I woke up mid-orgasm, so I guess it all started pretty innocently.
It hit me like a Land Rover late one Friday. One minute I’m sweetly drifting off, and the next thing I know, I wake up in the throws of a powerful orgasm coming to a majestic end. Once it’s finished I bolt upright and reorient myself, and I realize that the safest place I know—my bed—is only bringing back snippets of what I just experienced.
The sheets are kicked out from under the mattress, and I remember wrapping my legs around his lower back. One of my six pillows is on the floor, and the image of him flipping me over and pinning my arms flashes, then fades. I’m sweating like the fattest guy I have ever sat next to at Yankee Stadium, when I smell the unmistakable scent of sex. As I’m catching my breath and trying to figure out what the hell just happened, I realize that I just had a dream: This dream was a sexual dream, and my partner—my very able and stimulating partner—was a guy from work I barely know. Someone I have to see on Monday.
I have absolutely no idea where this dream came from. I’ve found that most dreams come from what you think is the ether, until you consult your dream interpretation book (or your psychiatrist) and find out you’re latently homosexual with a strong desire for leather daddies. And all this time you just thought you were stressed at work. So I did consult my psychiatrist on this one, lying on my back on her couch, a pillow on my stomach, one eye on her large-pawed cat and utterly terrified she was about to tell me I have a subconscious desire to be peed on.
“Dana, you’re just horny.” Refreshing.
“Well that’s a given,” I snap. Been a little dry at Camp Dana. “But why him? I barely see or talk to him.” I could count the number of our interactions on the hand of Lloyd, the two-fingered homeless man who rides my subway. I have no thoughts about or feelings toward this sheepish, barely there, Mr. Cellophane type co-worker, and I’ll even go as far as to say that I have more meaningful conversations with Lloyd—and all I know about him is that he’s “still coaching the basketball.”
“Well, many times in dreams, people don’t represent themselves, or even other people, but they represent ideas or concepts,” the Doc calmly continued. I’m sure. But I’m still confused since I have no thoughts or knowledge about this man in general, so how can I know what concept he represents? Having a dream about sex is no mystery, since I am getting a little rammy. But my new mission is getting to the bottom of why I had dream sex with a man who’s a hair away from a stranger to me. And I just know my image of him, whatever image that had been, is about to change. I’m going to call this Dreamtime Sex God Dan.
Of course, as luck would have it, the first day back at work after the dream was rife with instances I had to speak to him, and I was less ready for it than I thought. My boss asked me to go around to the people who didn’t RSVP for the summer kick-off happy hour and ask what was up their ass. Nicely. She grabbed a piece of purple Post It, flipped her wavy red hair over her shoulder and began to write the names of those who are all too important to RSVP. And as she did, I looked around impatiently, until it hit me she just might write… Dan. Oh, shit.
All right. I can be an adult about this. I certainly can confront something that only exists in my head. Up the five flights of stairs to his floor, I carefully rehearse what I’m going to say and how I’m going to say it. I’m going to say, Hey Dan. So I know you didn’t RSVP for that party thing. Do you know if you’re going yet? And I’m definitely going to carry the question with an air of indifference, a hint of nonchalance and just a soupçon of boredom. I walk—practically stroll—to his desk, hoping that I am reeking of “I did not have a sex dream about you” confidence.
“Hey, Dan. So I know you didn’t RSVP for that party thing. Do you know if you’re going yet?” (Everyone stop what you’re doing and notice how nonchalant that was.)
He gives me a quick, shy little look, and somehow his shyness is amplified through his eyes, which are big and round and—I didn’t notice until now—warm. But he is careful not to look at me for very long.
“Um…I…don’t…know...but…thanks…though,” he manages to utter through lips that barely move, staring at the computer as if looking away means a child in Uganda dies. He is hell-bent on not making eye contact with me, almost as if he can’t, shouldn’t or doesn’t want to because he’s…mortified.
Son of a bitch knows.
I thank him, turn on my platform heel and haul ass out of there, relieved that with my back turned he won’t see me blushing. Of course he doesn’t know know; but sex dreams, especially ones about people you work with are so damn embarrassing that it’s like they were there, which is as good as actually there as far as my paranoia is concerned. I run up a few stairs seeking asylum in the stairwell, and once I am thinking and acting more like Dana and less like an acne-ridden high school girl who has just asked the “totally hot guy” to the prom, I head back down the stairs to my office. On my way, almost to the landing of his floor, the door to the stairs opens. Take a guess who appears.
