WET DREAMS

There are recurring bodies of water in my dreams and often there’s violence too. Bloodshed with an ocean view. Most of the time I’m a bystander and the gore plays out around me. I tend not to dream about individuals; lunatics, serial killers, suchlike. I dream of institutional violence. What happens when a crowd turns. Groups of vigilante rapists, fuelled by their beliefs. I have nightmares about lynchings, reigns of terror and coup d’etat.

I remember sitting on a bus to school and the man opposite me was reading an illustrated anthology of torture. The book was too big for his lap. The man’s hard-on was too big for his lap also. Too big for a Monday morning’s busride. He looked delighted that the book had caught my attention.

Water Cure

Waterboarding

Witch Ducking

Jung says the significance of water in your dreams is about repressed

emotions and lack of clarity on the surface. Muddy waters can mean confusion:

thiccc emotions

Gushy, stagnant pools of fffffeelings

Waterhuis

Keelhauling
Chinese Water Torture

SALTMARSH GUERNICA

I was in a dank marshland. The sky was that kind of Gormenghast-grey which normally forecasts a storm. There was a school trip, with a slide, and a suspension bridge. The slide was more of a mud chute. And I was taking a tour of the facilities in this perma-twilight dreamscape. Bosch buildings in the background, puddles in the foreground. I didn’t know anyone. It was my first day on campus and there were blast craters underfoot. It became muggy and the mosquitos came close.

Then, I was on holiday with my mum and sister. We were sightseeing in Spain. I knew it was Spain in the way you just know things in dreams. Even if it defies the phenomenology of what makes Spain Spanish;

It was Spain. We were traipsing around galleries, museums and edifices which all had gruesome stories written into their fabric. For us, it was ambient titillation, not that morbid even. Just something to do. We were walking from one atrocity to the next, cocking our heads.

“Oh wow. That’s interesting.”

Saints with untimely deaths. Mourning infantas appeasing inquisitors in black dresses holding wooden rosaries (muddy, everything was muddy). The sodden ditches were Franco’s fascist mass-graves. Spectacles of torture were documented in detailed oil paintings. We grabbed ourselves some churros in between bloody episodes, ‘cos it was a holiday. And then, I wasn’t with my family anymore. I was in this bog that was more like a minefield, there was a black ship stuck in the mud. Washed up and at an uncanny angle. It was Isabella Blow’s hat, covered in ship’s tar.

There was a group of sailors wearing black uniforms outside the ship.

Boss matelot uniforms, tight, pristine.

kinda hottt

The captain decreed that it was bad luck having a beautiful sailor on board the ship.

So, he was picking the prettiest boys and having them executed in front of the crew.

The chosen sailors, expressions of terror on their faces, were ordered to get on their knees.

They put their arms above their heads and were skewered with a sword from one armpit

through to the other. A slender zealot’s knife pierced them through the heart like a cocktail

stick through a martini olive.

The captain dismissed the slaughtered sailor’s screams

of pain for being unnecessarily dramatic. He turned his

back on the executions and repeated to himself.

“It’s just an experiment”

with a shake of his head.

RIHANNA THE PIRATE QUEEN

Rihanna was the headlining cabaret star of a luxury cruise liner – It seemed like the Titanic or at least a Cunard ship. All the men on the ship fancied Rihanna. Dressed like a pirate queen she held dominion over the entertainment underbelly of our voyage. Her uniform was pretty much the outfit she wears in the “wild thoughts” video. I was just a punter on the cruise and the boat was crossing somewhere cold and deep. Jane Macdonald was there too, singing “my heart will go on”.

People started getting ill and the climate became superstitious. Rumours were circulating that the boat was cursed by a witch. The men agreed that the only way to break the curse was to root out the evil on board. A good old-fashioned witch hunt ensued. Afterall, no one wanted a titanic disaster. Naturally, Rihanna was the first to be locked up. But they didn’t stop at just one person they rounded up anyone who might be under her influence and locked them in a flooded chamber full of seawater. The water was nearly to the roof until only our chins were above the surface and the ceiling was a hands length away. We stayed locked up until the ship moored.

At last, we arrived in London and put down our anchor in the docklands area. Newly-regenerated desirable London at it’s finest. It looked like Dickensian Wapping, or similar. Smoggy docks, bawdy pubs and an old scaffold. I was getting fingered against a metal post down at the waters edge roughly by someone or other. In fact, I was Nora Barnacle for a moment and drunk on my land legs. I looked over to the pub nearby, all lit up by gaslights and rainbow festoon garlands.

Rihanna was being dragged in front of a jeering crowd and had both kneecaps smashed with a wooden mallet. The horror was in the futility of the situation, she had no choice. She was outnumbered. Despite the violence and unnecessary pain of gratuitous bone crushing it was all O.K. - Rihannna was secretly a witch as well as a budding starlet making her names on the cruiseliners. She was able to bounce back and became a local music hall star.The jeering crowd returned year on year to see her knee-capped. It became an annual rite of passage.

Andromeda over and over.

