Stuck on the Threshold of a Dream

That night I had a dream in which I found myself wrestling with a pros­ti­tute who kept insist­ing that I give into her. All night long did I strug­gle, in and out of sleep, to resist her entreaties. Just before dawn, I gave into her in a moment of weak­ness. Imme­di­ately, I woke up.

Deeply trou­bled by the dream, I lay awake for what seemed like an awfully long time. Upset with myself for hav­ing given into my sex­ual desires, I sin­cerely hoped the dream was not a por­tent of how I would be con­duct­ing myself in real life at some point in the near future.

As I fell back to dream­ing again, I beheld a white knight rid­ing towards me on the back of an incred­i­bly beau­ti­ful white horse. Over­come by a tremen­dous fear of what I was see­ing, I woke up won­der­ing what I had been so afraid of. In my drowsi­ness, I man­aged to unearth some vague notion that the white knight and I were one and the same per­son, before I fell back to sleep.

This time, as I slipped back into the dream where I’d left it out of fear, I was not so afraid of the white knight when I saw him. Much to my con­ster­na­tion, I was informed by the white knight that I must serve She Who Must Be Obeyed, if I wished to free myself from the spell of the Great Gray Whore. Star­tled by this rev­e­la­tion, I woke up.

Unable to fall back to sleep, I got up, dressed myself and moseyed on up top­side to my favorite perch to begin the painful process of try­ing to catch a glimpse into the mean­ing of these god-​​awful dreams. Not until I had let go of my own thoughts, long enough to hear those of my heart, did I real­ize my mis­take. Hav­ing told the Tem­ple Priest, under psy­cho­log­i­cal duress, that I would eat again, I essen­tially gave myself back to the Navy. In other words, before it dawned on me that I must find out why I wanted out of the Navy, I fell vic­tim to ser­vic­ing a whore of the Great Gray Mother—to putting my ener­gies back into a way of life which was not meant for me. Even though I had been enthralled by the incred­i­ble power I had briefly com­manded in my new role as the white knight, I grew fear­ful of the price I might have to pay to play such an obscure part. Out of fear, I relin­quished this new role, and fell back into an uncon­scious state of being. So did I, by emo­tion­ally dis­tanc­ing myself from the white knight, effec­tively rid myself of the fear of step­ping into his shoes before I was ready. To my con­ster­na­tion, I was informed that I could serve only one mis­tress, either She Who Must Be Obeyed or her shadow, the Great Gray Whore.

Unable to crack the shell sur­round­ing the truth of these images, I began to feel some regret over hav­ing ended my fast so soon, and won­dered if more wouldn’t have been revealed to me had I con­tin­ued it.

As I con­tin­ued to lis­ten to my feel­ings, I felt as if I were stuck on the thresh­old of a dream, only because I didn’t know how to enter it. While the Great Gray Whore drove me to act instinc­tively, like a wild ani­mal, She and the white knight were try­ing to show me the way out, the door­way to my human­ity. Only I just couldn’t take the first step—that big of a leap in faith. I was too afraid to sim­ply walk into the unknown with­out hav­ing some idea of where I was going.