He Comes When I Call Him

(July 2, 2004; a dream of Coyote)

I dreamed of a nameless young man, glimpsed across a luscious park as I lay in the sunshine. He caught my glance and was suddenly beside me, standing at the edge of my spotted blanket and smiling nervously downward. He asked if he could sit with me and I agreed cheerfully, then he wrapped his arms around my shoulders and sighed.

His mother language was Spanish - I demonstrated my one phrase in that tongue (Donde estan mis pantelones?) and he laughed - and his English was broken but fixed. He spoke in metric verse without awareness of the fact, his words spilling out with more thoughtless grace than I could ever engineer. We could not communicate easily but it was all right; I'd never met him, but I knew him all the same. With the sensory crossover so common in my dreams, I read a card and knew him to be a coyote and a wolf, and relaxed immediately, knowing his presence.

The park became a parking garage and I was in Fredericton, curled around him asexually and basking in his warmth, when I realized that I needed to run to the all-night grocery store for a container in which to place my contacts before I could sleep. I feared waking up in the morning without my vision. I exited briefly on a side trip - leaving my camera and purse with him, wondering for a moment if that was at all wise, and realizing that it was, inherently - then returned to him, and we prepared to take out my car. We passed Mike on the way, and suddenly he and my nameless companion were dressed identically - same military jacket, same curly hair, same red sunglasses. Mike looked in and threw a fit, and as I stammered that my Spanish man had chosen his own outfit and it had nothing to do with me, the coyote/wolf chuckled to himself.

We drove down through the layers of the building to reach the bottom floor, and got out of the vehicle - only to lose it. The girls working in the booths were of no help; they agreed that they had seen the car, but perhaps it was stuck in a chute on the way down now? We lunged back up the stairs then down again (fifth floor to eighteenth, eighteenth to tenth, tenth to twenty-first...), swinging around the bannisters and performing stunts to amuse each other. He leapt through the space between the railings and fell; I dove after him, flitting downward to reach the basement at his side. A doctor stood there, spot-shaped bandaids in one hand and syringes in the other, and began shouting at my companion: Do you want to take this like a man, or like a baaaaaby? He was an actor, possibly John Cleese, but though I knew this at the time it seemed appropriate.

Returning to the booths at the garage's exit, we again failed to find the car, took the elevator back up - getting out at random floors then dashing back in, giggling at each other's perplexity - and rushed down once more. I was at the edge of panic but he blunted it, flashing me a smile whenever I seemed about to break, reminding me of his love, our shared selves. I need to sleep in that car! I shouted at the booth-girls on more than one occasion, causing him to hide an amused smirk behind a layer of false sympathy.

Eventually I awoke, one of those slow awakenings where you become aware of your body before the dream has completely faded, and found myself wrapped about my pillows and sheets in a desperate hug, skin creased like an old woman's from the folds. I felt loved, accepted, and entirely, hilariously, lost.

Fucking coyotes.