Browsing in Dream Bookstores

I awoke this morning with another vivid dream. Unfortunately, this one did not involve David Krumholtz or God. Instead I dreamed about bookstores.

I walked into a used bookstore and started to browse. The salesman was very friendly and talkative, and I was alarmed to realize that he was assuming I was going to buy every book I casually glanced at, since he was gathering them together. And yet I couldn’t bring myself to protest. I left, promising to come back.

Next I walked into what was obviously a gay and lesbian bookstore. I walked to the back, where there were clothes, of all things. “These really are cute,” I thought, “and they come in my size.” Then the owner came over to welcome me and gave me a form to fill out, which I reluctantly did. But there were abbreviations I didn’t understand. What did “C” mean? Closeted? But there didn’t seem to be a letter that could mean “out.” What about “M”? Married? If I marked that would they assume I was married to a woman? Should I just mark it anyway? Would they hate me if they found out I was married to a man? Why was I here at all?—I was such a fraud. Then I realized that she was ringing up a book she thought I wanted to purchase—it was a copy of the Childcraft book of stories from many lands that I loved as a child. (I used to make my mother read “Nannette and the Chateau” to me every night. I re-read this as an adult and, boy howdy, Freud and Jung could have had a field day.)“But I already have that,” I thought, “and it’s expensive--$51.” But again I couldn’t seem to decline.

The dream ended there.

To top things off, I woke up with an old Lloyd Cole and the Commotions song running through my head: “Perfect Skin.” “She’s got cheekbones like geometry and eyes like sin, and she’s been sexually enlightened by Cosmopolitan.” This was particularly annoying because I always preferred his song “Rattlesnakes” from that album.