Morpheus Read online

  MORPHEUS

  By

  Stan Charnofsky

  © Copyright 2016, Stan Charnofsky

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the author.

  ISBN: 978-1-365-61509-2

  eISBN: 978-1-970-02420-3

  “I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.”

  Hamlet

  PROLOGUE

  Nightmares. I have them, you have them. Scary. Sometimes an amalgamation of old hurts, pains, failures––hard to track, often an inconsistent potpourri of unrelated past events, even scarier if prelude to a coming experience, which we discover later, in our waking state.

  The old analysts liked to explore childhood sexual experiences to see what terrible scars lingered in our psyches, often expressed in recurring dreams. Sure, we all have wounds from our early years, but I like to think we aren’t victims of them. I like to think I can overcome. Mommy and Daddy, and the cruel outside world, did what they did but I’m okay anyway. That’s what I like to think.

  Nightmares aren’t a product of a blank slate. If you don’t know ugliness, you don’t dream ugly. Now, here’s the rub: during the process of growing up, we all learn ugly. It is a virus in our system, a flaw in our culture, a chronic defect in our civilization, it is anathema to maturing with loving allowances, creating peaceful connections, living with zest, able and eager to eschew conflict, banish insult, disconnect from hateful attitudes.

  We do not grow up problem-free. We carry the burdens of affronts deep in our pores, are restimulated by them, alas, in our dreams.

  CONTENTS

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-One

  Twenty-Two

  Twenty-Three

  Twenty-Four

  Twenty-Five

  Twenty-Six

  Twenty-Seven

  Twenty-Eight

  Twenty-Nine

  Thirty

  Thirty-One

  Thirty-Two

  Thirty-Three

  Thirty-Four

  Thirty-Five

  Thirty-Six

  ONE

  My first catastrophe which I remember—that disclaimer is critical, for surely there were some I don’t remember––was when I was eight and bringing home milk and cereal and eggs and cheese from the corner grocery store in my Lincoln Heights neighborhood.

  Two older boys were on bicycles messing around, riding in circles, and when I exited the little mom and pop store, they challenged me with, “What are you looking at, dickhead?”

  In my childish naiveté and comic-book mentality, I defiantly replied, “You!”

  One, the taller one, at least a foot taller than I, with green-tinted hair, pulled his bike in front and wouldn’t let me pass. The other leaped off his and strode toward me.

  “What did you say, little pussy?”

  “Nothing. I didn’t say anything.”

  He slapped me upside my head as the bigger boy leaned forward and shoved me in the chest, sending my parcel flying. Before I knew what was happening, they were pummeling me. The whole episode lasted no more than two minutes. Mr. Caruso, the owner of the store, must have seen through his window what was happening and came rushing out, yelling and waving his right hand, in which he brandished a baseball bat.

  My two assailants, likely chicken-hearted in an equal fight, instantly sped away, leaving me devastated, milk spilled, eggs a mess of yoke and shell, and my sensibility wounded. Mr. Caruso replaced the grocery loss, and my parents found out only about the attack, not the breakage.

  Physical equilibrium restored, emotional residue ignored.

  Nobody can tell how much of me, today, is altered because of that painful episode. I know that when I was eleven I began having the same dream over and over, sometimes as regularly as once a week. It was of a giant dog with sabrelike teeth, coming at me, salivating, ferocious. A few times I awoke, screaming, and my mother had to console me.

  When I was thirteen my first attempt at romance was cruelly repelled by a cute fourteen-year-old girl named Jenny. I was as tall as she, but pretty immature, and she was already into her breasts and other things. That setback cost me a year of timidity—and also a different kind of recurring dream, not quite as often, not as physically threatening. I was in our local park, lying on the grass, and this truly homely girl came to me, leaned over and shouted in my face: “You are gross! I’d never let you touch me!”

  Here I am at thirty-one, and every now and then that little nocturnal gem pops up again.

  I don’t think I’m crazy or anything. Lots of people have recurring dreams, some more intimidating than mine. I do think it points to a lack of serenity in me. I mean I am probably a lot more frenetic than I ought to be, shamefully compulsive, off-balance in a way, living with anticipation that at any time a nightmare could come true and I could be maimed or crippled beyond redemption.

  In my teens I became a fairly good athlete, baseball my sport. But I was also a dedicated student deeply interested in my literature and drama classes, and convinced that someday I would be a famous writer. So, after my junior year, I quit the baseball team to focus on my creative bent. My baseball coach, Mr. Mallette, was disgusted, since he was counting on me to be his second baseman. A few of my buddies joined me in my distress about his criticism, but we amused ourselves with anecdotes about his frailties, which we had gotten to know well in the couple of years we played for him. Well, one wasn’t even a frailty, just a fact of life: after a game, in the shower, he would come around to praise us if we did well, and we would take that opportunity to check out his manhood. It was a running joke that Mr. Mallette’s pecker was like a ‘mouse peeking out of a bush.’

