Sharon Robertson, bank manager

 

I dreamed it was 2016. I was living with Sharon, in a town by the beach, somewhere in Northern California. She was bedridden, and it was near the end. She was on hospice, and I was once again the stressed out caregiver, seeking diversion and distraction from my job.

I was found it in the form of a bank manager named Sharon Robertson. This wasn't my friend's mom, who also bears this name, but lady of about 50 or so, who was an attractive, but overworked district manager for Rabobank. She oversaw the bank display designs and had very discerning eye for details.

She was setting up a display at an outdoor fairground amphitheater. There were horses there, and hers was among them. I was playing around with something or another, trying to be helpful, and she was picking apart the minutia of some coffee table arrangement.

"Don't touch that!" She intoned harshly. "I'll have to fix it."

I had been fiddling with the creamer or the sweetener and was getting powder all over the glass table. I decided that the table needed a good windexing and gave it a thorough spray and wipe. 

This must have impressed her, because she changed her demeanor toward me. As I went back to working around the horses and doing truck related things in the amphitheater, I heard her talking about me. I made my way to a seat right below where she was seated in the upper part of the amphitheater.

"How would you like to go with me to to Monterey and help out with the horses?" she asked me, looking down from her top row seat. "I need someone as thoughtful as you around to help with the pasturing, and then, of course, later on, to accompany me to dinner and whatnot."

I was excited by the offer, but somewhat conflicted about the "whatnot." It seemed like she was asking me out on a date. We'd be sleeping in the same motel room. It felt wrong, but I wanted to do it, nonetheless.

Of course, Sharon, my Sharon, wouldn't be on board with this. I'd have to arrange for her to have a babysitter, and I'd have to make up some lie about where I was going. It just wasn't going to be an easy affair.

I decided to just tell her the truth. So far, nothing was overtly implied in the proposal. It would just be work and a little entertainment. But it would be a road trip, and it would take me away from my dying wife's bedside. I was torn.

"I can't do it, anyway," I told her. "I'm not going to leave you here, to go with some strange woman to a hotel. I have to stay with you right to the bitter end." I wasn't mincing words, and it didn't go unnoticed.

She said something to the effect that she thought I was cheating anyway, so what difference did it make? I felt like I'd have to address this, so I asked her point blank if she was accusing me of cheating. She didn't say yes, but she didn't say no. 

"If it walks like a duck, then you make up your mind," she said, mixing metaphors and admonitions. 

On the one hand, she appreciated the horse aspect of my proposed trip. She was more jealous of that part than anything. She probably even understood my need for some kind of attention, sexual or otherwise. We'd had a rich sex life, but this was near the end, and there was none of that anymore.

She endorsed my trip, but with a couched sense of envy and bitterness about it. She was, after all, the horse person. I was probably just using this as an excuse to get with the sexy older bank lady. 

"What about if you take me with you?" she offered. "You could use that sling that they use for the horses and a Hoyer lift to hoist me into the back of the truck."

This seemed immensely impractical, and I told her so. I'd always been the one to shoot down her ideas and find the flaws in any suggestions she made. They usually involved me doing a lot of extra work, and I just didn't wanna.

The dream ended with me planning to go on the trip without her and possibly get myself into some amorous situation with the bank lady. I felt crummy about it, but no crummier than I did when she was alive, and I had let my mind roam free with all kinds of similar fantasies, none of which ever played out.

Guilt, the final frontier. These are the voyages of my Dreamship, Nocturne. 

My five year mission:

To dream up situations and scenarios in which I will absolve myself of survivor's guilt, shedding the associated baggage that has attached itself to me, barnacle-like, since Sharon's illness and death. 

To seek out new life forms and have occasional flings with them. 

To boldly go where I have already gone before... and rewrite history. 

This will be the return to myself, the  return to innocence.