Pleasant surprises, lousy timing, and the four-color love of my life

It’s been my experience that surprises are rarely pleasant, and when I went over to sign my lease, it was beginning to look like the surprise I was being presented with today would be no exception.
On the first page of the lease it said that my monthly rent would be nearly $100 more than I was expecting. This was another $100 in addition to the $76 increase that I was prepared for thanks to the offer letter I had received.
It was explained, though, that they have to put that amount on the first page, and that the addendum would show the prorated discount that I would be receiving and show the actual monthly rent.
Lo and behold, there was a pleasant surprise: despite what the offer letter had said, my rent is not increasing at all.
So that’s very cool.
Or rather, it would be if the price of rent weren’t so totally out of whack out here. Even after nearly two years I have difficulty accepting the notion that $1,000 a month is cheap, though I do recognize that for this area, especially considering what my apartment is like, it really is. Oh well.
Prior to walking over to the office I had, not surprisingly, made a bunch of peanut butter cookies.
Thinking about the cute girl who had told me that I smell REALLY good, I decided that it would probably be a nice gesture to bring over a plate of fresh cookies with me.
Unfortunately, the cute girl who told me that I smell REALLY good was not there. They were appreciated by the older lady who was working there alone, and who, while nice enough, isn’t nearly so cute.
Actually, I have a difficult time determining her ethnicity, but she looks something like a slightly younger, lighter-skinned version of “The Oracle” from “The Matrix.” The original Oracle, that is.
As I read through the lease looking for any significant changes from last year, I considered how a friend once put forth the theory that one of my biggest problems in the field of romantic endeavors is a lack of “timing.” Somehow I never seem to manage the whole “right time, right place” thing.
Oh well.
Throughout the course of the night I woke up several times, typically after about 2 hours of sleep. When that happened at around 7, I considered getting up, but, as the world outside my bed seemed cold and uncaring, I decided against it. I finally managed to build up enough resolve at around 8:30.
I had some odd dreams that I don’t really remember, though one of them involved having a conversation with an old friend, and someone who was, according the history of the dream world I was in, also an old friend, but who, in waking life, I’ve never seen before, about the difficulties involved in giving up smoking.
I’m not sure whether or not that one was the dream in which the vampires showed up, or if that was another one, but there was something about the vampires that I told myself to take note of for future reference, possibly for use in a story.
Of course, “taking note” in this context simply means “try to remember later,” since I long ago gave up on trying to keep a dream journal. I set out every night with good intentions, but somehow I could never manage to make myself roll over and put pen to paper.
I think I at least remember the gist of what I was supposed to take note of, though, so I guess I succeeded in spite of myself.
Or something.
Typically if a dream is especially significant, or weird, I’ll remember it anyway, and I always at least retain a sense of the quality of my dreams every day, so I know whether or not I was having weird dreams, or scary dreams, or *blush* those kinds of dreams.
Usually my dreams have only the most tenuous of connections to my present reality. More often I find myself at some point in my past, though frequently retaining my current knowledge and sensibilities, or at the very least interacting with people from my past.
Usually these are people that I haven’t seen in many years.
“Current Events” seldom make their way in, so it’s unusual for me to dream about people that I know and interact with now.
There are exceptions, of course.
For example, last week I learned that on Saturday Neil Gaiman was going to be nearby (In D.C.) for a book-signing and reading, and it annoyed me that I hadn’t learned about this in time to get the day off and head down there (Given that I kind of hate D.C. after having spent hours lost there a while back when trying to drive through the place, though, I probably still wouldn’t have gone even if I could have. Still, there’s a good chance that I might have gone.).
This all managed to make its way into my subconscious and manifested itself in a dream in which I was going to meet Alan Moore at a book signing. Not an exact reflection of reality, but closer than usual.
Of course, the dream was taking place more than 10 years ago, so in that respect it stayed in line with my typical dreams. There were, of course, a lot of typical dream non sequiturs. For example, while this was taking place more than 10 years ago, one of the books I was bringing for him to sign (Promethea Vol. 1) I had not been written yet.
For another thing, while I do tend to actually deify Alan Moore, and I think that he’s probably the only person in all of creation whom I’d be likely to actually gush over, I don’t think that I’d be so excited that, as I did in the dream, I would faint.
Humorous as the thought might be, I don’t think there are many people who know me who could honestly picture me as a fainter.
In any case, that was one of my more vivid dreams of late.
I did have an oddly vivid, and incredibly irritating, dream the other night, though. It was one of those annoying dreams whose internal reality manages to spill over briefly into the initial moments of waking up to external reality, and what the dream lacks in real-world logic it makes up for in vivid details, so it's difficult, at least initially, to distinguish it from reality. I hate those dreams, the ones that trick you into thinking that you’ve won the lottery, or that you’re late for work, or that you finally met someone who makes you feel like there’s a reason to get out of bed in the morning, though you may not want to, since if you just roll over you’ll see that she’s lying right…Oh. It was only a dream.
That kind of dream.
