Strange Dreams of David Yow

So I don't remember all of this dream, and can't make sense of it. But it was unsettling enough to wake me up at 4am. Almost what you might call a nightmare. Welcome to my subconscious mind, folks.

In the dream, I am visiting my father (who in the dream is very much alive, unlike in real life) in an apartment (apparently mine, because my stuff is in it, but it's not my actual home, more on which below). Not sure where my mother is in this scenario tho' she's apparently alive too. I've had a bad day at work, apparently, but I forget now what's happened. I think, in fact, that the apartment is supposed to be mine, because my stuff is in it, my movie posters and DVDs and books and such. One of the posters is for a film called Great Balls of Fire, about the life of Jerry Lee Lewis, and I've been watching that film for the first time that night, except the film I'm watching stars Nick Nolte and Jessica Lange, neither of whom, as far as I know, are in Great Balls of Fire, which I know full well in the waking world, but apparently not in the dream. It's not a very good movie, it turns out.

Anyhow, somehow, after I'm watching that movie alone, I am sitting and talking with my father, when David Yow shows up (I have a big interview with him in Big Takeover at present, in real life.). I'm hurt, offended, confused, because he hasn't replied to an email I sent him, but here he is in the dream, visiting my Dad, whom he had met when I was interviewing him (but not really. The only person I have interviewed that my Dad had any interaction with was Eugene Chadbourne, who signed a DVD to my Dad, once, at my request, since my Dad was sick and Eugene is a nice guy. He never actually met my Dad, tho'. All that part is true, and may even have some sort of role in the dream, since - see below - Eugene is coming to town... but my father was long dead by the time I was meeting David Yow).

But back to the dream: emotionally bruised, I'm sitting between my Dad and David Yow on the couch, and asking Yow, "Whattaya mean, you'll visit my father but not me?" I say to him. "What, do you like him more than me?"

"No secret there!" he blurts back, then tells me to check the news, so I do, scrolling through my phone. It's all over the news that, in disgust with his country, David Yow has become a Canadian.

I give him a "wow, congratulations," kinda comment or two than go back to expressing my surprise that he hasn't been in touch with me (which is also true, but what the hell, the interview was last year). I get all hurt and angry with him and tell him to go fuck himself, and he tells me something back - turns out he'd rather hang out with my father anyway.

Fine, I can tell when I'm not wanted. In a huff, I leave them to it. I step out the front door and it turns out to get out of the apartment I have to navigate along a narrow ledge, kinda like, what was it, Robert Hays in one of the Creepshow movies? Or Cat's Eye? Whatever movie it was - I actually can't remember but it's a real movie, some kinda Stephen King anthology flick - where a guy is forced to sidle along a ledge outside a building, pigeons pecking at his ankles, and come back in, having circumnavigated the building at the risk of falling to his death in the streets below. Below me, though, it seems like some hellish inferno, not city streets, but to get to the exit, this is what I must go across. David Yow and I should some parting barbs at each other, and I can hear Yow talking happily with my Dad, making observations that Great Balls of Fire was not a very good movie. And I'm thinking, well, it's cool that David Yow will see all my stuff, but he's right, that poster shouldn't be on my wall, people will think I like the movie and in fact, I don't.

My dream-brain flickers with some memories about how I came to have the poster on my wall, involving a friend giving it to me or my finding it cheap or something, but even if they are exculpatory of my dream self, justify my having a poster for a crap movie up there, in truth, they're not real memories, since a) the poster for the movie is not the actual poster for Great Balls of Fire, looks nothing like it - looks more like the poster for another movie with Jessica Lange (but no Nick Nolte) called Sweet Dreams, about Patsy Cline; b) I have seen neither of these films in real life; and c) I do not have the poster for either of these films in real life, let alone on the wall of my apartment (which, I should also add, is no apartment I've ever actually lived in, is not laid out like any real place I've been at all). Why is this mis-remembered movie that I haven't seen a feature in the dream, complete with false memories of how I came to have it (framed, no less)?

I can't say, but in my dream I have some dream-justifications that seem to satisfy me. 

In fact, I've been reading a rock bio, of Ice-T, and enjoying it, and contemplating which rock bio I will read next - maybe the Keith Richards bio that Billy Hopeless gave me? - and both of these movies are rock bios, but... neither of them are films I care about or have thought about, ever. Maybe it's related to my music journalism?

Anyhow, self-conscious that David Yow will judge me for my poster for a movie that I hadn't seen when I put it up, and hurt that he's fallen out of touch (but kinda happy that he's hanging out with my Dad, since he seems like a neat guy), I circumnavigate the pits of hell on this ledge, and arrive at the exit of the building, and make my way to - what, the building where I live now, which does resemble (in the hall and elevator) a building my parents lived in when they moved out of my childhood home. I think that I am supposed to be going home to my wife, though since the dream (or at least this portion of the dream, given the building) appears to be set in the 1990's, I wasn't actually married then, so I'm not sure who that wife was supposed to be. But there is a cute neighbour in the elevator, and I hit on her, making an excuse that I'm stoned. She is flattered and blushes and smiles but declines. I wake up feeling guilty, beside my (actual) wife (and actually a bit stoned, still, since I took a puff on my vape pen earlier in the evening, which might be why I'm having nightmares; I haven't had any in quite awhile, but I felt kinda crap after work yesterday, and didn't want to feel that way).

Awake, disturbed by my own dreams, I check my phone. It's 4am. But I need to pee, and I've gotta write this down.

Now that I've written it down, I gotta pee again.