Always a Groomsman

Chapter 2: Wedding Peeks-2

I kept having crazy and senseless dreams at night. A young man with a learning disability was holding my hand no matter where the dreams had taken us. He was more of a boy than a man. He was of a medium height and weight, never smiled, and his emerald-colored eyes always shined. Together, we had visited the Eight Wonders of the world in different dreams: the h*******t Museum in Washington D. C., the Space Needle in Seattle, and the giant picnic basket in Newark, Ohio. No matter where he had taken me, or where we met, we were barefoot and active. Sometimes we enjoyed a picnic with strangers, driving in a car toward Ocean City, or taking the Metro in London. Never were we inactive. Once, we were aboard the Titanic, sinking in the middle of the night on April 14 in 1912. Another time, we were being carted to a place called Auschwitz or Tribeca. I couldn’t remember exactly as soon as the dream ended.

He was timid and had very little conversation with me in the dreams. Rarely did he make eye contact with me, and he seemed to respond to things in a slow action. Rarely, if ever, was he alert. When he was, he was passive, silent, and almost afraid. Strangers looked at us as if we were father and son, but it was simple friendship. Sometimes we hugged in the dreams like brothers, old and young mixing for a brief period of time. Never was I looked at as a pedophile and he a victim. And never did we become in a questionable position, aligning our chests together, being platonic friends.

I asked him once what his name was, but he wouldn’t tell me, although he knew my name. I asked many questions on our travels about his life: Where are you from? Who are your parents? Do you live in Templeton? Why does it feel as if we’re running away from our lives and to these strange places? Why are we together? None of the questions were answered, though. Instead, the young man—a boy that wasn’t a day older than fourteen—kept to himself, silent and uninterested in me except as a traveling companion.

I woke from the dreams, misty-eyed and confused. None of those faraway places and the treks that were associated with them made any sense to me. Dizzy, perplexed, and somewhat sweaty from the dreams, I attempted to puzzle them together and place a name to the boy. To no avail, though, I failed miserably. They were disjointed concerning reality, vague and juxtaposed hallucinations of sorts while I slept. Sometimes I tried to fit the dreams together, piece by piece, but there was no rationale to how they united. A boating trip to Madagascar had no relation to Cape Cod whatsoever. Nor did a limestone quarry in Bloomington, Indiana, have any correlation with the three rivers that blended together in Pittsburgh. The dreams were a mystery to me and left me perplexed, but they seemed harmless, almost uneventful, and nothing out of the ordinary, if the truth be told.