This picks back up where I left of with “The Beach Dream,” but I have titled this second part “The Motorcycle Dream” for reasons that are waiting to be discovered below. Enjoy… I am glad to finally get this one out of my head…
I approach the rest of my family; my grandparents, mother, and aunts. I am fuming, my fists clenched so tight that had it been real I probably would have been drawing blood from my palms. I stop in front of them and begin to speak in a powerful voice that rises over the loud crashing of waves behind me.
“What is wrong with you guys?!” I roar, “How can you sit there drinking while dad and uncle Jeb are beating me down over there?! Don’t you even care?!” My arms flail around violently as I speak… like I am some psycho. I might as well have been one. I was crazy in that dream… that’s the only explanation I can come up with. “Don’t you even care?!” I repeat, jumping up and down like a child throwing a tantrum.
Nobody responds. They just continue sipping on their drinks. Atleast that is what I first observe, but then I see the tears running down my grandmother, Grum’s, face. She is staring right at me as she sobs.
‘Why am I yelling at them?’ I think, realizing that none of them even care except for my grandmother. It makes no difference. I am wasting my time.
I turn and look down the beach to where I had been assaulted, and find that my father and uncles are no longer there. They are no longer on the beach at all. I relax my clenched fists and take a deep breath, beginning to walk toward my sobbing grandmother. I decide that I am going to apologize to her, then get on my motorcycle and drive home on Shore Road. I don’t own a motorcycle in reality, nor do I know how to operate one. I would like to learn one day I suppose.
As I reach my grandmother I sit down beside her. I give her a hug, “I’m sorry, Grum. I love you… I have to go.” It is as simple as that. This is all I can say.
She says nothing, just continues to cry. I look down, noticing the rosary that she is holding in her right hand. She is rubbing the crucifix between her thumb and index-finger. I’ll go on the record right now, saying that religious symbols that happen to find their way into my dreams really freak me out. My anxiety flares again at the sight of the crucifix, and intensifies even more as my eyes settle upon a large, hairy, VIOLET-colored spider crawling up my leg. Anyone who regularly visits this site knows very well that I fear spiders more than anything else I can think of.
I panic, swatting the arachnid off of my leg. I run toward my father’s abandoned towel and cooler. I need to calm my anxiety. I feel like I am on the verge of having a heart-attack as I open his cooler and remove a bottle of Yellow Tail brand Pinot Grigio. Dad has already popped the cork, so all I have to do is bite down on the protruding nub at the tip of the bottle and yank it out with my teeth. I spit the cork into the water and tip the bottle straight up, chugging the wine as fast as I can. I will take this moment to clarify that I have never done anything like this in real-life. The thing about this dream that really rubs me the wrong way (above all other things, and there are many) is the fact that alcohol in-and-of itself seems to manifest itself as just another character in it.
I chug the whole bottle of wine, and then I remove another one from the cooler. There is no cork-screw to be found, so in my desperation I smash the tip of the bottle on a nearby rock and pour the wine that had not spilled into my mouth. I repeat this several times.
I have never been drunk in a dream before, and up until last night I couldn’t even imagine that it was possible. I was wrong. This is where things became very frightening for me. To mix the overall randomness and unpredictability of a dream with a slower state of mind within was… harrowing… especially after what happened next…
“You know, I’m proud of you, Earl,” My father says affectionately, throwing his arm over my shoulder.
I shudder violently, startled by his presence beside me. Last I knew I was all by myself, sitting on the towel. He and my uncles had vanished… now he was here with his arm around me. Hadn’t he been knocking me all up and down the northern end of the beach just minutes before? Now he is telling me how proud he is of me?!
I turn and look around the beach, ignoring my father’s presence. I look for my uncles. Surely if Dad was back, there were as well. But they are nowhere to be found… only he had come back.
“What are you proud of?” I ask, turning back to my father. I am deathly afraid of him, and deeply discomforted by the fact that his is arm around me. I begin to feel very dizzy… everything begins to spin around as if I am on some roller-coaster. The purple and red tinted clouds form a tie-dyed pattern that swirls across my perception. It is beautiful.
My father chuckles, removing his arm from my shoulders. “You’re nothing like me at all,” he says, seemingly appreciative of this, “I am very proud.”
I close my eyes, briefly stopping the dance of swirling colors that had dominated my vision. I look to my father and gasp at what I see. It is my uncle Jeb sitting beside me. I close my eyes and rub hard at my eye-lids. Slowly, I open them up again, and I find that my father is sitting there once again. The dizziness returns.
Frightened, I stagger to my feet and stumble toward the rocks at the edge of the beach. I have to get to my motorcycle and get away from this madness. The problem that I face is that I can hardly control what I am doing, and I fall several times before reaching the rocks.
Much to my surprise, I do not hurt myself while climbing the rocks. I step onto the street and my eyes settle upon my motorcycle, parked on the Cape Neddick bridge. I don’t know what make and model it was, not that that even matters. It is colored red and black with my trademark skull and crossbones insignia on each rim. There is no doubt in my mind that this bike bel0ngs to me.
I stumble my way toward the motorcycle, paying no heed to the voice in the back of my head telling me that it is a bad idea to ride it in my current state of mind. I have to get away from that beach, but I am not in control of such things, and cannot not leave unless the dream allows it.
“Earl!” My father yells behind me.
I turn to see him climbing up the last of the rocks. He steps onto the pavement. In his right hand is an open bottle of Pinot. He comes toward me as I straddle the motorcycle and prepare to kick-start it (as if I actually know how to do such things!).
“No,” My father commands, grabbing the right handle-bar of the bike and pushing me off of it.
I fall hard to the ground, smacking my head on the metal guard-rail of the road shoulder.
“This is your ride home,” he says, pushing down the kick-stand of the motorcycle with his foot, and producing (out of thin air) a bicycle that I know all too well from my childhood. It my fathers old red and silver ten-speed…
I don’t argue with him. Instead, I obey, and try to stand up. The dizziness takes me over once again however, and I fall back to the ground. My father doesn’t notice, he simply takes a swig off of the bottle and stares off into space… he is miles away. It doesn’t bother me that he doesn’t make any attempt to help me to my feet. I have become more determined to get away from that beach… by whatever means I can afford.
My second attempt to get up is a successful one. I amble towards my father and take the bicycle from him, placing my hands on the handlebars and walking it down the street for a bit. I listen to the click, click, click of the derailleur, each click letting me know that I was further from the beach. Soon I am ready to get on the bike, despite my dazed state of mind. For some reason I thinkt myself capable of keeping my balance on it. That doesn’t matter though…
As soon as I swing my right leg over the bike and sit down on the seat I hear it. Before I can even start peddling, the roar of my motorcycle reaches my ears… but that is not all that I hear. Ear-piercing, hysterical laughter rises ABOVE the sound of the engine. I place my feet on the pavement, straddling the bike, and turning to look behind me.
Both my father and my uncle Jeb are coming at me on the motorcycle, their faces all lit up in hilarity. Each time I blink my eyes it was a different one of them driving the bike! I have no time to react before they drive over me.
The screwed up thing is that I didn’t wake up there… I still had a few seconds to see them riding off before I came out of the dream. It was insane. There are so many hidden meanings in that dream that I hardly know where to start picking it apart. Any ideas?
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September 16th, 2006 
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