I awoke from the dream with a gasp, sunlight and consciousness flooding through my brain, scattering the fragments of my sleep-world and leaving me dizzy with shock.
As my rational brain came haltingly online, I grasped for those fast-dispersing remnants of the dream like a shipwrecked sailor desperately trying to gain purchase on the flotsam that surrounds him in the ocean.
Quite why I was so keen to hold on to whatever scraps I could recall only became apparent when the first rational thoughts made themselves known, and I realised that I had awoken with a deep sense of unease running through me. The unease quickly transformed into something altogether more strange when a second realisation made me aware of the fact that I was also more than a tad....well... horny.
This wasn't such a rare occurrence. So, I'm a thirty-five year-old woman (happily divorced), but I often wake with a feeling of heat nestled deep in my belly. Most mornings when that happens I enjoy the sensation, and, yes, may even explore it a little, if you know what I mean.
This particular Friday morning, though, there was something different buried within the low-grade excitement that my body was experiencing. For a start, there was nothing particularly low-grade about it -- I was wet down there and I could feel a high-colour on my cheeks. Then there was that lingering sense of unease. Whatever had brought me to such an excited state had also, in some strange dream way, unnerved me.
Try as I might to stop them, the details of the dream were heading over the hills and far away. All I could capture were more general sensations -- something to do with someone I knew who had surprised me, and something about me as well, maybe along the lines of me reacting to something in a totally unexpected way...
It was a mystery and, I knew now, would remain one.
At about that point I also realised what is was that had woken me. I checked the sunlit face of my alarm clock and nodded. Jake, my son, had left the house a couple of minutes earlier and had, no doubt, slammed the front door.
I sighed, wondering whether to be grateful to him for pulling me out of the unsettling dream, or annoyed that he hadn't let the dream-me continue to whatever conclusion the dream had in store for her.
The realisation that Jake had left, however, had one distinct benefit. Knowing that he would now be out all day at his summer job -- taken in order to add to the funds he would need when he left for university at the end of the summer -- I had total privacy inside our little house.
With a slightly desperate sigh, I threw back the thin sheet that covered me, lay back against my pillows, closed my eyes... and allowed my fingers to explore the wetness left behind by the dream.
Life had become a comfortable routine at our house since my ex had left three years earlier. In the peace that followed his departure, Jake had been given the ideal conditions for studying and his grades rose from somewhere south of average to the dizzying heights north of straight-As. In other words, he was finally achieving the sort of results his expensive, all-boys private school expected from their pupils.
The sudden absence of his loud-mouthed father had seemingly done little, however, to shake off Jake's inherent shyness, and I had begun to worry that he would find university life intimidating. When he had announced that he was going to work through the summer on, of all things, a building site I was both shocked and delighted.
Given his bookish ways, I was also a tad worried that his levels of physical fitness might not be up to the requirements of such a labour-intensive job. Certainly, the first few days were something of a struggle for him, but after a week or so he began to find things easier and had even taken to socialising after hours with some of his workmates.
It's safe to say that I was delighted at thus turn of events -- and especially so since I had the house to myself for even longer than I was already used to. Given that I work for myself, from home, the extra two or three hours of peace let me catch up with a backlog of work that had developed during the spring.
That Friday, though, I found concentration rather difficult. Even though the mid-summer sun was blazing down and the birds were twittering happily outside my little home-office, my mind kept replaying the few fragments of dream that had survived consciousness. I tried to switch tasks -- from preparing a series of magazine articles on child-care for the elderly (don't ask) to a review of recent fashion trends -- I just simply couldn't settle to anything.
I knew that Jake wouldn't be home until at least nine or ten that evening -- Fridays seemed to be a particular favourite for joining his colleagues for a few drinks -- and I decided that I would take the opportunity to pamper myself and maybe return to my work later in the evening.
I took a leisurely bath, washed my unruly mess of long, dark hair, exfoliated, applied a face pack, exfoliated again, moisturised, gave myself a pedicure... you get the picture, and then made myself a light supper and opened a bottle of well-chilled Chablis as an accompaniment.
Just before eight, I flopped down in front of the TV and channel hopped until I cam across an ideal programme -- or at least, an ideal programme insofar as it would temper my guilt at having done so little work during the day. The programme was focusing on the work of a couple of fashion designers and I reasoned that I could justifiably call an hour or so watching fashion shows well-intentioned research. I pulled my skirt straight, hitched the shoulder straps of my little t-shirt fully onto my shoulders and grabbed a notebook and pen -- and the wine bottle.
To my surprise, the front door opened a few minutes later and Jake's head appeared in the doorway.
"Hi, ma!"
"Hi, you. Early tonight?"
Jake shrugged, "Our normal bar was closed and some of the guys were heading off on some fishing trip or something anyway, so I decided to have an early night. I'm pretty well knackered anyway."
"Fair enough. If you haven't eaten yet there's loads in the fridge, and I put a couple of cans of beer in there as well."
"I'm truly honoured, thank you."
I couldn't help but smile at his grin, "I do hope that isn't sarcasm?"
"Never!"
"Oh, go take a shower or something and stop tormenting your poor mother. I need to watch this." I pointed at the television.
"Quite apart from trying not to take offence at your suggestion that I'm in desperate need of a shower, do you promise to change channels when I've finished cleaning up and eating?"
"That depends on how long you take. As it is, I've got lots of work to catch up on and this is research -- so don't hurry!"