He looks up at me, I look down at him, and we both start down the stairs. Down flights and flights of steep, never-ending stairs where I have nothing to look at but his broad shoulders and the graceful curve of his back, which is just slightly visible through his polo shirt. I am flailing in a pool of humiliation wearing swimmies full of pinholes as I try—unsuccessfully—to fight off fragmented scenes racing through my mind. His face between my legs, giving my thighs whisker burn. My hand between his legs, stroking like gold’s gonna come out. Then of course, thrusting, thrusting, thrusting as I dig my fingers into his back and then grab onto my fitted sheet and pull…
Surprise, I’m sweating again. I watch as each time he hits a landing he puts his hand on the rail to wind himself around to the next flight of stairs. It is the exact same hand that unhooked my bra with speed and precision and then ran down the center of my body to slide off my skivvies that were…drip! Sweat is now pouring down my tingling face, and I am fairly certain I look like a melting cherry Popsicle. Christ, don’t we have AC in here? I have never wanted a paper towel so badly in my life. He keeps turning his head slightly to the left and has a peripheral view of me and my movement behind him, and he repeatedly acts as though he’s about to say something. This is torture, and I am silently begging for a release.
We reach the bottom of the stairs, and in order to avoid a question from him like, “Did we have sex in your dreams?” I announce, a little too loudly, “So it’s been lovely following you down all these stairs.” He giggles, stops, then giggles again, a little harder this time. My stomach flip-flops. Surely he knows something. It’s the only thing my racing mind will allow me to believe. He takes a left at the foot of the stairs, and I take a right to the file drawers to “look busy”; but I hear him when he starts back upstairs. I can feel his eyes on me, and suddenly I am hit so hard by a new thought that knocks all of the dream scenes clear out of my conscience and pulls me into right here, right now—wide awake. I like it.
The days since have been a quick descent into a powerful awareness of an utterly bizarre attraction to a man I don’t know at all. I really only know what he looks like, what I think he fucks like, and what comes up when I Google him. It all just crept up on me, like my sweatpants when I do crunches on the big bouncy ball. I notice his smile, his eyelashes, the freckles on his hands, the lines around his eyes, the pace of his walk and the timbre of his voice.
My record for solid bullshit excuses to go up to his floor is 23 in one day, I can’t say anything to him without catching the gigglies, and every time I walk by his desk my gait morphs into that of the girl Jack is looking at when he runs his bike off the road in the opening credits to Three’s Company. I dress better, laugh bigger, arch my back further when I think he’s watching. I treat him differently than I do anyone else in the office, and I speak slower, softer and more deliberately as I pray that he sits up and takes notice: hoping to God it makes him have the exact same dream about me.
SUBMIT TO US
Everyone has a story of a relationship gone bad or a weird (and wild) NYC dating experience. We welcome unsolicited submissions for our Flavor of the Week sex/relationship/dating column. They can be in any format on any topic, but please read a few of the published pieces first so you can get a sense of what we’re looking for (funny always helps). All writers will be paid upon publication.
Email submissions to editorial@nypress.com
It hit me like a Land Rover late one Friday. One minute I’m sweetly drifting off, and the next thing I know, I wake up in the throws of a powerful orgasm coming to a majestic end. Once it’s finished I bolt upright and reorient myself, and I realize that the safest place I know—my bed—is only bringing back snippets of what I just experienced.
The sheets are kicked out from under the mattress, and I remember wrapping my legs around his lower back. One of my six pillows is on the floor, and the image of him flipping me over and pinning my arms flashes, then fades. I’m sweating like the fattest guy I have ever sat next to at Yankee Stadium, when I smell the unmistakable scent of sex. As I’m catching my breath and trying to figure out what the hell just happened, I realize that I just had a dream: This dream was a sexual dream, and my partner—my very able and stimulating partner—was a guy from work I barely know. Someone I have to see on Monday.
I have absolutely no idea where this dream came from. I’ve found that most dreams come from what you think is the ether, until you consult your dream interpretation book (or your psychiatrist) and find out you’re latently homosexual with a strong desire for leather daddies. And all this time you just thought you were stressed at work. So I did consult my psychiatrist on this one, lying on my back on her couch, a pillow on my stomach, one eye on her large-pawed cat and utterly terrified she was about to tell me I have a subconscious desire to be peed on.
“Dana, you’re just horny.” Refreshing.
“Well that’s a given,” I snap. Been a little dry at Camp Dana. “But why him? I barely see or talk to him.” I could count the number of our interactions on the hand of Lloyd, the two-fingered homeless man who rides my subway. I have no thoughts about or feelings toward this sheepish, barely there, Mr. Cellophane type co-worker, and I’ll even go as far as to say that I have more meaningful conversations with Lloyd—and all I know about him is that he’s “still coaching the basketball.”
“Well, many times in dreams, people don’t represent themselves, or even other people, but they represent ideas or concepts,” the Doc calmly continued. I’m sure. But I’m still confused since I have no thoughts or knowledge about this man in general, so how can I know what concept he represents? Having a dream about sex is no mystery, since I am getting a little rammy. But my new mission is getting to the bottom of why I had dream sex with a man who’s a hair away from a stranger to me. And I just know my image of him, whatever image that had been, is about to change. I’m going to call this Dreamtime Sex God Dan.
