At first it was exciting; immensely enjoyable, forbidden, alluring. The dream recurred only occasionally and always left him pondering ‘why?’ At first he thought it wrong that he should dream of people in a sexual way; at that age sex is something oddly mysterious whilst being strangely funny and frighteningly repulsive at the same time, an activity that only older sexy people do. On Sunday morning, when just awake, he would lie still feeling a bit naughty and relishing all the juicy details of the dream state intimacy that he could remember, each moment a departure from familiar motherly closeness. He’d then push down his pyjama bottoms and drowsily quasi-masturbate. In church that morning he would spend anxious moments examining his guilt about these wanton liberal thoughts.
The childish dreams did not evolved until at about 15 or 16, an incandescent adolescent period, he climaxed in vivid, long-memorable dreams about sex with significant characters in his life—powerful women like the teachers at school, some of the more animated girls he went to school with and beautiful sparkly female presenters he relished on T.V. The intensity of these somnambulant visions began to expand to include anyone and almost anything. All sorts of women appeared; sometimes nice well-behaved ones like his pretty Sunday school teacher, as well as the hideously ugly or fascinatingly overweight ones like the really big check-out lady, sometimes disturbingly incestuous sex-crazed aunts and, which severely startled him, even his mother and grandmother, and the girls in the neighbourhood (including the two little children who lived across the street and would sometimes came to play in their garden—which, of course, made him suspect he was going to be a paedophile). Sometimes men appeared which, of course, caused him even greater distress because it meant that he was undoubtedly going to be homosexual! And then he would dream of sex with animals like the cat next door or people’s dogs he’d seen on a walk, something he had not the slightest intention of pursuing in waking life, but which brought him closest to what would have been an eternally-embarrassing parental confession because he knew it really would prove he was perverted. And just sometimes there would be a strange whirl of all of the above; an orgy of sexual abandonment happening all around him, sometimes with him at the centre and sometimes with him merely watching, a salivating bystander in a cavalcade of internal debauchery.
In his early adolescence most dreams were short-lived on account of his simultaneous spontaneous ejaculation and the horrible awakening to a sweaty gooey mess in his pyjama bottoms. At first, at about the age of 10 or 11, this occurred at even the first hint of sex—a dreamy smile or friendly caress. This caused him untold worries, because he knew that if next time he saw the people in his dream, like Mrs Geller the newly married Sunday school teacher, and they smiled softly or lightly hugged him, then he would just uncontrollably ejaculate right there and then.
But as he passed through puberty his dreams became a little more controlled—the characters became more complex, the sexual scenarios more involved, even lurid. If it had been particularly nice, he would organise his waking thoughts so that he could remember all the intimate focuses, as if it had been real sex. Then next time he saw the same girl or woman he would try to recall all those erotic details and half-hope that his instant hard-on would get noticed. After all, he reasoned, hadn’t they popped into my dream because they wanted to be there?
He only once told someone about his sexy dreams. Roberta was a wonderfully attractive girl in the same year at school. Sunny and well liked, she had returned his coy glances, so he considered it not inconceivable that once they got talking she might actually enjoy hearing him tell of his nightly preocupations. Besides, he was dying to find out her response. And at first, she did indeed listen attentively to his tale of undressing and going to bed with her, of feeling her hardened nipples brushing up and down his chest and then of him pushing her onto her back, popping on top of her accepting bodily embrace and… After a while he quite forgot himself, being concerned with the proper revelation of the special details. She listened with a transfixed expression on her face—no one had ever spoken to her like that before. And while her suspicions were aroused, she also pondered for a second or two about whether he was exotically interesting or just a mad pervert. Her eyelids fluttered uncontrollably, her visage changed from quizzical smile to dark frown. Then she decided, and with a sneer spat that he was disgustingly depraved, swept her hair back and stormed off back into school to instantly tell all her friends. They, of course, giggled and laughed every time he entered class, but were themselves in two minds—was he truly a sad deviant or some dark misunderstood figure full of forbidden sexual knowledge? He caught their sideways peeks, and they also became fuel for the fire of his further dreams, where severa or all of them either excitedly sneered or merely talked in excited tones about his bold revelations.
Then, as graduation approached his hormones began to relax a little. He ran through a succession of real girlfriends and experiences, some of which made all his fantasies reality: at 17 on holiday in Mexico at the end of school he found himself in bed with three girls—admittedly one had already passed out and was later sick all over his pillow. Later in life he would try to recall this experience, but it would forever remain strangely elusive: he and three girls, this time all of them tall blonde Australian stewardesses, who swept into his large Melbourne hotel suite. He tried to recreate the fabulous energy and enthusiasm had accompanied this fondly remembered experience, but something didn’t quite work out. They had words and one of the girls instantly left. He ended up moodily sleeping on the couch and left before breakfast: it remained a memory-bound legend.
During his late teen period most dreams were directed to be about people he knew. But later other characters began to appear—people unlike anyone he knew; neither did they remind him of anyone in particular. He was in his mid-twenties, a junior flight lieutenant in the Navy. His mind was now clear and firmly set on a career in the skies and perhaps beyond. But at night in his bunk his mind became more and more distracted by the secret nocturnal somnambulant visitations from strangers, all very keen to have sex with him. And they cropped up during quieter daytime moments, the unreal almost-hallucinatory occurrences transpiring in any arena and whilst doing anything; drinking by the pool on shore, systems checking in the cockpit, reading in the mess hall, in chapel, driving, or in an aisle of the ship’s stores. A little taken aback by the lack of control these situations presented, he tried to make these occurrences a little more personal, and actually chatted back to these visitations with what he thought was wit, charm and interest. The characters of his encounters, however, seemed completely disinterested in talk; some of them didn’t even seem to understand English. All they wanted was his sex, and they wanted it immediately! Sometimes, they would appear to secretly discuss him in hushed almost unheard tones, their sideway-knowing glances just like the girls in class, only this time they were kindly, and also strongly suggestive. Ans just as he felt obliged to accept their advances—all of them—some of the experiences began to feel decidedly impersonal, even abusive. Perhaps strangest and most worrying of all, he became aware that he was not alone; that others were also watching.
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