Chapter 1

DREAMBOAT

Do you ever wonder where the dream people come from?Those people who appear in our dreams yet we’ve never seen elsewhere?They’re fully fleshed-out with their own voices,actions,and physical characteristics.But we’ve never seen them during our waking hours.

Where do they come from?Are they,as some might say,people we’ve seen and registered in our subconscious?Or are they real people,appearing in the dream realm to us?

Since I’m more of a romantic soul,I like to think they’re real and that they somehow made their way into our dreams.Maybe they have something they need to tell us….

****

I AWOKE THAT unbearably hot August morning twisted in damp sheets.I struggled to grasp for those dream images that had a way of always scattering the moment I opened my eyes.The bedroom was sun-dappled,dust motes floating in shafts of light.My dream had been erotic and,as I sat up in bed,throwing off the sheet,I exposed the physical evidence of the sexual nature of the dream.There had been a time in my youth when awakening with‘morning wood’was an everyday occurrence.Now,at 42,it was less frequent,making me yearn to discover the cause.I wiped sweat from my forehead and stared down at my withering erection,almost as if an answer awaited me there.

Think.I closed my eyes,listening to the sounds of traffic outside my bedroom window,the sirens,the whine of the garbage truck as it made its rounds,and an image came.

I was in a room I had never seen before and I was alone with a man.As I jogged my dream memory to provide details,certain things emerged.The room,for one,was a place I knew I had never seen before.I forced myself to psychically survey my surroundings and figured I was in the bedroom of a run-down apartment building.The walls were old;the paint was peeling;the curtains at the window looked like they were once white,but were yellowed now with smoke.I moved to the lone window and looked out:directly below me were elevated train tracks.I couldn’t see a stop,so I wasn’t able to pinpoint my location exactly.But as a train came rumbling down the track,I knew I was in the city I called home:Chicago.

I turned and looked toward the mattress on the hardwood floor.A man lay amid the cream-colored sheets,his dark skin a contrast to the color and texture of the linens.His eyelids were at half-mast,looking both sleepy and lustful at the same time.The lids shadowed the palest green eyes I had ever seen,all the more brilliant in contrast to his dark(Latin?)skin.He smiled and his perfect white teeth and full lips lit up his stubbled face.He patted the bed,inviting me to join him.I hesitated,the window at my back,feeling a strange sense of foreboding.He certainly looked inviting:his hard,muscular body sculpted from tawny granite and dusted with coarse,curly black hair.He cocked his head.

“Come on,sweetheart.”His voice was deep as he sang a lyric from an old reggae song,“The bed’s too big without you.”

He reached beneath the sheets and that’s when I froze.

****

That’s when I awoke.

The confounding thing about the dream was not so much its obvious eroticism and the man lying there.He was the embodiment of my filthiest fantasies.Perfect in every detail,he was a vision of masculine glory.I looked down at myself(not nearly the perfect specimen of my dream man:a body gone a bit thick around the waist,freckled and too pale)and realized that as the thoughts of my dream man unspooled,my dick had engorged itself again.

I got busy with my hand and a dollop of the Wet lube I always kept on the nightstand and forgot all about the confounding aspect of the dream:that I was not only aroused by this man and this early-morning setting,but that I was afraid.

****

IT WAS TWO weeks before it happened again.Or at least that’s what I thought:how many dreams are squandered with the morning light,vanishing from our brains before we even have the chance to consciously remember them?This time,though,I awoke in the middle of the night with a start,heart pounding,and my chest slick with sweat.I knew the perspiration wasn’t from the heat.September had arrived and with it,cooler temperatures.Lake Michigan-borne breezes verged on chilly.

Again,I grasped for scattering dream imagery.Once more,it came back in bits and pieces.First,there was the setting.We were in no run-down apartment,with a view of the L tracks.This time we were in a back alley.As I forced myself to recall details,they came rushing in.The back alley was one I was familiar with:this brick-paved route ran parallel to the L tracks and was in the near north suburb of Evanston,just south of the Davis Street stop.On one side were the high back walls of business buildings,on the other,a tall smooth wall supported the weight of the rumbling trains as they made their runs.The illumination was sickly yellow,cast from the sodium vapor of a street light at the alley’s entrance on Davis.

He was there again—my fantasy Latino man.This time he wasn’t naked,but he was no less alluring.He leaned against a brick wall,form partially obscured by shadow but clear enough for me to have a vision of something that could leave me breathless.His face was almost hidden by shadow,but his dark,well-cut features superseded the darkness:again,the stubble and the pale green eyes,the perfect smile.He wore one of those shirts politically incorrectly referred to as a wife beater.He had pulled the ribbed cotton up to reveal a perfectly flat and defined brown stomach,glistening with sweat.A treasure trail of black hair snaked downward and my eyes followed.He had pushed his frayed jeans down—almost to his knees.With his other hand,he stroked himself.He paused to let a gob of spit slide slowly from mouth onto the purple head of his cock and then began pumping it up and down.It was long and thick,with a loose,dark foreskin that alternately revealed and hid the shiny plum of his cock head.

My mouth watered.

A cigarette dangled from between his lips;the cherry alternately glowed and darkened as he jerked his head,beckoning me closer.I cast a look behind me;people hurried past the alleyway entrance and I guessed we were too far back in shadow for them to see us.None appeared to take notice of the two men by the dumpster.

My heart pounded as I moved closer.Blood roared in my ears.He thrust his hips upward as I neared.The want in his face drew me like a beacon.He threw the cigarette on the ground and whispered,“Please.”

I moved quickly and positioned myself on my knees.I pushed his hand away from the cock before me and replaced it with my own,guiding it toward my mouth.I was already starting to savor it,knowing it would be salty and fragrant with the smell of perspiration and something darker and more organic.

Then day arrived,a traitor.The sky going from darkest blue to bright,cloudless sun.It was the kind of time passage that could only occur in a dream.I didn’t take his cock out of my mouth as I turned my head slightly to see a crowd had formed around us.There was my mother,a disappointed frown on her face.My two sisters leaned close together,clutching one another for support,their mouths open in horror.There was even one of my teachers from high school,a man who had taught me world history and who had encouraged me to study history myself at university.His dark eyes sparkled in the sun as he slowly shook his head back and forth.A group of teenage boys,wearing punk skater uniforms,pointed and laughed.

And making his way through the crowd was a police officer,his clean-shaven face red with fury.

****