My cheating heart vs. my stupid monogamous subconscious
I wake up cranky and thwarted. “Damn it! I can’t even cheat on you in my DREAM. This stinks.”
“Mmmph,” says my husband. He would like to be more asleep than he is, but morning has landed hard on his chest. His wife is not even out of bed yet and already she is making very little sense.
“Do you cheat on me in your dreams?” I have a right to know. I keep an apartment in his head and if I’m going to bump into anybody in the lobby, I want to be prepared.
He opens his eyes. Some squinting. “Do I cheat on you? In my dreams?”
“Yes.”
He thinks. He thinks some more. “I really don’t.”
“It’s okay. You’re allowed to, you know. We’re supposed to be allowed to do that.”
“I know. But I really don’t.”
I believe him. Damn his noble mind. Damn my thwarted, less noble mind. It’s all very aggravating.
A few weeks later, the same damn thing. I wake up devastated and schlump around all day, knowing I have let the opportunity of a dreamtime slip right through my fat wedding-ring-laden fingers.
I bring it up with my husband that night, when he gets home from rehearsal. I am kind of mad at him. It might be his fault. His sweet Canadian-Jedi Mind Control. These aren’t the dreams you’re looking for, eh.
“I still can’t cheat on you in my dreams,” I say. I am being a little whiny. “Do you remember that conversation we had? Do you want to change your story?”
“I really don’t dream very much.” He pauses. “But I don’t think I ever cheat on you in my dreams. No, I never do.”
He is such a nice man; I can tell he is racking his brain for evidence of dream-cheating. He told me when he went to see The Dukes of Hazzard in Illinois during his business trip. He is that honest. He would tell me if he had dream-cheated; he would be happy to tell me. He has a hunch I am getting disgusted with the two of us and our unnecessarily loyal subconsciouses.
I make my little disgusted noise to confirm that I am getting disgusted. I like to confirm his hunches about me. I think it strengthens a marriage. “Errgh.”
He smiles fondly at me and takes a bite of the homemade meatloaf that Mama Stop ‘N Shop made for our home. I see now that my husband is pleased that we are not cheating on each other when we are lying side by side in bed at night.
My cheating heart is not pleased. “Last night? I met my celebrity boyfriend from The Office, and he thought I was great. He really liked me and I let him hold my hand for five seconds…AND THEN I TOLD HIM I WAS MARRIED.”
“Wow.” My husband is impressed.
“And then my celebrity boyfriend said, ‘Why did you have to move to the Berkshires?’ As in, he lived in the Berkshires too, and now he would have to be heartbroken and tortured with longing knowing that he and I lived in the same place and might run into each other. I am such an idiot.”
My husband chews his meatloaf thoughtfully, sympathetically. He doesn’t cheat in his dreams either, but all similarities between his brain and my brain stop after that.
I am very very very mad at my subconscious! I do not understand why It Hath Giveth and It Hath Taketh Away my celebrity boyfriend! It is so mean, my subconscious! I have been suffering from this dream-loyalty affliction for a very long time now. Before sleep, I beg my subconscious to let me pretend to be someone who looks like me except hotter and very not married. I tell my subconscious that I will make it a Mexican tin altar or a bathtub shrine with a picture of Freud pasted over the head of the Virgin Mary, if it will only let me be an oversexed adulteress in my head once every few weeks.
Now I’m indignant, all sizzly and jumpy like the stir-fry vegetables at that famous Japanese restaurant where you sit around and politely watch the chef be a chef but all you really want to do is hold a gun to his head and point at your plate because you’re tired of working so hard at looking revved up about him and his jazzy Ginsu knife.
That was supposed to be an analogy about the stir-fry vegetables, but somewhere along the way, it turned into something else. Let’s move on. We were talking about not cheating when you could be cheating with your celebrity boyfriend from The Office.
“I just think it’s all a HUGE STUPID WASTE,” I say. “A waste of PERFECTLY GOOD DREAMSPACE. We are wasting opportunities for GOOD GUILT-FREE EXTRAMARITAL ACTION.”
“Hmm,” says my husband. He is through with his meatloaf, and has now moved on to his carrots. In his case, a carrot is really just a carrot. I love him for it, but I still want my celebrity boyfriend. Come back, celebrity boyfriend. Please come back to me. Dangle your carrot that is not just a carrot.
66 comments March 30th, 2006