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.

Walken rapture

I had this dream as a young adolescent, maybe fourteen years old. I was a virgin (and extremely enamoured of Christopher Walken!) at the time I had this dream.

*****

I am having sex with Christopher Walken in my parents' bedroom at my grandmother's house. [As a child and teenager, I spent at least one night a week with my family at my maternal grandmother's house; her house was a second home. My mother's childhood bedroom in that house was her and my father's bedroom there from before my birth until my grandmother's death my sophomore year of high school.] Suddenly I experience a sharp pain, so he stops. He goes into the bathroom to finish without me. When I wake up, I have a feeling of ecstatic euphoria that is so intense it stays with me all day.

A hysterical non sequitur

What a hectic week this has been. I have been getting to bed late and waking up painfully tired with no memory of any dreams. Here is a dream I had as a preteen or early adolescent.

*****

I am in the garage of my family's house. My father [maybe it was both my parents] is on a ladder trying to fix something. I am on the ladder too. One of my parents says something explaining the next step we will take to fix what we are working on. I seriously doubt that this plan is going to work, and expressing my expectation of how I think it more likely to turn out, I (only half-seriously) remark, "Crash, as we hit the ceiling." This pronouncement strikes me as so hilarious I wake up laughing hysterically.

*****

In fact, for the next several days I could not relate that statement from the dream without breaking into hysterics. Even just thinking of that phrase would send me off laughing.

Land shark

Another childhood nightmare. Again, the details of any plot elude me at this date; it is the final image that I have remembered all these years.

*****

I am being chased by a shark. I run into a parking lot to escape. I run as fast as I can, but the shark catches me. It closes its jaws around me from the feet up. Only my head remains when I wake up in terror.

Frankenberrypus

Another dream from my early childhood. If there was any plot to this dream, I no longer recall it (though I feel like maybe it somehow also featured a shopping mall...?).

*****

Between the bed and the wall in my parents' bedroom at my grandmother's house, I see the Frankenberry cereal mascot with eight writhing pink octopus tentacles. It terrifies me.

A food-stroking concession

This is a dream I had in the fourth or fifth grade. I found it so interesting, when I had to put on a puppet show for a school assignment, I based it on this dream.

*****

I go down into the basement at my grandmother's house to get some canned food. [As a child and teenager, I spent at least one or two nights a week with my family at my maternal grandmother's house; her house was a second home.] In front of the shelves where the food is stored, I find a little stand with a woman [and a man? my memory now is fuzzy, though it was clear at the time] behind it, with prepared food on offer. When I try to order some, I see it actually is just pictures of food that are available. And those are not even actually available for the taking-- when I select an appetising picture of a perfectly roasted turkey with trimmings, the woman does not hand it over, but only holds it out to me with the instruction, "Stroke the food! Stroke the food!"

A monster shakes the earth

Here is another dream I remember that I had as a very young child.

*****

I am in the living room of our second-floor apartment. I hear a tremendous crashing, so loud the earth shakes with every clap. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! I run down the stairs to our external door, which is deadbolted. I look out the window and see a gigantic-- like, storeys tall-- version of this guy pounding over the horizon toward our house. I am terrified. I try to scream, but I cannot make any sound, only a voiceless wheezing.

*****

I believe this dream was my first experience of the "unable to scream" phenomenon. This experience is not common for me, but I have had it a few times. It hasn't really bothered me as an adult as I generally recognise it as an instance of sleep paralysis even as it's happening. In spite of being frightened by this dream as a five- or six-year-old, I still love all things Muppet.

The first dream I remember

I'm sure this is not the first dream I ever remembered, but it is the first dream I ever had that I still can remember now. Well, actually, what I remember now after so many years probably is a memory of my original memory of the dream. I believe I was about three years old when I had this nightmare.

*****

My mother and I were making cutout "giants." The brown quilt [that was frequently used in real life] was prominent. My mother showed me her creation: a small paper "giant" head. It was a jolly cartoon-like face, with a red mustache, bald head with red curly fringe, and a round nose. Then I looked at what I had cut out. I was not so skillful with the scissors. My "giant" face was a ragged, shapeless thing, white with black jagged holes for "features," but not in any discernible arrangement. It bore no resemblance to any kind of face at all. Looking at it filled me with horror.