Have you ever had a dream come true? Was it everything you thought it would be?
I remember the day I got my first full-time job, I went home to the one-room apartment that my dad had arranged for me to get in Tokyo, and collapsed into bed with such force that I bounced twice before I finally settled down. I had managed to undress, but I didn't even have the energy to get under the blankets, so I just used my hands to squish the blanket up against my thigh enough to partially cover me. I had goosebumps because of the air conditioning vent that was blowing over me.
The apartment was extremely small, and had very little going for it, but it was mine. It was mine and it had a window. The whole east wall of the room was taken up by the window, partially because the room was tiny, but also because the window was big. At least it seemed big to me then, with the lingering rays of the sun bouncing off it just enough to make the white walls glow subtly pink, and to give even the shadows a comforting dull blue hue.
My job sucked. I was working for my dad, of course, and I should be endlessly grateful to him that I wasn't destitute, but even all the nepotism in the world couldn't make his old-school Japanese company's men think of me as anything less than a girl. And a girl without anything special going for her, at that. As for me, all I could think about was the ocean. I drifted off to sleep.
That's when it started. I don't know what got me so worked up about the ocean that night, but ever since I've had this recurring dream, you see, of being enveloped by tall dark waves and sinking like a stone to a sandy ocean floor, where my feet caught the sand slightly faster than my butt did. I was sliding down a slope for a few mortifying seconds, before my feet caught a foothold and left me teetering over an abyss where the sand turned to rock and then to unthinkable nothing. For some reason in the dream I am always captured by the vision of the moonlight rippling on waves above me, casting scattered light down into the abyss, strong enough to illuminate my hands and make the pale light of my skin contrasted next to the deep dark into something equally frightening and alluring. I twist my hands with palms facing toward me, then away, and ponder, and I am too enchanted to be afraid, for a moment.
But the moment doesn't last, and inevitably I start freaking out. My heart pounds, I start kicking and trying to swim back to the surface, but the pressure is too great, or I am too weak, and I can't make it on my own. Fortunately a man appears, right when I need him - perhaps this is a typical female dream, I don't know - and his strong hand wraps around my tiny wrist and gives me a relieving tug towards him. There's a moment when I catch sight of a glow-in-the-dark necklace that levitates in the water in front of his chest, and it lights up his handsome face with green, and I can see the locks of his hair floating up above him mystically, and I am once again too enchanted to be afraid.
He pulls me towards him again, our bodies clash, and with a few easy kicks he brings me back to the surface, where I gasp and cling to him, and he carries me up to shore. I can feel his powerful biceps and abs tighten as he lifts me. I know he'll be my first and my last. It's all very cliché.
Of course, then I wake up. Over the years I've masturbated to thoughts of this dream-man many times, usually immediately after the dream.
So imagine my surprise when I found myself an eerily similar situation, but with a markedly different kind of outcome. It started when I was invited to an old rich man's beach house for a party, I won't get into the details but it was strange to be asked to dress up and also bring a swim suit. The dress provided for me to wear seemed like overkill to me, it was a single piece dress that looked like two pieces, a low cut and strapless deep maroon top, and a free-flowing black skirt, with the two 'pieces' bound together by a red and white sash in the middle, snug against my hips. It's hard to explain, but I felt more naked in that dress than I did in my bathing suit. Maybe because I hadn't chosen it myself.
The party was boring, with lots of old men desperately pretending not to notice my cleavage or exposed thighs. I'm quite thin but that kind of dress makes even me look voluptuous. Fortunately, the house was built close to the coast, and after dutifully saying hello to all the important people my father needed me to, I escaped to the beach. Changing into my swim wear in what was clearly a full, gender-split, indoor sauna was surreal. The few other girls there didn't even make eye contact with me, they just got dressed and left without a word. Soon I was making my way down a path made of artfully misshapen rocks beside a meticulously tended garden and hedge, towards the beach, under the full moon. I was so happy I began to skip just a little, but stopped when I realized other people were around.
There was a large bon fire set up on the beach, and some clearly very drunk people near it. I was raised in America, and for some reason that situation felt very American to me, so I wasn't surprised to find that most of the people near the water were white. I figured the business must be wooing the Japanese investors differently than they would woo the American ones.
I didn't really want to be around them, or anyone, I just wanted to indulge my strange long-term desire for an underwater adventure at night. I avoided the fire, though some people tried to wave me over, and just waded out into the water. Unlike my dream, it was freezing cold. The frothy waves crashed around my thighs and made me shiver, but I was determined and plodded forward. The moon was bright, but the water was still so dark that I couldn't see my feet or the sand below. I crept forward uneasily, feeling my way slowly so that I wouldn't step into the abyss that I just knew must be there, somewhere.
I kept wading out until the waves crashed against my shoulders, and then I dunked my head below and immediately sank down to sit, with my legs crossed, and struggled against my instincts before managing to actually open my eyes. I could barely see anything, let alone the beautiful image from my dream. The tiniest inkling of moonlight told me that I wasn't looking at pitch blackness, but I couldn't make out any shapes at all, and if it weren't for the feel of the sand below me I wouldn't be able to tell up from down either. Even though it wasn't perfect, I felt myself relax, I felt properly alone like I did in my dream, able to just think and dream and wonder.
It felt like a long time, but either I am far better at holding my breath than I have any business being, or the whole ordeal took less than a minute, because it wasn't the need for air that ended my adventure - it was the temperature that broke me. My bones ached from the cold, and I decided to give up on my dream and go find the warmth of the fire. I kicked myself up and started to swim to the surface, only to find that it was a lot further up than I had anticipated.
