Suzi Moonlight

I don’t know about other night people, but I have some pretty weird dreams. Half of the short stories in my book were based on dreams. ‘Based’ isn’t really accurate – they were dreams. It’s almost like cheating, but I have strange enough dreams to write them up as stories and screenplays. I wonder if people ever have poetry dreams?

In mine, sometimes I’m the main character, sometimes a bit player, sometimes a viewer – like I’m watching a movie. I’ve been a young boy, an old man, just about any character you can imagine. Last night’s dream involved a school bus, a steep incline, kites and a really cool globe device that you could think of images and they would appear in the globe. You could zoom in on the image, move it from side-to-side, etc. – just by thinking it. It was very cool, but the goal was to find an image you like and set it into the globe. The image I wanted was a lake with trees. It was all grey and misty. I couldn’t figure out how to get the thing to ’save’ the image. I would back away, and the image would pan out. It was frustrating, and might say something about me that I’m unaware of.

Psychics, be they real or not, often say they can’t foresee things in their own lives. It’s a legend like vampires can or cannot be around garlic. I can’t decipher my own dreams. I can decipher other people’s dreams very easily. Sometimes, it’s totally embarrassing when someone is telling me a dream they had, and I know what everything in the dream means and what that means they are thinking/feeling. I know this goes against the whole ‘I’m dense’ that I profess. I guess I just have a minor layer of complexity. Maybe, my brain is cautious, so I take personal things at face value so I don’t risk too much?

Last night, I looked up my first boyfriend. I didn’t really date till I was out of high school. I went on a date or two, but never had a ‘boyfriend’. I was too busy goofing off with my friends and causing trouble for the authorities that be within the school environment. I looked him up, because he’s playing in a few weeks, literally down the street from me. I was going to go to the show to see how he looks now and check out his wife. The wonderful tool of the internet made that unnecessary. His wife has set up a website for them. I should mention, by ‘play’ I mean perform. He’s a musician. I’ve only dated musicians and musicphiles. Not on purpose, but I have so many mixed tapes… I always thought I would date a sarcastic, sullen, literate fellow. I don’t think I’ve ever even met one.

Anyway, my first boyfriend is old. He looks like a ‘grown-up’. His wife is old. I don’t understand how that happened. We were the same age. Now, he’s old. It would seem logical that I would, therefore, be old as well. I don’t think I’m old. I’m not overweight. I’m not wrinkled. I’ve been dying my hair since I was 9, but I don’t think I’d be grey. I should explain, nine is young, but I wanted dark brown hair, and I had light brown. My mother said, ‘If you want darker hair, dye it.’ So, I did. I’ve had almost black hair, black and blonde hair, burgundy hair, streaked hair… I tried to dye it green once, but it wouldn’t take. I guess that’s where my hair drew the line. I thought it would look great to have hair the colour of my eyes. I once saw a guy with blue eyes and hair and swoon!

I don’t look my age. That’s not vanity, that’s from the reaction I get when I tell some new friend my age.

I work part-time at a library. After 9-11, my business sales slacked, horribly. I decided to get a part-time job, just till things picked up. I’ve always wanted to work at a library. After business picked back up again, I couldn’t bring myself to leave. Books! Books everywhere! New books! Classic books! Authors I’d never heard of! It’s like a hungry person working at a snack shop. Which reminds me, I saw a book called The Boy Who Ate Books and forgot to get it. Argh!

Yeah, so I work at a library, and I told a new girl my age. For the next two weeks, all I heard about was my age. She had told everyone how old I was. I wasn’t keeping it a secret. I would have told anyone who asked, but apparently it was big news. Geez, I almost put my real name. “[my real name] you’re how old? That’s impossible!” Two weeks of me assuring everyone I was as old as I said. It made me cautious about telling people. I’ve never cared about telling my age. Suddenly, I had become one of those coy women, but I imagine for a different reason.

I’ve been waiting all my life to get old. I was rarely taken seriously when younger. I was ‘cute’. Cute overrides anything you say. The internet was my salvation. I could write under a genderless name, with no photo and be taken seriously. God knows – He really does – how much I love that. I’m thinking maybe my time has finally come. If my ex is old, then maybe I’m finally old enough that people will listen to what I’m saying and not stop me to tell me I have pretty hair. Except, yesterday a stranger told me I have pretty hair. ::sigh::