(10/10/09) foolish at the farewell party

(Entered in paper journal at 8:30 AM at Connecticut Muffin in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was at a party with a group of friends, possibly co-workers. We were at a smallish apartment which was lit by a slightly cold-feeling, incandescent light. The party was quiet and calm. We might have been saying farewell to one of our co-workers, who looked like my old co-worker CT.

CT was at the other end of the room from me, possibly with a group of other people. I was upset with her because she'd made me feel like she liked me romantically, but now she'd somehow made it clear either that she liked someone else more or that she altogether didn't like me romantically. I felt like I had been made a fool of in front of everybody.

I tried to act like I didn't care about CT, almost like I didn't even know she was at the party. I began walking around the whole periphery of the main room, counter-clockwise. I figured that I'd go around the whole periphery (the room was now much larger), and then either leave or find that CT had left. This way I would prove, I thought, that I could ignore CT as much as she could ignore me.

But when I was almost all the way around the room (I imagined a map, like a floor plan, that showed the room to be large enough even to include a library), I realized that CT was not only still here, but that she was having a good time with everybody else. CT had even started to follow my idea of walking around the periphery of the room.

I thought that now I was for sure going to leave. I may have seen an old, rich-looking, white-haired, beautiful man by the door.

Somehow I got sidetracked by a male friend of mine who convinced me to sit in a different room with him. We were going to discuss something very important to me. We went into an unlit room that was joined to the main room by two open glass doors. The room was narrow and appeared to be something like a library, with a few wall-height bookshelves, some armchairs, and some unopened boxes. There was also a desk with a computer on it.

The man sat us down in two folding chairs before the doorway to another room, which may have been a bedroom but which looked like some kind of classroom half full of folding chairs. The light was on in that room, and the walls may have been a warm color, like orange.

As the man and I began to discuss things, CT went into the bedroom with a man and a few other friends. The man had told CT earlier on in the party, I now remembered, that he would draw her portrait. Now CT sat in one of the folding chairs in the back of the room. The man sat in a chair in the row before CT and turned the chair a bit to his left so he could twist around to see and draw CT. The friends sat around CT and the man.

CT And the man began discussing something, possibly something I'd done but shouldn't have done, but how I couldn't be blamed because I really hand't known any better.

I now realized that this party was a funeral for a young man we'd known. The man had been Latino, tallish, thin, with a closely shaved head of hair, and maybe a little stubble on his chin.

I now stood outside on a city street. It was a grey, slightly cool morning. I could see my breath, mostly because of the humidity, not the cold. I stood next to a brown velvet rope barrier that went along the edge of the sidewalk, leading, toward my left, to what was either the loading dock for a big building or the back of a semi-truck's trailer. A few other people stood along the velvet rope. A couple people stood inside the loading dock area, apparently waiting to carry out the coffin of the man whose funeral it was.

As I stood waiting, I began to think that the people who also stood along the rope were beginning to look at me funny. I started to remember having done something distasteful at the party last night, something along the lines of being completely drunk and shouting out how awesome I thought the deceased young man was.

Apparently the young man was now still still alive. I could see a black and white photo of him. He looked like my cousin N. I knew he was going to walk out from the loading dock at any minute. I also worried that, at any minute, somebody in the groups of people by the rope and in the loading dock would make a loud comment about my foolish behavior, and that everybody else would laugh me to shame.