Mine are like surreal movies, hence the heading Reel Dreams. I usually have some form of powers. Often, there is an unfinished romance.

I was so certain it was real. After waking from a 6 hour night’s rest after the night’s check-in to the Long Room Bar (where I met a cool guy wearing a “Brotally” T-shirt) I went through the morning ritual of breakfast and laid on the futon to organize my thoughts and recover from my injured state, meaning too much boos and too many smokes. I nod off again for around two hours. I have never seen such truer, vivid dreams than these of late.

I was on a bus headed to Durango, Colorado where a number of friends, family and old instructors were gathered. We were all about the large white house, milling about, some people were smoking on the porch, others eating in the kitchen or dining hall while others had tottered of to bed, rather early for my taste. It was the first time he kissed me.

I had dreamed about us together before… many, many times. In fact, there is no one that I have dreamed of more. We had been together in my slumbering thoughts on five or six other occasions, highly intimate. However, I never remember him kissing me before this and regardless as to whether this holds true what I do know is that within the realm of dreams, this was the first time we kissed. His lips held that lovingly anxious energy, so full and moist, yet his head remained refrained and hesitant to lean my way. He smiled that embarrassed boyish smile, blushing at our moment. Now his face is up close. It happens almost as a child-like pop kiss but with a little lingering touch with my cupids bow. He pauses. He comes forward again. We shared a rushing embrace of taste and flooding sensations as I could feel his breath move inside of me and mine returning to his. Our bodies had more to say to each other and, once again, it was all for the first time.

I almost said, “Perhaps we should slow down. I don’t want us to rush the physical part,” but I didn’t speak. “What? Is everything o.k,” he says looking up at me. I bring his mouth to mine again and move to the rest of this gorgeous, protective, hard body, where, as things often are with a first time, one can find his release in seconds. He says something to the extent of “I knew I wouldn’t be able to [wait].” I laugh. We kiss.

Outside now, I’m looking up at the sky with an unfamiliar, anonymous girlfriend figure and I suggest she watch as the sky is taking on another life all its own. Rolling and ripping waves of stratus turning cumulus, peeking into lenticular shades, night turns from day. Happening within moments, everyone’s gaze goes to the now night sky as the darkness begins to billow into momentous, unforgettable images of the cosmos. Some people are frightened, some in heightened states of disbelief, others in mild shock all the while I simply watch and smile, amazed. Looking at this cosmological tapestry unveiled before us, with the wonder of a kid I run inside of the house looking for Beast.

Before I slept these two hours I watched two episodes of my second favorite childhood cartoon series, X-Men, specifically season 3, episode 35, “Obsession,” which concerns Archangel’s insatiable hunger for revenge against Apocalypse in a world recently saved by the legendary Phoenix after it awakens within Jean Grey. Evidently, in this other world I knew Beast would appreciate this site best.

Unable to find my fury friend I return to the ever-changing cloudscape which has returned to a nearly normal night sight with one majestic exception. Spread wide across midnight colors is a glowing, ornately detailed symbol of the legendary bird. My most beloved of mythical creatures beams down at me. Snapping a photo with my phone I notice a distant shadow approach the floating Phoenix.

This was a government issued machine. As it silently plowed the sky it began erasing the mighty bird with some mega-maid vacuum power. I snap a photo with my phone, then another. The machine notices me. Heading towards me, I know what it wants. I have proof now, proof that this metal soldier will not allow published. Inside now, a gigantic robotic arm reaches in the door smacking an old friend, Michael Sands into the wall, unconscious. This thing is obviously going to hurt everyone if necessary to get this photo wiped from my phone and ultimately my memory. I stop and reason with the mechanical entity which has now assumed the form of a man, mixed in color and stature. “My contacts are important. I know you need the phone but I ask that you only delete the one image. I should be allowed all my other data.” Hopefully, this alien would see that I meant know harm but simply wanted to remember such a beautiful sight of this legendary image resting in the sky. Maybe this creature was only upset that I photographed it without permission. My phone is taken then returned. What happens next, I did not enjoy to say the least.

Raising both hands as open palms, placing them to either side of my head, the unknown does his deed. It’s as if I hear a piercing noise but I don’t, it’s more of change in pressure around my whole body, heavier around my head. I scream, fall to the floor weeping as if everyone I’d every known had died. The room is clearing, people are looking at me having no idea what is wrong. The machine turned man figure is gone.

Trying to make sense of this in my awake state, no one else had seen this intruder who washed me of a memory. I appeared insane.

I ran outside to find Rob and John. Two other anonymous figures sat on the night bathed porch, having a drink. “Where is Rob and John?” Immediately, they both stood up, unmasked from the railing just behind them. I run around to the other side. “Did you see the sky?” I ask. “No,” they both say. I make an annoyed huff, turn, walking away, waking up.

On a real note, the two men in Chicago for whom I have felt the deepest look nothing alike but were born on the same day. I discovered this yesterday.