2000-08-30 - 03:39:25
Dream Man

Dream Man

Derek showed up in my dream last night. Again. I don't remember dreaming about him ever before, until these past few months when he's made an appearance 3 or 4 times.

Derek was the most popular guy in my grade. Secretly, I nursed fantasies about him all through high school. He was from the nearby town whose kids were bussed to my school from Grade Nine on. Second eldest of a Catholic family of 5 boys and a girl; his mom died--giving birth to twins, only the baby girl lived--when Derek was about 8. (The doctor had warned his parents not to have any more babies, but being good Catholics and all…)

Derek's eldest brother George was a fat, obnoxious bully. Like many older boys, George honed in on my academic smarts, my disinterest in sports, and various other effeminate idiosyncrasies, mocking me relentlessly. "Fuckin' fruitcake," he would snarl. Daily. And he would shove me. And he would spit on my face virtually every day in the changing room after gym class. And he and his buddies would often roar through my family's farmyard in the middle of the night, his souped-up truck's muffler raping the sleep of my eighty-something Grandma.

And then there was Derek. The prince who almost rescued me. The beautiful brother who liked me, who stuck up for me when George would taunt and spit and shove. The one who made an effort to get to know me, who wouldn't just go along with what the rest of the cool guys thought.

Derek and I never achieved anything remotely resembling "friendship": he was several strata above me in the school's caste system. But he was kind to me. Several times his calming intervention would distract George or some other brute from roughing me up. And Derek would laugh at my jokes--most of them "gay" jokes. And he would tease me, not cruelly, but almost flirtatiously. I don't think he was queer, but his fondness twitterpated my bewildered heart.

I remember a volleyball game in gym class. All the other guys were swearing at me for my ineptitude. Flustered at the taunts and jeers, I was actually trembling. Derek murmured in a soft, soothing tone: "It's alright, guy, you can do it." Beaming me a smile. I almost cried.

One other day he came up behind me in the gym and playfully wrapped his arms around my torso, his track-panted crotch pressed into my butt for approximately seven seconds. Seven seconds seared forever into my psyche. I remember looking back at him, anxious and titillated and confused: determined above all else to register none of this on my face.

And I would jerk off fiendishly about this. About Derek. I would allow myself these brief nocturnal emissions, and return to my next school day's platonic pine for his friendship and protection and admiration and approval. From a distance.

There are oodles of memories. Here's the painful one. After I came out, two years out of high school, everyone back home found out. Especially once I became a gay activist with the attendant fifteen minutes of media fame.

I've only laid eyes on Derek once since then. It was the summer of 1988, about a week after my first lover, Matt, dumped me. Immersed in a hum-dinger of an alcoholic binge, I went to an alternative nightclub with some gay friends; lately this club was attracting lots of mainstream straight folks. I hang out for a while, realize I'm too depressed to be there, so I leave. As I'm walking out of the club, there he is: Derek, walking in with two girls, one I don't know, the other from high school.

He smiles as he recognizes me, calls out my name in his usual friendly voice. Then he pauses, looks at me in my trendy black Le Chateau suit, looks at the girl we both went to high school with. Quickly adds, "You fucking faggot."

I say nothing. Feel nothing. And by and large, I have succeeded in keeping this memory separate from all the other ones of Derek as the beautiful boy who gave me a chance, the boy I yearned to have hold me and tell me I can do it, that I'm okay.

By and large.

Did I mention that I am still in love with him?

He's married now, has a couple kids, last I heard.

Oh yeah, the dream:

I find myself, somehow, at Derek's apartment. I am very cautious around him, despite his friendliness, not sure whether he will be homophobic. It's obviously the year 2000 rather than the mid-eighties. Derek still looks gorgeous; the only sign of aging is a slight puffiness to his face.

We go outside together. Come to some bridge (perhaps a railway bridge?) and I am up above on some rocks and Derek is walking below. All the while, he continues to chat away. He makes some comment that piques my curiosity: I don't remember what he says, but it implies that he is a hustler! I can't fucking believe it. I race down to his level to look him in the eye and Derek confirms my interpretation. From then on in the dream, Derek speaks and acts as a tough male hustler: streetwise, coarse and sexy for hire. I see him in a new light, and I am flooded with compassion, yearning to "save him" somehow from his life.

Then I am driving my parents' old blue truck (the one I "rolled" in high school); I think Mom and Dad are riding with me. We are on a road at the top of a winding hill and it's dark outside. I make a wrong turn and plummet us into the ditch. But it's not a ditch, it's a steep decline and we careen at full-speed down the hill, crashing through trees, etc. Scared out of my fucking wits. Thinking I'm going to kill me and my parents. But we come to a stop, finally, without injury.

Later, I am at an outdoor social event with other high school classmates (I don't remember who). We are sitting on the ground in a crowd of people and all of a sudden I look over and there's Derek sitting nearby, surrounded by half-a-dozen older men who are obviously sizing him up as a purchase for the evening. My heart is pounding. I leave my classmates (not sure whether they notice Derek there or not) and go up to this group with Derek at its centre. He leans into me, and all of a sudden we are kissing.

I wake up.

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