So, I’M AWAKE, universe, and yanked out of a sound sleep because I swear the waking parts of my brain just went to war against the non-waking parts of my brain and hit the “abort” key on sleep for the night.

The dream started like this: my wife and I were in Chicago, alone with one of my students, a kid who I won’t detail at all other than to say he’s a pain in the ass and a lot of the time I don’t like him very much.  Actually, I’ll say this, too: I don’t dislike him enough that he’s generally on my mind when I’m outside of work, so it’s deeply weird that he’s showing up in a dream.

Anyway, we were on the train, headed somewhere to have lunch.  I get off the train and I discover that I’ve lost the two of them.   The neighborhood we’re in looks sorta like the nicer/more commercial parts of Milwaukee Avenue, if you’re a Chicagoan and that means anything.  I know where we’re supposed to meet but can’t remember the name of the place.  I look around, getting rather frantic about the whole thing, then call my wife, who is standing in the doorway of the place– it’s across the street from me– waving me over.  It’s called the Indian Tea Room, a fact that I remember instantly as soon as she tells me where she is.   Note that to the best of my knowledge no such place exists in Chicago or anywhere else.

I enter the place to discover that the bottom floor is a long, ridiculously narrow store, and that I’ve lost my wife again.  There is a table of bangles and Indian-style jewelry and good luck charms by the door, card tables full of random junk lining one wall, the sales counter along the other wall, and a high, narrow table covered with comic book short boxes running down the middle of the place.  The aisles are too narrow for me to walk through in a normal fashion; my shoulders are too wide– so I have to turn my body to get through, and push past a couple of people who are shopping.  The comic books are all labeled by title and I’ve not heard of any of them, but I remember feeling weird that none of them were Indian comic books.

The entrance to the restaurant is in the back; it’s on the second floor.  So I have to push past everyone.  I climb up to the second floor and discover it’s a big square room.  Now, the following two things contradict each other, but: dream.  First of all, everything is black and white, and the furniture in the place is like what you might expect from an old music store, except that there’s not anything at all on any of the racks and there are a few beds scattered around.  Also, every single object in the room is prominently labeled.  Like, the racks have a big card on them that says “RACK” and the beds say “BED” and the floor says “FLOOR” every few feet.

This is the contradictory part: I can see all of this, but it’s pitch black in the room.  My wife and my student are sitting on one of the beds.  Note that, again, dream-logic; this was perfectly normal.  When you go to a restaurant what you do is you sit on the bed in the dark until someone brings you food.

Anyway, we sat on the bed for a few minutes until a server came upstairs and flipped the lights on.   She was startled to see us and made some comment about three people sitting on the bed in the dark, at which point it went from being perfectly normal to totally shameful.  My wife and my student were ready to order already, but I didn’t know where the menu was, so I wasn’t ready.  It turns out the menu is on the wall by the stairs, so I go over and look at it.

It’s completely incomprehensible.  I mean, I can tell you thinking about it that most of the stuff on it was typical Indian fare; rice and lamb and various vegetarian dishes and a few other things, but in the dream it was impossible.  Another customer came upstairs with a thick notebook and began carefully explaining to another server what she wanted; it wasn’t on the menu at all but apparently you could just bring your own recipes to this place if you want.

I stared at the menu for maybe twenty minutes of dream-time, getting more and more frustrated with myself for not being able to pick anything, then gave up and went back to my wife.  The bed had transformed into a regular restaurant table with a white tablecloth on it; the only splashes of color in the room were the food.  They’d ordered already, and gotten their food, and there was a big pot of rice and some meatball thingies sizzling in oil.

I got very, very angry.  I remember snatching one of the meatballs out of the pot with my bare hands, wondering for a brief second why I wasn’t burned, and throwing it down on the table, while screaming and cursing about, of all things, the bad service at the restaurant.  At which point the part of my brain that doesn’t like being mad at my wife made me wake up.

I’d say “Fuck this, I’m going back to bed,” but bed is where this happened, so apparently I need to find something to do.