Anyway, in my dreams my subconscious often likes to turn my romantic famine into a feast, so in my dreams, it seldom rains unless it pours, and I often find myself having too many options.
Having to make a choice when you’ve gone so long without any choices is fairly difficult, and usually I find myself waking up before the moment of truth is actually revealed.
In this latest dream, I had to choose between three women. One was an old friend who, because I’d suddenly become so popular with the ladies (One of those way, way, WAY off-base dream moments that ought to clue you in to the fact that you're dreaming. I mean, hel-LO! Come on Jon, if even one chick is interested in you, you MUST be dreaming.), apparently, was now seeing me as if for the first time, and was expressing an interest in becoming more than friends.
(It’s worth noting that this “old friend” does not exist in my waking experience. She did look a bit like “Flame Chick,” but, much like the other "old friend" I mentioned, she seemed to just be an amalgam of female friends I’ve had over the years.)
The second option was a young woman named Kitty Pryde.
Those of you out there who know anything about comic books probably recognize that name. Kitty Pryde, also known as “Shadowcat,” is a character in the X-Men.
Kitty was introduced to overwhelmingly enthusiastic and welcoming fans back in 1979.
At the time, Kitty was a lovely young woman of 13 ½ years who had just discovered that she was a mutant.
The laws of time and physics being what they are in comics, Kitty, who when introduced was 6 years older than I was, managed to hold relatively constant, so by the time I reached puberty, she was still within my age bracket.
In addition to having the ability to walk through solid matter, Kitty was also a genius.
She was smart, beautiful (at least she was the way I pictured her), and she was a super-hero…what more could a boy ask for? Well, he could ask for her to be real, I guess, but that's not the point.
In any case, the fact that she wasn’t a real girl aside, there was no possible way for me to avoid falling madly in love with Kitty. It was unavoidable.
I actually used to gauge the relative attractiveness of real-life girls and women on how much they resembled my vision of Kitty (Back then, by the way, Alyssa Milano came pretty close.).
Honestly, I think that, to a certain extent, to this day I’m still looking for a real-life version of Kitty. She's probably the main reason I prefer brunettes, at any rate.
In the comics, by the way, my age and Kitty’s actually intersected about 17 years ago, and I am now roughly 11 years older than she is.
Anyway, the Kitty Pryde in my dream was not “Shadowcat,” and the fact that she resembled her in terms of looks and personality, was a complete coincidence.
I never actually saw the third woman in my dream, I was simply aware of her existence and the fact that I had a date with her.
As mentioned, my old friend had begun expressing interest in me, and I had just met a girl named Kitty Pryde who was also interested in me, and how could I not be interested in her? She was Kitty Pryde!
So I had to choose between them. Kitty seemed like the obvious frontrunner, but the old friend and I had history, and I had been carrying a torch for her for quite some time, and of course I obviously must have felt some sort of attraction to the third woman.
To make matters thornier, I had made separate arrangements to get together with Kitty and the old friend, and, due to really bad planning, I had scheduled both meetings at the same time and location as my date with the third woman!
(Hey, give me a break; I’ve never had to try to juggle women before, so I’ve had no practice. I'd like to think that in real life I could handle it at least a little better, though.)
I had just realized my mix-up as I was waking up, so in that transitional state I felt butterflies churning in my stomach as I realized that I had probably blown my chances with all three of them.
Then, of course, reality set in and I realized that I don’t have ANY chances, so there’s nothing to worry about.
Whew, what a relief that was.
On a somewhat related tangent, years ago in a Newsgroup (I don't remember which one) I encountered posts by a woman who called herself “Cat,” and who had lyrics by singer Emma Bull in her signature.
In the X-Men comics, Emma Bull is the lead singer of Kitty’s favorite band. I had noted over the years that the way Emma Bull was presented in the comics by the various artists, she appeared to have been drawn from photo references (In much the same way it would look, for example, if Bill Clinton appeared in a comic book), so I had often wondered if Emma Bull was a real person. The lyrics in the signature seemed to confirm the idea that she was, but I wanted to make sure, so, rather than just doing a Web search (Hey, "Google" didn't exist yet.), I sent an e-mail to this “Cat” person inquiring about the situation. She responded and explained that, in fact, Emma Bull was a real person and that she was friends with X-Men writer (though at this point he would have been “former X-Men writer”), and Kitty Pryde co-creator (with artist John Byrne), Chris Claremont, which was why she was sometimes a "guest star" in the comics.
She went on to explain that, while she didn’t read the comics, she was familiar with Kitty Pryde, and that her fiancé, who did read the comics, often told her that, physically, she would be the perfect choice to play Kitty in an X-Men movie.
…
It drove me crazy to think that somewhere in the world, though God only knew where, there was a woman who looked like Kitty, and not only was she not mine, she was engaged to someone else.
It only got worse from there, when one day I saw a later post that “Cat” had made in the Newsgroup in which she offhandedly mentioned that she was bi-sexual.
And people have the nerve to wonder why I hate life...