Last night I dreamed I fell in love.
I was in Japan on a missionary trip for my Father’s Church. Weird, I know, because I lost my Faith years ago. But anyway, I was either a Believer again, or I had never lost my Faith in the first place, because I was on a mission trip to Japan in the name of Jesus Christ Our Lord. I think it was the latter, because I had a sense that Dad was still attending a Charismatic “House Church” under my Uncle, whereas in “Real Life” he had transitioned to a proper upper-middle-class Southern Baptist Church instead.
The dream opened with me wandering the Japanese wilderness. It was a lot like Kentucky, with rolling hills and insects sharply chirping in the red light of evening. I was swinging along the treetops like some kind of Tarzan or Spider-Man, and I actually got the sense that I was in a videogame of some kind, meant to simulate Japan.
Anyway, eventually I got to Tokyo and I settled down to the business of missonarizin’. I moved in with an attractive young woman who reminded me of a girl I met at a Halloween party last year. I think she might have been Native American.
I walked in to the living room one day and I found a couple of 2nd Edition Dungeons & Dragons books. I thought to myself, oh my, I must have lost these, and started to put them with my things. Then I realized the young woman was nearby, calculating up statistics and designing maps. She was creating a D&D Adventure using the books! “Who is all this for?” I asked. “You, if you want it to be,” she said with a seductive smirk. It was then that I fell in love.
We made mad passionate nerd love many times over the next few days, until I went to make a purchase with my church-issued debit card and had the transaction denied. I quickly discovered that the young woman had stolen all of the money out of my Missionary bank account. “I want my money back!” I roared, and she wouldn’t give it to me. But I wouldn’t report her to the Authorities, because I didn’t want her to go to prison.
Turns out she had stolen my money because her 9 year old son had some kind of arterial disease and needed the next round of treatments very badly. When I learned this, I told Dad of the whole situation and he understood, saying that he would accept the loss of the money as a witness to a Troubled Soul, and hopefully the young boy would improve. I of course never told him of my affair with the young woman and we were able to live together in bliss and harmony, with me ostensibly continuing my Mission (but not really).
That’s what I consider the “official” story of the dream, though, the one with the happy ending. There was a “side” story where I went to investigate the hospital that this boy supposedly had his treatments at and found it a total ruin with barely one brick on top of another. Then there was some kind of alternate dimension where the hospital was standing, and that’s where the boy went. All I had to do was “will it into creation”… but all this is unnecessary and it was so half-formed I almost consider it a heretical reading of the dream in question. It was just an expression of my continued mistrust of people, and I prefer to remember the heartwarming “official” story of the dream.