  I mentioned that my mom came to comfort me when I was distressing over some painful dream. She and my dad, fighting and arguing from my earliest memory, split up when I was nine, and I’m sure I was stung to the core by that event, though I don’t precisely remember the day or the details: one more zinger to be buried in my subconscious, to clamor for comprehension in the middle of the night.

  I’ve read that Freud believed dreams were the royal road to the unconscious mind, but another psychology guru, the irascible Fritz Perls, disagreed, saying dreams were the repository of unfinished business bellowing to get finished.

  My mom was an attentive parent and, since I was an only child, she doted on me—well, to be honest, she spoiled me rotten. Good old Father disappeared for a time then circled back into my life when I was fourteen. He was remarried, with two stepdaughters, aged nine and ten. He and his second wife, whose first husband died, bought a house about ten minutes away from ours. I never asked Mom directly what she thought about that, but my memory of her demeanor was that she was annoyed, if not insulted. Later, I found out that my parents’ divorce was so bitter that Mom had insisted Dad stay away. Someday I imagine I’ll learn the true story of their breakup, with all the gory inside particulars.

  Mom was a dentist, high-powered, with more than one office, a corporate executive with all the imagined authority over several dozen employees. Her style was not restricted to her business relationships.

  Enough with the family history. Abb
y appeared in my life when I was twenty-one.

  TWO

  My mom agreed to bankroll my attendance at the University of Southern California, USC to most people, the school that spawned O.J. Simpson, George Lucas, Robert Zemeckis, Ron Howard, actor Tom Selleck, and baseballer Mark MacGwire, among other luminaries.

  An expensive ride, but I did manage to get a modest four thousand dollar scholarship the first year, which paid for about one quarter of the tuition.

  Mom was eager to help, and since along with her ample income she had some kind of trust fund from her father’s estate, she could afford the tuition. I was worried there would be strings attached, like what she wanted me to major in, or what kind of job I had to get on the side, or—worst of all—what woman or women I could get interested in. She has always been a strong-willed person, my mom, and, except when she and my father got divorced, expected to, and always did, get her way.

  At the university I majored in American lit and creative writing, but was stunned in my freshman year to receive four consecutive Ds on essays we were assigned to write in our English class. And I thought I was a gifted writer! Well, I do think I had neat unusual ideas, but I apparently never learned the specifics of putting words together in an acceptable, grammatically correct, manner. Quite a sobering experience! Dr. Briggs, my professor, was gracious, a true teacher in that he wanted his students to succeed. His grades were motivators rather than deadly judgments on our abilities. By the end of the first semester, believe it or not, I was getting A- grades, and on my report card, Briggs gave me a B for the class.

  By the time I was a senior in college, I was an active member of the Writers’ Guild of Southern California, which had monthly meetings across from the Farmers’ Market near Fairfax Avenue, in a building that was an architectural landmark for its swoops and circles and postmodern accent. It was a place to read our work and get insightful critiques. I loved it, though I often had difficulty with the judgments because of my spoiled childhood; I didn’t expect to be criticized.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

  Abby wasn’t a college student, since her life had been one of survival—scratching and clawing her way to adulthood despite a horrific experience of family and neighborhood. I didn’t learn that right away, of course. When we met—when I first saw her—there was no inkling of historical misery. She looked radiant, alert, a sun shining in darkness, a star twinkling in an ebony field, her hair long and black, hanging straight down like two dark side-curtains framing a proscenium stage. I would also learn that she was indeed a student, not formally like those of us in the university, but a committed learner and avid reader.

  I was at one of our Writers’ Guild meetings and raised my hand to ask a question of the speaker, a Hollywood screenwriter with a mammoth list of credits, when this dark-haired female let loose with what I read as a disdainful titter. The presenter seemed not at all annoyed at my query, and set about to answer amicably and without a hint of resentment. When his explanation was over, I felt satisfied—at least about the information—but off-balance because of the derision from the woman.

  At break, a few minutes later, I ambled up to her.

  “You didn’t think my question was too swift.”

  “Sorry. It seemed to come out of nowhere. Unrelated, if you know what I mean.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that, and watched as she seemed to adjust her focus.

  “Look, I didn’t mean to make fun of you. I don’t do that. Had enough of that in my life. Don’t believe in it. If I insulted you, forgive me, please.”

  The swoop of the design of that amazing edifice suddenly seemed movable, elastic, as if it were stretching and adjusting to some new I-beam, bolstering it to its foundation. I was thrust into one of my old dreams about loss and stupidity, and my lack of cleverness with women. A hurricane was sweeping across my vision, battering my body and causing me to brace myself against the wall. I almost shouted, “Help!” but had enough presence of mind to realize it was all part of my interior invention, not really happening, only a reaction to an attractive woman being sincere with me.

  “Well, I don’t claim to be all that smart about the writing field. I was just trying to understand.”

  She looked—I swear I saw it, though I didn’t think of myself as a great interpreter of others’ feelings—contrite, and it made me feel warm and appreciative. Her response was even more of a balm to my fragile senses.

  “You’re a cute guy, and you sound pretty bright to me. We’re only just learning. I’m certainly no Hemingway myself.”

