I’ve been lacking some hours of sleep recently, I just woke up form a little nap and from a very confusing dream. One of those which makes your head heavy, very heavy. I need to write it quickly, but first and more important, I’ve been dreaming in English and I woke up thinking in English too, I’m losing it and I suffer in despair for trapping the words before they slip away from my mind… I want to let them slide down my fingers and fix them on the blank paper, make them mine...
I was teaching, doing my thing… no, I was teaching English but these kids could already speak English. That was a very old building as from the end of the last century. I wasn’t in Linares. I had a boss… I had a boss I had been talking to earlier, in my mind I assumed him to be him. He was definitely the one of mine. Hang on a second, I’m in, say, Louisiana, and my students are all black folks. This girl with her plaited hair is exactly the same as the little girl I taught in Morocco. My lovely little one. She is singing and when an older boy starts following her and clapping, she starts dancing. It is amazing, still I had to do my thing, and I have to teach them something, no matter what really. But I’m there for a reason. First I need them to realize I am there. Suddenly we are engaged in the class, we are reading something, I don’t remember that. I must have been doing well as I am satisfied. They look happy and into whatever the woman who is me is saying. I say something, say “Good guys, now let’s move this and think about how…" I can’t hear her very well, but suddenly I’m trapped in her body again while all the kids start packing her stuff and leaving, I run to the door “Seriously? We haven’t finished and until we finish we are not allowed to leave the building, you know it” they look amused and I can feel a sense of complicity as if we shared a common knowledge; yet I’m not aware of it. The woman
who is you goes back to the board and I remain observing the whole picture again. The teacher approaches her desk, the students take out her books and notebooks, the woman who is me starts talking and the little girl with plaited hair starts singing. An older boy starts clapping and she dances. They all join a bit and the woman opposite me smiles at them. She nods and then holds the little girl’s hand follows her movements and finally leads her to hair chair kneeling next to her, she caresses her hair and stands up to start it over again. We are trapped. I go next to some of the big boys and I start annoying him. He can’t see me. Some men with very long dark brown coats and expensive shoes and hats enter the classroom and take some of the students away out
off the blue. And the room is also blue-ish. I run away. Now I’m out, I run along the corridors searching the boss' office, the little girl is holding my hand and I’m rushing her. We are scared and we need to find the Head of Studies' Office. I find it. There are lots of people waiting outside. That is shocking and makes me feel impotent. You can see that the petty place is packed with big business men. You can see it through the old ocher coloured glass of the double door. There is a little room on the right side of the corridor, the cleaning women smile at us in a cheerful way as if it were normal to pop out there. But it is not, you can tell for their sudden frown. “Aww... Sweeties, what are you doing here?” “Oh! mummy I promise I won’t do it again. I won’t have pudding tonight” the little one says. “It wasn’t that serious, though, don’t you think?” I respond in an authoritative way, in order to play the fact that I am the teacher and I’m taking the little girl to the office down. I cuddle her and lift her in my arms. I walk towards the door and it is open, at least five or eight big body guards come out laughing in a very familiar and confident way, cracking jokes. I can see two young men sitting on the chairs in front of the desk, quite relaxed, too comfortably, I would say. My boss' laughter echoes in every corner of the place. He is massive and so white he’s ugly “Hahaha! Forget this not! Neglect this young man here!” he says pointing to the one sitting on the left opposite him, who leans back a little bit smiling, as he taps the brim of his beret with his first and second fingers as to say good bye to the men leaving, and
I can’t believe you are hear, I kiss them and hug them. Dom, and James! They have come to take me out from here.
I can feel something wet and warm on my waist. The girl has pissed on me, she looks petrified. I have to run. “I can’t believe you are here! I’ll see you in a bit, sorry Sir, for interrupting like this. I can wait” I rush out and I go down the wooden stairs. They are old and I can
here the steps creaking as I slide them down. There is an enormous door and the dust in the air, and the amount of light coming from the outside make it the blurry picture of an old massive door against the light. I almost doubt whether to open it and go through the doorframe, but she holds me tight, I can still feel her fear and I get out.
Now everything is very light and we are not there anymore, we wander around the place. I feel as if there were no way out or I was in a very big film setting. I can smell the sea. I suddenly notice that I am dreaming and that this is Atlantic City. I’m in Boardwalk Empire again. Look at my lovely clothes! I turn round and there he comes walking towards us in a smart casual coat, wearing the hat I gave to him. “Hey doll! Who is the young lady?”. Cosy.
I have not seen Boardwalk Empire for ages. Still I can say that the music the radio was playing when I fell asleep was perfectly tuned with the first part of the dream, and then… what can I tell you? Dreams are just that, are they not?
We are having lunch in a fancy café by the sea. He asks me “What do you want me to call you?” while he is still looking down at his fish and pouring some sauce on it in his particular way. I panic and I decide I want to wake up. He turns round in joy and kisses me first, just right before I reappear here-perhaps at the same time- Where am I
no? And I wake up with the taste of his kiss on my lips and the sight of his smile in the back of my eye.
Aw… I want to get back there again… by the time I finish writing these lines I’m not thinking in English anymore and I’m completely awake. I’d better go back to study...
Jace Everett – Bad Things
