Sweet Dreams…

One of my first conscious thoughts when I woke up this morning was:

🎶 Sweet dreams are made of these
Who am I to disagree? 🎶

Yes, this is another recounting of one of my dreams. This is the second morning in a row that I’ve awakened in the middle of a lovely dream. Y’all are probably getting tired of me talking about dreams, but it’s only recently that I’ve started remembering them, and some are just too good not to share.

I won’t really talk about the dream I woke up from yesterday because it was based on a real memory, and honestly, it never got to anything particularly exciting. This morning’s dream, however, was a little more interesting.

It began with someone asking me a question I often get when people find out I’m originally from Alabama: “What do you think of Vermont winters?” It’s always some variation of that question. My answer is usually something along the lines of “I love them” or “I don’t mind them,” followed by “I hate the heat in the South.”

In the dream, someone either asked me about skiing, or I volunteered that I wished I enjoyed skiing but had never learned how. I mentioned that I’d once tried to learn to water ski but had never been successful.

That’s when things got interesting.

The dream began with an actual childhood memory that gradually transformed into something entirely different.

When I was growing up, my family had a camp on the Alabama River. We’d take our camper down there and spend our days fishing, swimming, and generally enjoying ourselves. It was a wonderful place to spend a summer weekend.

When I was a teenager, I tried to learn to water ski. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the upper-body strength to pull myself up out of the water. I remember getting into position behind the boat, holding onto the rope, and waiting for Daddy to take off. When he did, my skis went one way, and I went another. To make matters worse, I had trouble letting go of the rope and ended up being dragged underwater. Daddy stopped the boat, and I finally surfaced.

That’s where the actual memory ends and the dream takes over.

Apparently, in the dream, I was having some difficulty after surfacing, and my older brother’s friend jumped into the water and helped pull me back into the boat. Now, I don’t actually have an older brother, so that’s your first indication that my sleeping mind had decided to rewrite history.

And what a rewrite it was!

My imaginary brother’s friend was gorgeous, especially to a gay teenager who was still trying to come to terms with his feelings for other guys. Needless to say, I developed an immediate case of hero worship. I spent the rest of our time at the river getting to know him and following him around like a lovesick puppy.

When we returned home, I couldn’t stop thinking about him.

Then, one day, a letter arrived in the mail. It was from him! He wanted to know how I was doing, how the beginning of the school year was going, and all sorts of other ordinary things that suddenly seemed extraordinary because he was the one asking.

He and my brother were in college, which would have made him about nineteen, although in the dream he seemed only a couple of years older than I was.

I wrote back, and before long, we became pen pals. Remember, when I was a teenager, there was no texting, email, or instant messaging. If you wanted to communicate with someone who lived somewhere else, you wrote a letter, put a stamp on it, and waited for the mailman. There was something wonderful about getting a letter from someone special, even if waiting for the next one could seem like an eternity.

The following summer, we all returned to our camp on the river, and my brother brought his friend along. This time, he seemed to spend more time with me than with my brother. At night, he slept on the top bunk while I slept on the bottom, and my brother slept on the couch that pulled out into a bed.

After that summer, the letters continued, but now he occasionally called me on the telephone, too. I can only imagine how excited my teenage self must have been every time the phone rang and it was him.

Another summer passed, and once again, my brother brought his friend to the river.

One afternoon, while Daddy and my brother were fishing, he asked if I wanted to go for a walk. Of course I did!

We followed one of the animal trails, probably a cow path, that wound through the woods along the river. We walked deeper into the trees, laughing and joking as we went. At some point, we stopped, and I found myself looking into his eyes. By then, I’d grown enough that we were about the same height.

And before I could think better of it, I kissed him.

It was just a quick kiss on the lips, but the moment I realized what I’d done, I jerked away and immediately began apologizing. I was terrified. I’d ruined everything! This wonderful friendship, which had come to mean so much to me, was surely over. I was probably on the verge of tears.

But instead of pulling away, he reached for me, drew me close, and kissed me back.

What had begun as a brief, impulsive kiss became something altogether more wonderful.

And then Isabella woke me up because it was time for her breakfast.

I got out of bed, fed her, and crawled back under the covers. As I lay there thinking about the dream, I drifted back to sleep.

And would you believe it? The dream picked up right where it had left off!

We were still standing in the woods, kissing. His strong, muscular body was pressed against my scrawny, awkward teenage frame, and for the first time, I knew that the feelings I’d been carrying around for so long were returned. We could feel each other’s erections through our shorts. It was the sort of moment a young gay boy could only dream about, especially growing up in Alabama when I did.

Then the dream jumped ahead another year.

It was summer again, and I was eighteen, preparing to begin college in the fall. By this point, our relationship had blossomed into a full-fledged romance. Whenever we managed to get a moment alone, we couldn’t seem to keep our hands off each other.

One afternoon, we took another walk through the woods, following the river farther than we’d ever gone before. Eventually, we reached the end of a narrow strip of land, something like a little peninsula, separating the main river from a quiet lagoon. The water there was deep enough for swimming but sheltered from the stronger current of the river.

He began taking off his clothes.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“We’re going skinny-dipping,” he replied, as though it were the most natural thing in the world.

Well, who was I to disagree?

We undressed and slipped into the water. Unlike the main river, where the water could be surprisingly cool, the water in this little lagoon was wonderfully warm. We swam together for a while, enjoying the privacy of our secluded little paradise.

Then he pulled me close and kissed me.

There we were, naked in the warm waters of the Alabama River, our bodies pressed together, with nothing between us and no one around to interrupt us. The kiss deepened, there was nothing between our erection this time, and it was becoming increasingly obvious that neither of us was particularly interested in swimming anymore.

And just as the dream was getting even better…

My alarm went off.

I opened my eyes, realized it was time to get up and write my blog post, and immediately thought:

🎶 … dreams are made of these
Who am I to disagree? 🎶