Isn't it always a little uncomfortable when someone tells you that you appeared in a dream they had? I think so, and people are always telling me they dreamt about me. With one startling exception, none of their dreams ever involve sex. Well, let me back-track. None of their dreams ever involve OVERT sex, but I have become expert at mining the dreams of my friends and coworkers for subliminal sexual content, as it pertains to me, Violet.

For example, a couple of years ago, a coworker I knew only slightly told me about a dream she had wherein she ran into me at the beach. The dreamer (whom I'll call Candy) said that I was with her sister and her sister's girlfriend. (Her sister is a lesbian. So is the girlfriend.) The three of us went into the ocean, and were swimming around and playing together and having a great time, and we called out to Candy on the shore to come join us, but she was hesitant about the safety of the ocean.

It's possible to regard that as a nice beach-time dream, maybe a little boring, certainly innocuous. Unless you are me, in which case you would be secretly thinking, "Awwwwwww, yeah.... Candy wants to do the shook with me, subconsciously!" and secretly file it away for later use in an online diary. Because if you are me, you've read too many "dream interpretation" books where the ocean = sex, and it has warped your sensibility.

It is a very fun pursuit, because now, when someone who's related a dream to me talks to me about anything, even like, defrosting their refrigerator, I fix them with an innocent, interested-looking gaze and think, "You subconsciously want to have sex with meeeee..."

I am very popular in people's subconsciouses, for some reason. Not so much in the "waking life," as the dream guides like to call it, but hey, I'll take that screen time where I can get it, y'all.

So, with that in mind, here is a small, non-sexual dream I had in which a friend of mine figured prominently. I'm writing it here because if I tell him directly, it would make us both uncomfortable, so this way, he'll be able to read it and not be exactly QUITE certain that I'm talking about him. I'll write it in such a way that it could be any of my male friends, and you won't know that it's Al.

The dream takes place in Tucson, Arizona, and in it, I am looking through the Weekly Reader for something to do. My Dream Friend is there, too, and telling me there's nothing to do in that town, and how beat it is, which the ads in the Weekly Reader certainly bear out. I come upon the back section of the paper, where all the ads for escort services and strip clubs are, and right in the middle, there's a line illustration of a wavy-haired guy wearing sunglasses. He's bare-chested and flexing highly developed muscles, wearing a toothy grin. On his chest is a symbol that I can't quite decipher. I look at it a couple of different ways, and finally ask My Dream Friend if the symbol is a swastika. He looks uncomfortable and nods, then says, "Yeah... that's that new Neo-Nazi strip club that just opened." I think, "Who would go THERE?" and then, "Who would WORK there?" and then a whole host of other questions, one involving the curiosity of having a robust-haired male model in the ad.

So, that's all I can remember about it, and you have to admit, nothing untoward happened. Well, except for that part about strippers and racists, but that didn't involve me directly.

I find dream interpretation incredibly easy. When someone tells me their dream, I can instantly translate it into something comprehensible (i.e., they want to sleep with me, but haven't admitted it yet). However, I am not as skilled at interpreting my own dreams, so I'm generally wary of repeating them to others. I'm hoping to find a good dream interpreter, though, so if you're up to the task, give me a holler. One thing, though: Don't try to tell me that my dream means I want to sleep with you. I'm over that scene, man.

Star of the day. . .Stevie Nicks