So now I've told you the dream, and how I handle it. After the night of the spilled Stoli, I started telling more people about the dream. I was quickly emboldened, not because people were accepting of the dream, but because they didn't give a ****. When you tell someone about your dream, they tend to give a variation of one of two answers: they're either indifferent and respond with a distant "uh-huh", or they're annoyed and resentful that they had to indulge you by listening to your pointless dream, and respond by subjecting you to a telling of one of their own pointless dreams.

But their responses didn't matter. Just saying the dream out loud released so much tension. I'd tell anyone who could feign decent interest. People at bus stops and waiting rooms were granted access to the deepest part of me. Even an attentive dog gained a glimpse into my subconscious. Then, just this morning, I got Sunday brunch with my favorite cousin who was in town for the day. I was always closer to her than my other cousins, many of whom were more than a dozen years older than me. She was only five years older than me and had babysat for me when I was young. She also had a Master's in Psychology.

I took her to a nice Italian-American place on the river. A lot of people want to take visitors to Greektown, but you only take someone to Greektown if they've never been to the city or if they come here all the time. No, a nice place by the river would leave the city tasting subtly sweet in her mouth on the plane ride back east.

We got to the restaurant a little after noon, so we just shifted our late brunch to a punctual lunch. No one seemed to mind. As we pushed around the last few soggy leaves of spinach in our appetizer salads, I looked up at her and, as soon as she made eye contact, I told her about the dream. I told her about the pulsing in my head and staring down the barrel of my own gun held by my own hand. I told her I was blowing my own brains out all over my down comforter a couple of times a week. And I told her about the waking up in sweat and the not being able to sleep and the staring into darkness and the muffled screams of the Stoli calling my name from the second drawer. I decided it was good table etiquette to leave out the part about the masturbation. And I just didn't want to tell her about the sloppy gulps of Stoli. Or the picture frame face down in the first drawer.

She looked down into her salad bowl for an agonizing moment, then picked out the final piece of spinach, as if she'd been contemplating eating it the whole time. After she swallowed, she dabbed her mouth with her napkin and smiled softly. "You still have the gun? From the dream?"

"Yeah."

"You ever take it out after you wake up? Hold it, or whatever you might do with a gun in the middle of the night?"

I knew I could let my guard down with her. She was my cousin. But I was uncomfortable, and it was just instinctive to hide it. "No - no, I just, I don't really ever take it out anymore."

"You don't really take it out anymore?"

"Well, you know, unless the occassion arises."

She gave a soft chuckle, but there was sadness in her smile. "You still drinking?"

Now sadness was in my smile. "Not unless the occassion arises."

The conversation broke for a moment as the waiter came by and cleared our salads and refilled our waters. I looked up to thank the waiter, but she kept her eyes on me. As the waiter left, she took a sip of water, cleared her throat, and spoke. "You know how they say a suicide attempt is a cry for help? Well, I think your dream is the same way. It's your subconscious crying for help from the rest of you, for help with your insistence on ruining yourself. I mean, you were supposed to stop drinking. Apparently you haven't. And you still have that **** gun. With either of those things still in your life, no one is really safe around you and you're definitely not safe around yourself. You can't have a real relationship with anyone while you still have either of those things around you, let alone both. So long as you keep them around, all you are is staring down the barrel of gun, waiting to see if you'll pull the trigger on yourself."

Suffice it to say that the rest of the lunch conversation was less than jovial.

Now, it's after 3 in the morning. I'm back in bed, balls and legs and sheets all sticking. I haven't had the dream tonight because I haven't gone to sleep. That x-ray vision is a blessing and a curse. I lie on my side facing my night stand, and I'm staring down two barrels from inside it, one in each drawer. I'm waiting to see which one will pull the trigger...