My dream residence (apartment in this case) is exactly like the space I’m living in now, only dustier, dirtier, and a share it with another person. She happens to be a lesbian.
We’re waking up for work – she’s on time, I’m running a bit late. I ask her to wake me up. She’s in a rush because she’s off to meet her mother (from here on known as Fancy mom). This women turns out to be a nasty piece of work – all Southern with no charm, lipstick on her teeth, hypocritical.
There’s a sidebar moment when my roommate and I are looking in to the apartment across from ours. We catch a glimpse in as our neighbor is getting ready in the morning. The place is impeccable and the furniture frilly. It's like Laura Ashley threw up in there. There are curtains covering the mirrors, and lace everywhere. Overall the apartment is very white. We make a point to mention how happy she must be.
Our apartment is next door to a fancy restaurant. It’s election day so people are ordering their food and discussing politics. I catch Fancy mom there eating something that looks incredibly rich (some cream sauce) talking about how she hates it when her daughter eats there because the food is so incredibly rich.
By this point her daughter(my roommate) has left and others in the restaurant are mentioning how rude it was of her to try to take money out of the atm when she had no money in her account. Then someone else yells that the ATM was/is out of cash, more yelling back and forth about manners. It’s never clear if the ATM was out of cash or not.
After leaving the restaurant, I walk across the street to an apartment that is being renovated by our same landlord. I've been asking about this apartment for some time, but he keeps giving me the impression that I can’t afford it, even though when he tells me the cost, it’s only slightly over what I can make. Just out of my reach.
These apartments have been in my dreams before, because I remember seeing this apartment over the course of its renovation. There's actually a point in the dream where I have a memory of an earlier dream.
This time, I walk in and the first floor of the apartment is still under construction. There are 3 levels. The basement level looks complete and is meant to be a workout and laundry room. The second floor houses the bedrooms. The floor creaks under my feet. One room has little character at the moment (still under construction), but you can tell that the second bedroom will be beautiful – moldings, arched ceilings, and a window seat overlooking the street. I move on to the third floor, where I find a state of the art kitchen and family room. The family room is one large room that takes up the entire length of the apartment. It overlooks a small but pretty garden and a set of floor to ceiling windows at the other end, which overlook a body of water. It’s interesting thinking back on it now, that the scene outside of these windows is nothing like the actual outside of the building. In the dream, the neighborhood is a bit more run down than my own in real life. Through the windows, it looks like the neighborhood is on a beautiful crystal blue bay and sunny outside. When I leave the building, it's gray outside and very urban.
I’m suddenly joined by San Juanita and Emile outside of the building. They hang out while I try to discuss the apartment with the landlord again. He tells me he has someone moving in next week; the deposit is on its way. I ask him to keep me posted. I don’t understand why he keeps putting me off about moving in to this place. It’s not the perfect apartment (there’s some green carpet/floor tiles that I could do without) and overall the renovation is close to what I’d like but not exactly how I would have done it. He gives me the impression that I’m not good enough for the place.
SJ, Emile and I leave the building. We’re talking about how the charm of the neighborhood lies mostly in the fact that its’ (I believe the acronym Emile used was DDR-direct downtown runoff).
We’re on the street waiting for traffic to slow down so we can cross. SJ has a cute little fluffy white dog with her. I tap the dog on the back and she lays down, just as she was about to cross into oncoming traffic. I ask SJ to please leash her so we can cross. She does, but as soon as we start crossing, the dog takes off. The leash doesn't seem to want to retract or stop the dog in anyway. I slowly start to say SJ’s name. Quietly at first as the dog is running towards oncoming traffic. I keep expecting the leash to stop the dog in her tracks. It doesn’t.
SJ…… SJ………SJ……… SJ!
The dog looks like she’s gone under a car, San Juanita starts moving. The dog is running out from under the car and towards a basketball court. Bad move, there’s a huge german Shepard on the court looking to lunch. The dog is desperately running towards the fence. In my mind, I say, jump it, you’ll be ok. He jumps the fence. The leash gets caught on the fence, but the other dog doesn’t try to jump. One of the guys playing basketball is running to help SJs dog over the fence – he was trying to save him. His friends are laughing at him “Oh, ha ha, you were trying to save the preppy dog! Hahaha”
I suddenly love the dog saver. As SJ is working to get the dog collar unstuck from the fence (we have all RUN over during this exchange), I look to the right.
There’s this awkward giraffe standing in the corner of the basketball court. He has the body of a giraffe but the fur of a llama. We exchange hello’s. He puts his head down to meet mine and lets me pet him.
I wake up.
(The title of this blog - "Giraffe? Giraffe!" is a reference to what I hope/expect to be the first of many fantastical stories of the true nature/purpose of animals.)
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