Please Keep Hands Off The Doors

Gerard H., of Plainfield, VT writes:

My dream is set in an anonymous city sort of like New York but not New York. The overwhelming feeling is of desolation – a gray palette, lots of steel and glass, unhappy faces. 

I’m entering a subway station and as I get close to the turnstile I can hear a train approaching. I’m struggling to find my fare-card, but I do, just in time. In this unfamiliar station, though, I run down to the wrong platform. I look over and see the train starting to enter the station and run (against foot-traffic) up the stairs, over to the other stairway, and down to the other platform, just in time to hear the tell-tale bing-bong, and see the doors closing. The train slowly moves out of the station, and from the faces of my fellow passengers, I can tell it will be a long wait before the next train arrives. There’s nowhere to sit, of course.

Trains and tunnels, tunnels and trains? This dream is almost obscene. In your dream you're like Raquel Welch in Fantastic Voyage, except you're not floating around someone's blood stream, trying to cure them of physical ills: you're floating around your own psyche during the act of male/female penetration sex which, as the dream is screaming out to you, is actually quite depressing and bleak ("a gray palette," "The overwhelming feeling is of desolation.") You have a fare card, which you've obviously used in the past, but you have trouble accessing it and, even when you do, and gain entry, the place and situation are foreign to you. This isn't because you've never been intimate with women - quite the opposite -   it's just something that doesn't really sit right with you and makes you feel as if you're delving into a place that is completely strange, and not in a good way, either. Your getting to the wrong platform, and then scurrying to catch the right train is a reference to your efforts to find the right woman who can make this commute successful. But it's not a commute into Midtown Manhattan you're embarking on; it's a journey to the REAL Gerard: Queer-as-a-three-dollar-bill Gerard!

Your dream is riddled with self-loathing and shame. It's no accident the action takes place underground. 

The missed train, the long wait for the next one, and there being nowhere to sit as you wait? Isn't it obvious? This is your subconscious telling you two things: 1) You're gay, dude, and the train to Heteroville no longer makes local stops and 2) It's standing room, only, because you're not alone in your vain attempt to live as a straight man in the hopes that you'll somehow be "fixed." The world is full of other people, living their lives like Sisyphus and never getting anywhere 

You're gay - stop fighting it and take the bus, already!