Close but no Cigar

Last night I had the strangest dream
I sailed away to China, in a little rowboat to find ya
And you said you had to get your laundry cleaned…

If you’ve never been awoken to the sounds of 80s One Hit Wonder Matthew Wilder, count yourself lucky. But the irony is that I did just have the strangest dream.

I was in Vienna with Glenn Close discussing Sophocles when all of sudden she took out a huge cigar, lit it and started sucking on it, hard. While in real life I revile cigar smoke, I found myself oddly aroused.
Then a man dressed in a sailor suit, from the waist up, entered the room, wheeling in a room service cart. He pulled the food cover off to reveal large pile of sausages. I offered Ms Close a sausage but she said Oh no, they’re for you.

And then, in the way that can only happen in dreams, I was suddenly in a speeding train going through a long tunnel on my way to the airport where I would board a large plane. Once on the plane, I looked out the window and saw a rocket blasting off into space. The plane landed in Greece where I hopped into a Ferrari and drove to the Parthenon. Inside my father, who was eating a twinkie, was giving a lecture to a group of young master bakers on human evolution. I walked in just as he was talking about “man first walking erect.” And then the columns of the Parthenon just flopped over, as if they were made out of rubber or latex, but no one seemed to notice.

All the while a condor made lazy circles in the sky while mocking me – fraud fraud fraud.

What could this mean?

Fortunately I am quite skilled at dream analysis from my days with the British Foreign Service. (Okay, I wasn’t actually employed by the British Foreign Service, but I was with them, or several of them at any rate. And these people are a little uptight.)

Vienna clearly refers to those little sausages, such as one might find at a party, a party in Hollywood. I had recently been taken to such a party by my close friend, Glen, a sailor. The refusal of the sausage was clearly a reference to the fact that this party was hosted by a lesbian power broker, who naturally was a vegetarian.

To get to Los Angeles, I took a train since I have an irrational fear that if I flew the plane would be hit by a rocket. I remember that night distinctly because on my way up to the house I accidentally got grease all over a Ferrari owned by a renowned pastry chef. I had been startled by a priest who had slipped on a rubber (it is Los Angeles) and was having trouble standing up again. Never mind I happened to have a small tub of grease in my hands.

It all made sense except, why dream about this? And what of the condor at its accusatory call? I would have to use all my powers of analysis to figure this out. (Tee-hee, I said anal.)

Fraud fraud fraud. That sounds like freude the German word for “joy”, the first word in the chorale movement of Beethoven’s ninth symphony. Beethoven was the name of an unfortunate series of movies about a slobbering beast and a St Bernard, the former being played by Charles Grodin. Charles Grodin did a short stint as Andy Rooney’s doppelganger on 60 Minutes II.

Could that be it? Could this be a resurfacing of the anxiety caused by the time 60 Minutes exposed me on their show as a fraud posing as a lesbian Hollywood power broker? Damn you Ed Bradley! Will the nightmares never end?!?

No. I hadn’t taken the analysis (tee-hee) far enough. 60 minutes, as in lunch hour. I had just fallen asleep in the back room of the copy shop and almost missed lunch. They’re serving loukanika at a close by Greek restaurant with a nautical theme. Never take a nap on an empty stomach.

The only loose end is the cigar. I guess sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.