I open my eyes to find Neena next to me on a beach. We appear to be in the Maldives, utterly deserted. We’re relaxing on chaise lounges with yellow-striped cushions; nothing but white sand beneath us and pure blue seas for miles ahead.
Tragically bougie opening scene here--sorry--but I can’t control this - it’s subconscious. This is the best dream I think I’ve ever had in my life. I woke up from this dream last summer and somewhere, in some messaging platform, told Neena all of it (or so I thought). So here I am, a year later, typing “abortion” into iMessage and Messenger looking for where I deposited all the details. I’m finding plenty of other amazing shit, but alas, we’re just going to have to roll with my photographic dream memory on this one.
(Neena just confirmed - I never told her this. Oops.)
Neena is lying with her eyes closed next to me, and I decide it’s time to hop into that beckoning water. I tell her I’ll be right back, and march right towards the edge. I walk until the water is over my head, and keep walking along the seafloor. You know those wide-angle photos of scuba divers standing on the seafloor, 20-40 feet deep, petting sharks? Zoom out for a moment and that’s me; I’ve simply walked down the slope of the sand to get there. Breathing is a non-issue. There are no sharks, there is nothing. I walk until I find what I was seemingly looking for when I entered the water. There is a pile of strangely molded iron at my feet when I stop. Flat, rounded pieces, like enormous flower petals, dismembered and compiled right where I’ve stopped. They haven’t rusted, but I know they were definitely dumped off of a ship in the 1800’s, a fact the metal seems to transfer to me when I reach to collect it all in my arms. I stand up with what is rightfully mine, and look ahead to see a door standing in the water. It’s glass with a long metal handle, like the entrance to an expensive mall, and I can clearly see that the ocean just continues on the other side of it. But I walk to it, arms full, and it opens for me into a room. It’s an all-white room. None of the water that should pour in behind me does.
Satisfied with the mere presence of the empty room, I exit back through the door onto the seafloor with my new possessions and push my toes into the sand to shoot upwards. I break the surface into sparkling, foamy waves and swim (without using my very full arms apparently) back to shore. I call to Neena. I explain that I know these pieces of metal were dumped off of a ship in the 1800’s. We lay the pieces out and attempt to arrange them, and have quickly located breastplates. Round, convex breastplates. The flower pedals arch together below the breastplates, and we have suddenly assembled armor for a very pregnant woman. I know her name instantly.
Neena asks how I know this woman’s name. She’s an ancestor of mine. The metal tells me all of this by touch. She was not on that ship by her own volition, that much is sure. The armor she had made specially for her pregnant body at what had to be 7 or 8 months was certainly ripped from her without her consent and tossed overboard. Realization smashes into me: this armor was what she was using to protect herself, to disguise herself as still pregnant. This armor was to ensure no one knew she had had an abortion. She had been found out, robbed of her protection, autonomy. Touching the laid-out armor - a pregnant skeleton in the bleachy sand - I knew that the persecution for her abortion over 2 centuries ago was still living, breathing, chasing. The moment this clicks, Neena and I jolt at the sound of a motorboat in the distance. Of course - a Hong Kong-based anti-abortion vigilante found us, found me, the descendant, and are in pursuit of a centuries old “justice.”
I rarely have action-movie-type dreams. I can’t remember the last time I willingly watched an action film. We’ll get back to these Call Me By Your Name dreamscapes soon, but first we’ll venture into something like Call Me By Your Name’s setting with the cast of Wet Hot American Summer.
Neena and I encounter a zoomed-in, Ocean’s 11 shot of a boat overflowing with anti-abortion extremists, so we hop onto our water mo-ped.
That’s not what they’re called. I don’t want to google it, but you know...a motorcycle that’s on the water?
JETSKI. Jesus.
We hop onto our nearby jetski.
Apologies. I’ve had some wine while writing this.
Fast-forwarding through the chase-scene in downtown Hong Kong, we arrive at a summer camp for orphans in Indonesia. It looks remarkably like “the Maldives” except there are cabins on stilts above the calm, green water.
This is definitely inspired by Telunas Beach, an Indonesian retreat center where my high school art classes went every fall break.
We arrive in “disguise” (all our hair is chopped off) and spend weeks at the orphan retreat trying to draw as little attention to ourselves as possible. Sam, a dear friend and brilliant playwrite, is the lead camp counselor, and knows our situation. He lets us stay while we wait for the anti-abortion extremists to give up or disappear. Weeks of sad meals, silence, and watching t.v. together in the rec hall ensue.
This is not summer camp. I now realize I mislead you by implying this was anything like Wet Hot American Summer. This is if Orange is the New Black were set at an Indonesian orphan retreat.
Another typical evening begins where Neena and I, with our hair chopped short and in our official orphan camp t-shirts, sit at the back of the rec hall and watch all of the other orphans watch t.v. For the first time, I am tuned in to the content of the series we are watching. It’s a wildly popular show that we’ve been viewing as a group since our arrival, though Neena and I never paid it much attention.
In this episode, two young women are escaping a Maldivian beach on a jetski and heading to Hong Kong with a pile of mysterious metal.
Holy shit.
Neena and I understand simultaneously. The most famous t.v. show in the world is only a couple of weeks behind in recounting our story. Someone sold the rights to our lives to HBO, and by next week, the episode that reveals our current location could air, and the motorboat would pull up again and we would be in for it. We’d been vaguely watching it for weeks, and here we were, finally knowing we’d been watching our own lives all along.
Sam understands this too. The timing is precarious. He walks straight over to us, where we sit with our jaws dropped. As he’s about to speak, we all freeze at the sound of a motorboat. We turn our heads in slow-motion. Turns out, our friends wouldn’t need next week’s episode to reveal where we were. Sam rushes us across the boardwalks and forces us into a gigantic treasure chest parked outside of his cabin door. He sits on top of it.
The rest of the dream is “shot” from an outside perspective, so you don’t have to listen to me recount whatever claustrophobia-induced panic attack my treasure-chest-bound body would likely have been experiencing at this point.
Sam whistles some sort of Tom Sawyer tune while we await our fate. Six men march down the boardwalk and approach Sam. Before they can speak, Sam stands up on the treasure chest and begins to tap dance. The men are awestruck, silent. Sam continues dancing while singing a completely improvised song. This shit was Hamilton. He sings about how we had been staying at his orphan retreat and had recently left to find hiding ‘elsewhere.’ But the words themselves didn’t matter: the men are so deeply distracted by Sam’s dancing, so baffled by how beautiful the melodies he spontaneously produced were, that they believe him without even listening to him.
I would give anything to hear this song again, to dream this scene again. Sam has actually written a musical, and I’ve even pitched a co-write with him based on emails about clogged pipes my friend was receiving from her landlord. Naturally, I’m enamored with Sam’s musical abilities, thus this central feature in an already absurd dream that could only be described as cinematic.
But then again, aren’t most dreams? At least, in theory?
The dream ends with the men applauding Sam as he bows on top of the treasure chest. They leave. I assume we live in Indonesia forever. Fin.
To be fair, this is by far my most interest dream that I remember. I don’t think anything else really comes close. I typically don’t fly or experience the surreal in my dreams, nor is there usually any sort of plot. I once dreamed I couldn’t pick a type of chapstick at a Walgreens. A friend comforted me by sharing her recent dream of choosing a frying pan.
Yes, I think often of my ancestors. Yes, I love the idea of the abortions of my ancestors leading to the precise life I live today. My subconscious smashed it all together. Thus, I’d like to thank my subconscious for making it far more ridiculous than I would have ever conjured myself.
By Addie Loggins
Image by Laken Sylvander
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