Shine Your Light

Last night I dreamt but before one dreams one is awake. And when you strip it all away are not the dreams the product of the awake. So I will write of the dream but first the awake.

It is the season so Friday after work, happy hour with the staff. A few beers – large beers – and time to leave the kids to their party: homeward bound for me. Carrie calls as I start the car and we chat for a half hour, a pleasant ride. I tease her – Friday nights are Perfect Manhattans, not beers, and she says she will make a pitcher. I protest but when I arrive our favorite pitcher is filled and we start to drink. A brief interruption to feed the kids but two hours of sitting at the kitchen table – drinking and talking: Carrie and I have a few things to discuss.

Among our many topics are boring things that married couples cover, children, and our unique issues: kicking Bill out – the status of our marriage and our sex life. There are times Carrie wants me but she is afraid – afraid of how she will feel in the morning, afraid of sending the wrong message, sending that message to me and to her. She is afraid of creating a relationship built on an unhealthy foundation. But there are still desires, we are still married, still lovers underneath it all.

Finally I get to return some visiting children to their Mom and it is our nuclear family. The twins are downstairs watching TV and Carrie is in our room. The TV is on – some soft core HBO show and Carrie is in a skimpy thing, one I have not seen in a while. It is a beautiful sight, the covers pulled up but the top of her breasts exposed, inviting.

Now alcohol is an interesting drug and does highlight some gender differences. We were both loose, we were both amorous, we were both ready. Well, maybe ready is a wrong word in my case. There is this little thing which comes pretty naturally to me – the brain directs certain blood flows and a little part of me ceases to be quite so little. As I said a natural process, but not so natural after three or four beers and three or so Manhattans.

The kids are watching TV and our door has a lock: we use it. Eventually we take a break and I put the kids to bed. Our door still has a lock and we use it again. Now I have already confessed to my limitations on this night but we own a Rabbit. We have started to experiment with it on occasion and Carrie is coming to enjoy it so long as it is in my hands. As she becomes more comfortable accepting I become more comfortable giving. Let’s just say the Eveready bunny was blushing.

We are wild, we are having sex, we are making love, but to a great degree the main performer is named for a small animal and hums. It adds a level of strangeness, but we are both feeling pleasure and while my “blood flow” is not what I would have hoped for I still manage to climax. Then Carrie is sated and suggests ways to take care of me. The toys are still there and there need for denial is long gone. Of course they work - too well - and of course Carrie is left wondering as to what I am all about.

We sleep – yes we cannot get to dreams without first finding sleep. And I awake in the pre-dawn hours. Carrie is in a haze but we both know better than to start talking. She rolls over and I place my hand on her side and rest. I pleasantly lay there, my hand touching her and then I am excited. The alcohol is gone and my dick is hard, throbbing hard. But Carrie is sleeping and even if she were awake her thoughts would be: we had fun last night but to do it again now would send the wrong message, it would ignore all we have spoken of for a week. So we lay there, my hand still on her, still needing that little bit of contact. She sleeps and in time I join her.

This should be two posts, this one is way too long, but it seems strange to stop here, to tell you to come back when I am in the mood. So feel free to stretch, visit another site for a few minutes but when you come back be ready to dream with me.

Yes she sleeps and with my hand still on her I drift away.



We are at an outdoor party – not a backyard party – a true outdoor event. On a ridge are simple tables strung together, a pleasant day. Carrie and I sit with the twins and then for some reason I see our best friend’s daughter alone at a table, one of the many strung together. She is an only child and is perfect – just ask her parents. She pulls on the table cloth as if a napkin and everything is being pulled askew so I go to help her – to tell her not to pull the cloth off the table, to attempt to put it back. It never really does go back, but the moment passes and I go back to our table.

Carrie and the kids are not there and the food has been put away. I have missed eating and am quite hungry so off to the kitchen where they are cleaning up. I seem to know this “camp” kitchen and find a plate. I put the plate down and when I go to pick it up again the plate is gone but Carrie has arrived. She asks me if I fed the kids and is upset that I had left our table and maybe the kids had not eaten or eaten enough. I am enraged and after words are yelled she leaves and I go running out after her.

Then I am with the twins and also with a man – no one I know, just another person at this strange gathering – and we are walking through some little town, more a façade of fake stores for show. At one point he asks me if my wife runs ads – I realize this is a question of sex ads and I stop him – the kids are with us.

We leave the town and there is an old boardwalk – the style that goes over the dunes at a beach: it is old but the kids run ahead and me and the guy follow. I quickly realize the boardwalk is rotted – incredibly dangerous. I try to catch up to the kids but they are ahead of me. I am alone now, the guy has been left behind I suppose. I come to the peak and the boardwalk is fully rotted and the kids have scampered down the rocks towards the ocean. All of this time I am worried for them and also worried as to Carrie’s reaction when she learns that I allowed them on this rotted structure.

I start to go down the rocks and end up falling and sliding until I come to the bottom and find myself sitting on the edge of the water, sitting in mud. I look for the girls and they are in the distance, in a field with other kids, running and playing. I call out and they raise their hands so I can see them.


The alarm goes off. I am not one to remember dreams but this is still vivid. There is so much to the dream – interpretation will have to wait, though you all can feel free to pipe in. Carrie sleeps and I deal with the children – they want breakfast. This time I feed them.

Then I am with one daughter and we stop in a store on the way. As I pay she announces she will meet me at the car and scampers off. And I realize the end of my dream is coming true.


I once quoted a Dylan song:
You either got faith or you got unbelief and there ain't no neutral ground.

This morning the song again appeared on my iPod and another lyric struck me:

When the truth's in our hearts and we still don't believe?

Shine your light, shine your light on me
Shine your light, shine your light on me
Shine your light, shine your light on me
You know I just couldn't make it by myself.
I'm a little too blind to see.