house, and then I woke up and I was in a room but in another house, and on the wall of the room there was a painting, and the painting was of a horse, and the horse was in a field and on the horizon there was a house and I looked closer and closer and the house got bigger and bigger and then I climbed through the window of that house, the house that was in the painting, way out in the distance, and I was inside that house and then I woke up and I was inside a different house, but this one was upside down so I was standing on the ceiling and there was a skylight and I broke the skylight with a rock that was suddenly in my hand, then I jumped down through the skylight and I was in another house, but this house was moving, it was on the back of a truck and the truck was carrying it across a country road in Italy, I could see the farms on the hills through a window, then the truck stopped and I climbed out the window and I walked across a field and there was a house on the horizon like the one that was in the painting and I walked to that house and I knocked on the door and then I woke up and I was on a boat and the boat was sailing to Catalina, I could see Catalina in the distance, and there were dolphins swimming alongside the boat, arching their dorsals out of the water the way dolphins do when they swim, and then I woke up again and I was in another dream and the other dream was on a stage and I was playing piano – Debussy’s “First Arabesque” – and I woke up again and I was in another house in another dream and there was a beautiful woman with me in bed, she had long, wavy blond hair and she was looking up at me lovingly and I kissed her and she kissed me back and I undressed her and I climbed on top of her and I was about to penetrate her when I woke up and I was at work and I was typing this and I closed my eyes to go back to sleep so I could make love to that woman but when I fell back to sleep I was in a house, and I went from room to room looking for her but she wasn’t there so I climbed out of a window and I was in another house, a house that contained the one I had just left, a house that held another house like the other one I had dreamt, and I went from room to room again looking for her but she wasn’t there again and I would’ve called out her name but I didn’t know her name and then I woke up again and I was in my bathroom and I was on the scale and I was weighing myself and I saw that I had lost 10 pounds and I told myself that I lost that weight because I was eating less and that thought made me hungry so I went downstairs to see what was in the fridge and that’s when the earthquake hit and I saw my living room chandelier sway and I lost my balance and everything in my kitchen crashed down from all the cabinets and I thought “oh no this is going to take HOURS to clean up” but I didn’t have to because I woke up again and I was in another dream in another house and this one was empty and I went from room to room looking for that woman again but she wasn’t there and as I turned a corner I put my hand on a wall and small furry animal bit my hand and held on and it hurt and I tried to shake my hand so the animal would let go but it wouldn’t and it didn’t and I woke up again and I was in another house within a house and a dream within a dream and the telephone was ringing but I couldn’t find and the answering machine picked up but it wasn’t my answering machine and the greeting wasn’t in English or French or German or any other language that I recognized and then I walked out the door and onto a patio and I saw that the garden hose was leaking from its nozzle and I thought I should fix it and I tried to find where it screwed into the spigot so I followed the hose around the corner and then around another corner and then another corner and the hose kept leading me around corners, three, four, five, six, seven corners, then it led me into another house where it disappeared under a crowd of people and the people were dancing, it was a party, but then it wasn’t a house, it was a strip club, and there was a girl in black bra and panties and high heels and she had a nose ring and a tattoo on her back, she was dancing on the stage, the way strippers dance when they dance, she was twirling around a pole, and I tried to see what the tattoo was but I couldn’t get close enough and she was twirling faster and faster and then I woke up again but I wasn’t me, I was you and you were reading this and then I woke up and I walked away from my computer and I looked out my window and the sky was blue with white wispy clouds and I was awake and I thought I wasn’t dreaming but I was, because I woke up again and I was in a different house and there was a mirror on the wall and I could see myself and I looked older and my hair was thinner and I could see my blue, blue eyes staring back from the mirror and I woke up again, but I was asleep, and I knew I was asleep because I was floating above myself and I was watching myself asleep on my bed and it was raining outside and then I woke up again and I was in bed and I saw myself floating above me and then it was raining inside and each raindrop was a mirror and I could see my face reflected in each raindrop, older, with thinner hair, and the rain started falling harder and harder and each raindrop showed my face, hundreds, thousands, millions of raindrops were falling, each one reflecting my face, and the water was rising in my room and I saw that I was still floating overheard and the water kept rising so I got out of bed and slid open the glass door and the water gushed out and I rode down with it the way a kayaker rides down rapids, twirling the way a stripper twirls on a dance pole, arching my back as I jumped out of and back into the water the way a dolphin swims alongside a boat, and I rode the flood down a flood channel, and the waters of the flood channel were churning more and more fiercely, and I woke up and I was in a room and there was a painting in a room and the painting showed a clipper ship on the ocean against a dark sky and the ship was being tossed high up on a wave and the painting came to life, the way a movie does, and I woke up again and I was young and I was back in the house where I grew up and my dad was there and my mom was there and it was daytime but the sky was black and I went to ask my dad something but he was gone and then I went to ask my mom something and she gone, too, and I went downstairs and I heard a knock on the door and it was you, and you were looking for me just like you told me you knew you’d be looking for me one day, and that you knew that one day when you were looking for me I wouldn’t be there for you and I didn’t answer the door and you kept knocking and I didn’t answer and I thought I was going to wake up but I didn’t wake up, and you kept knocking and I didn’t answer, and you kept knocking and knocking and knocking and I kept thinking I was going to wake up but I didn’t wake up because it wasn’t a dream anymore and then finally you stopped knocking and walked away and I still didn’t wake up and I’m still awake and that was the last time.