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

So, I suppose this last one isn’t so violent - which breaks form on this pamphlet’s nightmarish quality. However, it is a dream I had after an act of violence done on to me;

Which gives me pause to think about dreams and trauma –

Traumen is German for dreaming. Albtraum is a nightmare. An elf or incubus who might sit on your chest creating pressure or anxiety where it sits.

Trauma

Dream

Traumen

Drowning

Reaming

Dreaming

OH HEY INCUBUS!... YOU LET YOURSELF IN.

MERMAID - manual

I was starting work as a fluffer girl on a porn set.

“Looking forward to your first day?”

“Uh huh” I said brightly, just as I would on any first day of the job. The team knew each other from way back.

“Air B “n’ B has really changed the industry” said someone. There was a strong gender bias on set that I objected to -

But isn’t there always?

Ketchup-smeared Glassine paper from the fried egg and sausage sandwiches lay crumpled on the granite countertop. It gave off undertones of sulphur. With twelve or so people in the room, it divided into a natural hierarchy. The talent did its own make-up. Production talked amongst themselves. The Director – was simpering on the phone to “the end client”. I sat at the kitchen island on an Ikea barstool with the other fluffer girl, contemplating the millenial décor.

She was texting with one foot up on the stool. “When’s the fun gonna start?” she said all cocky.

She was barely 18, had course brown hair, freckles and a tummy behind a taught t-shirt.

The t-shirt read:

“What Attitude?” in bold, black lettering. She looked so comfortable. So relaxed that it made me shy.

“Me? ... “I’m just part of the porn furniture.” She said whilst examining the nutritional information on the back of a crisp packet. "Which is the bad fat; saturated or unsaturated?”

To my surprise, behind the slash curtain was an Olympic Lido. This handful of film team were but a tiny part of grandiose Technicolor-production, maybe two thousand people strong. A million-dollar-mermaid scene ensued with big smiles and human pyramids back as far as the eye could see. It was a Porno that MGM would have been proud to hallmark in its golden era. Five up-lit Fountains erupted down the centre in Mexican wave formation. There was a Styrofoam waterfall at the end of it, decorated with beautiful women waving palm fronds. They sat in tableau with Carmen Miranda headdresses on. Staff with scissor lifts and cherry pickers were helping them get into position.

The tiles were grubby from the grouting out and the pool had that nostalgic smell of chip fat and chlorine. A smell evocative of my childhood. A man scooped some water out of the pool with a long net and swashed the tiles. On the periphery were rocky enclaves of moss and turf. These coves floated on little pontoons at the side of the pool, bobbing up and down in the choppy water. Bobbing up and down with them were more girls resting on perches like buzzards. They had slick-back hair and sequinned falcon-hoods, they looked like bluebottle flies. They were
tethered with leather leashes and were practising writhing, like they were newly born rats in a nest.

Busby Berkeley Toy-boys lined the side of the pool in kitschy-appropriated Egyptian costume. Another line behind them held tridents, standing to attention with a homoerotic machismo. A man was spraying their cocks gold, it was taking more coats than it ought to against the glossiness of their viagratic erections.

My team was responsible for “the male aqua-talent” a.k.a the “Life Boys”. It was my job with the other fluffer to swim along between takes and make sure “there was something to shoot”. The other fluffer came through the slash curtains in a purple high-neck racer costume and walked to the far side of the pool, belly first, with pride. The shoot was behind schedule, so we were asked to get in the water and do a spot check. We took one side of the pool each.

The water felt cold, heavily disinfected like a leisure centre and iridescent with sun cream. With one hand in the grate and one hand at crotch depth, I greeted each of the boys coyly. This guy who was new to the business was floating on his back. A little bulge at the base of his navel was just about breaking the surface of the water. I submerged my grip and he was so fuck- ing hard. My excitement drove me into a sex-crazed frenzy so I wrapped my legs around him and pulled him inside me. The release of being filled by lifeboy-dick was buzzing through my spine.

He gently pushed me away.

"Not now love - but nice try. Leave that for the talent!"

He said, kissing his teeth.

He put one hand on my back and went in for a high five instead. I walked back to the Green Room blushing with embarrassment hoping no one had seen my disgraceful outburst of lust. The other fluffer, was fawning over a pile of purple shoes. As I got dressed, She picked up the envelope on top of the pile and ripped it open.

“Are you opening my mail?” I asked pointedly. She raised an eyebrow at me.

“It’s just Dad, that’s all” she said “He always gets me a little something when I come to work with him”

She showed the card to me – it was prefilled with a “To my darling daughter” message.

The handwriting was messy; In block capitals it read:

"ALWAYS THE PRETTIEST GIRL ON SET? LOVE DA"

“Awww” she grimaced. "So! Cringey!”

“The director is your Dad?” I asked her.

“Yeah but I only come in on the Aquatic features. I used to be a swim champ at school: Front crawl gold and a steady bronze in butterfly”

She walked off down the fire escape. Humming Nicki Minaj with one headphone in, all jiggle and vigour.