  Lights blinked, summoning us to return to the second part of the presentation. My eyes were drawn upward, and for the first time I saw two graceful lamps arced out from a cavity in the stainless steel wall, pouring spotlight beams onto the speakers’ platform.

  She turned to go to her seat, and I took the biggest risk of my young life. “When this is over, maybe we could get some coffee or tea or beer or ice cream, or something, and I could find out what you meant when you said you had enough of someone making fun of you.”

  “Tea is my cup of tea,” she said.

  “What’s your name?” I called out after her.

  “Abby. Abby Justice.”

  “Mine’s Clare,” I blurted out, realizing, of course, that my full name was an embarrassment, a product of Mom’s devotion to some obscure historical figure. “Clarence,” I muttered to myself, also aware that I hadn’t told her my surname, which was another reason for ‘Clarence,’ since my mom was a poet of sorts and believed in alliteration. Clarence Candle. I’m pretty sure Candle got whittled down two generations ago from some long European moniker like Candeleski, or something like that.

  The speaker was brilliant, with just the right touch of humor to keep us all from panicking over the rigors of screenwriting. After about forty-five more minutes, he closed by admonishing us to keep our minds open and airy the way little children do: “A seven-year-old named Minnie, when asked what a couple does on the first date, said, ‘The boy puts on cologne, and the girl puts on perfume, and they go out and smell each other—and that gets them interested enough for a second date.’”

  The crowd mingled for half an hour, gossiping and munching on cookies. At first I didn’t see Abby, but suddenly she appeared right next to me.

  “Sorry, I had to find the little girls’ room.”

  “Why do people always call it that? Why not the big girls’ room?”

  “Sometimes the sign says ‘Ladies,’ sometimes ‘Women.’ I think it’s whimsical, depending on the sign painter.”

  “Or on the contractor.”

  “Or on the entrepreneur.”

  “Why are we talking about this?”

  “Nothing else to say?”

  “Hardly.”

  “So. Speak up.”

  There was a long silence, during which I tried to pull together my scattered thoughts: such as, Damn, she’s pretty! and Wonder what kind of writer she is, and What do I most want to find out about her?

  “So,” I said, “who used to make fun of you?”

  She laughed. Great teeth. Whatever her painful story—we all have them—someone took care of her oral hygiene. “Who didn’t? When I was a kid it was a battle for survival.”

  It became clear to me that her history was no modern short-short story that stopped in the middle and expected the reader to do all the finishing work. I felt a strong pull to get her alone, not for illicit stuff, but to learn all I could about her.

  “Where can we get tea?”

  “The Farmers’ Market is across the street. There’s a Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf there. Feel like walking?”

  “You bet. I’m a marathon walker.”

  Pompously I gave her my arm; fancifully she took it, and away we sauntered.

  THREE

  I mention my mother a lot. It’s because at that stage of my life, I was truly under her wing, or better put, under her influence. She was never mean, but she always knew the right way to do so
mething; that is, the right way for me to do something. I said earlier that I was spoiled, and I know that isn’t very flattering for a grown man to admit. But, it’s the truth. Because good old Dad split (I make no judgment here as to why) and disappeared for a time, I became the designated male in the house. Can’t say I relished the role. Mom took me to movies and plays and concerts, even when I was an older adolescent and wanted to hang out with my friends. Looking back, I think she just needed a date.

  Though I knew it was not likely, Abby’s eyes seemed both black and green. Well, a kind of lime-green around the irises, and darker, darker, dark in the middle.

  I loved her laugh, a sound that elevated my spirits—her delight became an appliqué on mine, her enthusiasm explosive in its impact on my frazzled, dream-afflicted psyche. But I also knew—was absolutely positive—that she was not free of nighttime harassment herself. The more she spoke, the more I picked up a childhood of terror, parenting short on nurture and festooned with neglect, a residue of pain and despair a virtual guarantee. That she could be spontaneous, upbeat, able to have a romance with life, was a wonder in itself.

  She was not intimidating to me, despite my sense of privilege, a legacy from Mom that I deserved only the best; and as we conversed, I began to realize that Mom would give thumbs down on this woman if I tried to insert her in any serious way into my life. Well, that was her problem!

  “What kind of writing do you do?” I asked.

  We were both drinking tea, I not discriminating enough to know one from another, but she advising that chamomile might be best this late at night.

  “So far, short stories. No market for them, I know. Magazines like The New Yorker run them, but their choices are narrow and specific to their reading audience.”

  “Short stories I’ve read lately are not really stories at all, but studies. Maybe character pieces, or a slice of an event without resolution. So unsatisfying!”

  “I agree. But how about you? What do you write?”

  Before I answered, I flashed on the fact that, in my twenty-or-so years, I had little guidance to prepare for a relationship with a woman. My model was my mother, who, I was convinced, was dreadfully narcissistic, overprotective, controlling, and in no way my notion of the ideal female. I had read about how men often marry caricatures of their mother—not a scenario that appealed to me. Abby, I could see, was, thankfully, nothing like Mom.