Monday, October 18, 2004

...and You Were There, and You Were There...

I had the weirdest dream ever last night!

I was in Las Vegas; as I walked into the casino/hotel, there was a huge check-in line for all the regular rate paying guests. To the right, there was a much shorter line for the special guests. The concierge in the short line was handing people oversized wallets of casino cash (I dunno if that’s real—but in my dream it was spendable cash) and handing the people over to a bell hop. One bell hop for each guest. Oh, and one elevator per bell hop and guest, too.

My bell hop, a tall man who looked like Dastard (complete with no visible face!), ushered me into our elevator and proceeded to take me up to my room. At about the 5th floor, another smaller door opened on the opposite side of the elevator, and he walked through. I didn’t follow him. The elevator continued up—at each floor, for about half the travel distance between floors, I could see him in the adjacent room, but he was half a floor above me. As I looked behind me, I noticed that we were traveling unusually fast. I noted the elevator went from floor 13 to floor 15, skipping floor 14 altogether. I remember noticing at the time how odd that was. Don’t most hotels not have a 13th floor? This one skipped the wrong floor. How odd.

So I’m standing in the elevator box. The floor indicator was behind me, above the doors, like a normal elevator, and the bell hop was in front of me, through the other set of smaller doors which, as I mentioned, were running half a floor faster than I was. To my right was a large window which looked out on other people’s rooms, but instead of going straight up, we were traveling past them, horizontally (sort of like a spiral parking garage, you know? We were going left to right past the room, and circling up a floor at each pass). From the window I could clearly see each luxury room as we passed by. And believe me when I say they were HUGE luxurious rooms! Clearly what the highest rates can buy in a hotel like this. There was explicit detail, but for the sake of brevity, I won't bother here, though it may already be too late.

I, however, opted for a less expensive hotel room. When we “landed” on floor 17 and my bell hop saw me to my cheaper rate room, I was disappointed to find that it was merely a bed on the floor between a number of other beds at the front end of a very busy restaurant (really, a bed on the floor. No bed frame, not even box-springs. Just a matress on the floor). All the patrons of the restaurant had to walk past our beds to get to their tables. I had my purse & earrings (who knows…) set next to my pillow so no one would steal anything, but left the wallet of cash out on the floor. I could clearly see the wallet. It wasn’t *my* wallet, it was the one the concierge gave me. As I walked up to my bedspace, I realized that the wallet had been replaced by a large stack of actual cash, not the “casino cash”, but real money! So I put it into my actual wallet inside my purse. Then I left it on my bed anyway. Go figure.

I walked through the restaurant looking for people. I was very excited about the prospect of bringing all my friends back to my high-priced, fancy room so we could party together all night long. I spent extra money just to get this large room, so was a little disappointed that it was only a bed on the floor.

I was supposed to meet up with some people there, only I couldn’t remember who. As I walked into a different eating area (same restaurant maybe, but a completely different set of rooms), there were two very large booths on an elevated platform. I walked up to the woman sitting on the outside edge of the closest one; as I neared her, Pup appeared to hold me by the arm and guide me up the platform toward the tables. The woman at the booth was Celti. She stood, we each leaned in and gave each other a kiss, then she waved her hand toward the two tables. No introductions, just a wave of the hand that seemed to say, "Here we all are!"

Every single person was facing me (I don’t know how; it doesn’t matter). With the exception of Pup and Jay (who was way over in the back corner), there were only women there. In addition to Celti, I saw Sloth, Lovisa, Regan, Kate, Jamie, Leese, Varin, Leslie, Fleece, Inanna, Vader, E-Lo, Katey, El Sid, Ang, Tricia, Brighton, Karri, Riz, Catt… I’m telling ya—EVERYONE was there!

As I was sitting down, the bell hop re-appeared as our waiter. When Sloth started slamming him with insults, I realized it really was The Dastard! Just as Jamie began to lead a cheer imploring him to show us his face, I woke up.

Whew!

I’m exhausted!