Dreams.

[gottawonder]

I had a very detailed dream last night.

I dreamed that I was walking around in a city that I used to live in (though it is always kind of fluid in my dreams, changing for whatever the dream needs to show), and in a sort of market area, a woman got my attention, and called me over to her. She handed me what looked like a modern room key for a hotel (they look like debit cards, almost) in a battered cardboard sleeve. It was shiny and gold-colored, and it said "broom closet" on it. Like, the hotel room the key was for was labeled "broom closet".

To the me in the dream, the key was obviously for this very clandestine and underground "hotel" that was more like an illegal club. Some people could buy a card, but it was kind of hard to get one. For me to be handed one for free was VERY suspicious, and not entirely welcome.

The woman just smiled and said "you should go. Someone wants you to go. It'll be fun."

Then, I'm walking into the lobby of a normal kind of building that has several stories, some are offices, etc. Just floors rented out to whoever. I go to the staircase, which, after several very normal flights of stairs, changes to ragged carpet that might have been luxurious once, and there's beer stains and cigarette butts, and it's now the entrance to the club.

I've come up from kind of a back entrance, that goes straight into a hallway that is very narrow, with "rooms" off of it. Some of the rooms are just curtained nooks, obviously for liaisons. Some of the rooms have closed doors. All of it looks run down, like no one cleans. There are people everywhere in the hall, drinking, laughing, all of them look exotic, like circus performers and burlesque dancers. This is maybe where the "performers" hang out, and bring their "dates".

My key saying it's for the "broom closet" is a little joke. The thing is, no one comes to the hotel to stay the night. There aren't really any rooms, but everyone knows that already. The key is sort of like having membership, or an invitation. The status of the holder is indicated by the type of room. My card saying "broom closet" is a way of saying I got in, marginally. An important guest would have gotten something like "executive suite".

The hall eventually opens into a huge room, just like in the movies how the clubs are enormous and loud and full of gorgeous people. This one had the exotic performers on suspended platforms connected by catwalks, all far above the crowd.

Someone grabbed me by the wrist, and spoke to me: "how did you get in here?" I showed them the card. They said "you really should leave. If someone GAVE you that card for free, it belonged to someone else who SHOULD have been here tonight, and you don't know what happened to them. You don't know who that person was, and someone here is going to think that you are that person because you have that card. You're being set up for something. You should leave."

So I left. It was still daylight outside. I walked to a lovely park just down the street from the outwardly normal looking building, and some friends of mine were there. Mostly I remember one friend, who I was very close to in my 20's, and though I keep in touch with him, I rarely see him anymore. We talked and laughed, and sat at a little café eating and drinking.

This started to bleed into lucidity, because the real "me" was asking my friend if he was here at this park a lot. Could I start finding him here? Could I start meeting him here? How could I find him again?

Then I woke up.