Of course, as luck would have it, the first day back at work after the dream was rife with instances I had to speak to him, and I was less ready for it than I thought. My boss asked me to go around to the people who didn’t RSVP for the summer kick-off happy hour and ask what was up their ass. Nicely. She grabbed a piece of purple Post It, flipped her wavy red hair over her shoulder and began to write the names of those who are all too important to RSVP. And as she did, I looked around impatiently, until it hit me she just might write… Dan. Oh, shit.
All right. I can be an adult about this. I certainly can confront something that only exists in my head. Up the five flights of stairs to his floor, I carefully rehearse what I’m going to say and how I’m going to say it. I’m going to say, Hey Dan. So I know you didn’t RSVP for that party thing. Do you know if you’re going yet? And I’m definitely going to carry the question with an air of indifference, a hint of nonchalance and just a soupçon of boredom. I walk—practically stroll—to his desk, hoping that I am reeking of “I did not have a sex dream about you” confidence.
“Hey, Dan. So I know you didn’t RSVP for that party thing. Do you know if you’re going yet?” (Everyone stop what you’re doing and notice how nonchalant that was.)
He gives me a quick, shy little look, and somehow his shyness is amplified through his eyes, which are big and round and—I didn’t notice until now—warm. But he is careful not to look at me for very long.
“Um…I…don’t…know...but…thanks…though,” he manages to utter through lips that barely move, staring at the computer as if looking away means a child in Uganda dies. He is hell-bent on not making eye contact with me, almost as if he can’t, shouldn’t or doesn’t want to because he’s…mortified.
Son of a bitch knows.
I thank him, turn on my platform heel and haul ass out of there, relieved that with my back turned he won’t see me blushing. Of course he doesn’t know know; but sex dreams, especially ones about people you work with are so damn embarrassing that it’s like they were there, which is as good as actually there as far as my paranoia is concerned. I run up a few stairs seeking asylum in the stairwell, and once I am thinking and acting more like Dana and less like an acne-ridden high school girl who has just asked the “totally hot guy” to the prom, I head back down the stairs to my office. On my way, almost to the landing of his floor, the door to the stairs opens. Take a guess who appears.
He looks up at me, I look down at him, and we both start down the stairs. Down flights and flights of steep, never-ending stairs where I have nothing to look at but his broad shoulders and the graceful curve of his back, which is just slightly visible through his polo shirt. I am flailing in a pool of humiliation wearing swimmies full of pinholes as I try—unsuccessfully—to fight off fragmented scenes racing through my mind. His face between my legs, giving my thighs whisker burn. My hand between his legs, stroking like gold’s gonna come out. Then of course, thrusting, thrusting, thrusting as I dig my fingers into his back and then grab onto my fitted sheet and pull…
Surprise, I’m sweating again. I watch as each time he hits a landing he puts his hand on the rail to wind himself around to the next flight of stairs. It is the exact same hand that unhooked my bra with speed and precision and then ran down the center of my body to slide off my skivvies that were…drip! Sweat is now pouring down my tingling face, and I am fairly certain I look like a melting cherry Popsicle. Christ, don’t we have AC in here? I have never wanted a paper towel so badly in my life. He keeps turning his head slightly to the left and has a peripheral view of me and my movement behind him, and he repeatedly acts as though he’s about to say something. This is torture, and I am silently begging for a release.
We reach the bottom of the stairs, and in order to avoid a question from him like, “Did we have sex in your dreams?” I announce, a little too loudly, “So it’s been lovely following you down all these stairs.” He giggles, stops, then giggles again, a little harder this time. My stomach flip-flops. Surely he knows something. It’s the only thing my racing mind will allow me to believe. He takes a left at the foot of the stairs, and I take a right to the file drawers to “look busy”; but I hear him when he starts back upstairs. I can feel his eyes on me, and suddenly I am hit so hard by a new thought that knocks all of the dream scenes clear out of my conscience and pulls me into right here, right now—wide awake. I like it.
The days since have been a quick descent into a powerful awareness of an utterly bizarre attraction to a man I don’t know at all. I really only know what he looks like, what I think he fucks like, and what comes up when I Google him. It all just crept up on me, like my sweatpants when I do crunches on the big bouncy ball. I notice his smile, his eyelashes, the freckles on his hands, the lines around his eyes, the pace of his walk and the timbre of his voice.
My record for solid bullshit excuses to go up to his floor is 23 in one day, I can’t say anything to him without catching the gigglies, and every time I walk by his desk my gait morphs into that of the girl Jack is looking at when he runs his bike off the road in the opening credits to Three’s Company. I dress better, laugh bigger, arch my back further when I think he’s watching. I treat him differently than I do anyone else in the office, and I speak slower, softer and more deliberately as I pray that he sits up and takes notice: hoping to God it makes him have the exact same dream about me.
SUBMIT TO US
Everyone has a story of a relationship gone bad or a weird (and wild) NYC dating experience. We welcome unsolicited submissions for our Flavor of the Week sex/relationship/dating column. They can be in any format on any topic, but please read a few of the published pieces first so you can get a sense of what we’re looking for (funny always helps). All writers will be paid upon publication.
Email submissions to editorial@nypress.com
