Guest Post: An ominous masturbator

From my good friend H:

"It is night, and I am asleep in my bedroom. I wake up frightened. I walk into the living room; it is very dark and I hear the hiss of the gas heater. Crouched beside the heater is a man masturbating. I can only see him in silhouette. None of his features are visible. I am terrified of this man. I have a pencil in my hand, and I stab him with it. When I stab him, he groans softly and ejaculates onto my hands.

This is one of the most intensely frightening dreams that I have ever had. The most vivid aspects of the dream were the sound of the gas heater and the noise he made when he came. Sometimes in a terrifying dream, I become paralyzed, but here I didn't have any difficulty moving (even though my heart was beating so hard!). I was always scared of the heater in that apartment--scared that it would ignite a fire or something. I used to sleep on the couch a lot, and always had my ear open for when it would come on. The heater was almost as ominous in the dream as the guy."

*****

H had this dream some half-dozen or so years ago, but wrote this account for me recently. I know the apartment she was living in at the time. The heater was in the living room, which was between the bedroom and the kitchen. After she sent me the account above, I called her to discuss it further. I asked her if the guy was on the bedroom or kitchen side of the heater. She told me he was on the bedroom side, crouched against the narrow stretch of wall between the heater and the doorway out of the apartment.

We could not come up with a satisfactory interpretation of the dream, but we did mention a few ideas. A pencil resembles a penis both in its form and its name. ("The penis mightier than the sword"?) I brought up the possibility that the scary heater might be a fear of her own libido (heat of passion, bitch in heat), and her stabbing the guy with her pencil could be a representation of a desire she might have to be the active, penetrating partner rather than the passive, submissive one in some (sexual or otherwise) relationship.