People think dreams aren’t real just because they aren’t made of matter, of particles. Dreams are real. But they are made of viewpoints, of images, of memories and puns and lost hopes.
Neil Gaiman
I had a work crush before the Work Bestie. This was back when the Work Bestie was the friend I talked to about my crushes, not the person I was crushing on. The Work Crush used to speak poetry to me, first in his native tongue and then immediately translated into my own. Swoon.
I did not flirt with The Work Crush. He is an amazing man – brilliant, talented, and thoughtful, with many tales to tell and the wit to tell them well. Still, I never wanted to start anything with him, in part because I am a coward afraid of being hurt again, but mostly because he never seemed like relationship material. I want someone who is going to stick around for the mundane everyday of partnership and not mysteriously disappear into another corner of the world, or a hidden corner of himself, for who knows how long. The Work Crush is a colleague, a friend, and, in weaker moments, a crush, that’s all.
I had a dream about the Work Bestie back when I was only interested in friendship. It took place at work, which was probably the only normal thing about the dream. He was seated like an emperor on his throne. There were people gathered around him, students, colleagues, I don’t know who else. The room was large and crowded, and acoustically hard, like a main hall in a museum. This was not a room anything like the rooms we actually have on campus.
The Work Bestie was in the center of everything, but not necessarily engaged in the goings on. Clearly, he was done teaching. Now he was just soaking it all in. As the crowd thinned I moved in closer, planning to go talk to him. Students were saying their fond farewells as if they were engaged in conversation with him. He wasn’t engaging with anyone though.
They were acting like he was responding, but he was just sitting there. Then I saw his eyes, black as obsidian. He has beautiful, dark-brown eyes, but in the dream they weren’t the eyes I knew. There was no pupil, no iris, each entire eyeball was endless black, all the way around, all the way down. The people looking into his eyes only saw their own reflections and mistook those mirrors for the man they were talking to. He matched their energy perfectly every time, but he wasn’t participating. There wasn’t any response there behind those reflective spheres. Still, each person walked away feeling like they’d had this moment of deep connection with him.
His eyes were the first thing I noticed when I met him. To see him without any light in them, with the windows to his soul gone hard and black, was bone-chilling. Terrified, I wanted to run away, but I wasn’t sure if the Work Bestie had seen me. I couldn’t tell if I needed to play it cool, back away slowly, nonchalantly, or if I should just run as fast as my legs would carry me. My fear paralyzed me, and in that paralysis, it began to swell until it woke me.
I had a weird dream when I was getting to know that other colleague too. It also took place at work, but this time I was alone when I saw a snake in one of the planters. We used to have a one-eyed gopher snake on campus named Carl. This wasn’t Carl. This snake was white as cream but, when the light hit him, his scales shimmered like mother of pearl.
The snake was so beautiful, but also, I had no idea what kind of snake it was. I’ve personally never seen a rattlesnake on campus, but they are native to the area. I can’t have a venomous snake loitering about public areas of the campus. That’s no way to run hospitality. So like Alice following the rabbit I kept trying to catch up to this unexpectedly fast and unpredictable white animal.
If I saw its tail, I would be able to tell if it was a rattlesnake, but I didn’t think it was. I didn’t think it was any type of snake that I knew. I kept following it trying to get a good look at it. I didn’t need to know its full taxonomy, I just needed to know if it was venomous. If I could see its head, the shape of its head, the shape of its pupils, I could maybe know if it was safe. I just wanted to see what I was dealing with, but it kept moving in unexpected ways, always evading inspection.
My alarm went off before I ever figured out if the snake was dangerous. I used to have a pet ball python named Spot. Snakes aren’t inherently good or evil, they’re just living their lives. Spot was a good boy. Some snakes are dangerous, though.
Later at work, when the dream flashed back like a memory of the last time I was on campus, it occurred to me that the snake was representative of the Work Crush. I used to have a recurring dream in junior high where I had to get to homeroom, but class met on a basketball court inside the top of the Matterhorn at Disneyland and I’d be in trouble if I was late, but every time I’d almost climbed high enough to crawl in, Dumbo would fly by and swat me down with the flap of an ear.
I didn’t go to school at Disneyland. The Work Crush is not a snake. Dreams are just weird like that, how something can be totally different, and yet, you just know that that is what they are. The snake, like my crush, was something beautiful that I wasn’t sure if I could trust, something that didn’t want to be seen completely.
I don’t always know what my dreams are trying to tell me. Sometimes, they manifest so slowly that like a vague recollection of a fortune teller’s divination you have almost forgotten them entirely by the time you’d know if they came true. Sometimes, they are heavy-handed, too on the nose. Mostly, mine are just emotional vignettes, which are very honest, but not necessarily true. My subconscious gets cranky when it thinks I might be getting happy about something. At least that’s consistent.
“Take me in, tender woman
Take me in, for heaven’s sake
Take me in, tender woman,” sighed the snake
“I saved you,” cried the woman
“And you’ve bitten me, but why?
You know your bite is poisonous and now I’m going to die”
“Oh shut up, silly woman,” said the reptile with a grin
“You knew damn well I was a snake before you took me in”– Johnny Rivers
The Snake
Crystal, Clearly 
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