crazy dreams

My boyfriend and I were on a road trip with a bunch of friends from college and high school. We were headed for the beach, but we had a long way to go since we were starting out in Eastern Oregon. If you know anything about Oregon, you know that there is nothing in the eastern half but random small towns; the kind of places where they hold Renaissance Fairs and where ideas for movies like "Deliverance" come from. You must realize we are ALL from Oregon, so we are used to that sort of place.

So we stop in one of these towns for a quick bite to eat and to take a rest. We meet this nice seeming fellow who is boasting about the town's scenic and little-known treasures. Of course he knows we are not from the area, since we have "city fashion." As he is grinning from ear to ear, he insists on us following him in our car to a "hot spot" known as "Elk Ridge" where apparently there is a fabulous lookout point looking over a huge wildlife preserve of wild elk. We are all for it, so we pile into our car and follow the guy for what seemed to be 15 or so minutes up a winding and narrow road with huge Douglas Fur trees jutting into the road.

Finally, we reach a long dirt driveway and pull up to a HUGE house. We are thinking, "hmm, this is strange, maybe this wasn't such a good idea...we are already behind schedule and at this point we will barely be getting to the beach before dark." But we get out anyway after the nice young man gets out of his car, smiling, waving for us to get out and follow him.

I don't remember all of the details from this point forward, but we go up closer to the house, and a band of about 20 people come running out of the house, grabbing us and forcing us inside and put us all in separate rooms and lock us in there. Somehow we find out that these people are all family and that they are performing a yearly family ritual where they poison the sacrificial people, and them perhaps eat them.

I remember feeling quite calm through this whole experience, sure that we were going to get out of this in one piece. Somehow, I find my boyfriend and tell him that we need to sneak out by ourselves and then call for help for the rest of our friends. He thinks it would be a better idea for us to corral all of our friends and overtake them. I am entirely convinced that this is the worst idea I have ever heard of. Then, we overhear some of the family talking about a shuttle bus that goes too and from town, so we sneak up to where the shuttle bus is waiting and get in the back, crouched down low. There is a blanket in the back seat that we hide under so that no one will see us as we drive by. As we are driving we notice that more and more people are starting to show up to the house, and that is what the shuttle was for. So my boyfriend and I pose as people attending "the party" who forgot something back home. We get off at the first payphone we see in town. We call 911, tell them what happened and they rush over to where we are. We get into the cop car only for them to return us to the house. THEY WERE IN ON THE WHOLE THING. We soon find out that apparently THE WHOLE TOWN is in on this party.

Thats all I remember really, because I think my alarms started going off therefore interrupting the dream even though I continued to sleep.

What does it all mean? I am not sure. If you have ever seen Texas Chainsaw Massacre or Hostel, then you probably realize that this dream sounds a lot like a mixture of these two movies. But the turning point of the dream is the most important, which is this: When my boyfriend suggests that we should all band together, and I immediately disregard his idea as ridiculous.

In retrospect, his idea may have been the better idea since we were just returned to the house after we had tried to escape on our own. Perhaps if we had banded together, we could have forced our way out by shear strength in numbers and gotten into our car.

I think this somehow represents how I take control over a lot in our relationship, and then never want to admit that we should have done what he had suggested in the first place.... But the other thing is this: the only reason we are living in Washington DC is because of him. I didn't really want to move here, but here we are. I think at times I have resentment about this even though in retrospect I am now glad we live here. Neither of us want to live here for long, and its a great place to get our careers off the ground. At the same time though, I am jealous of my boyfriend for actually knowing what he wants. In turn, i try to control a lot of other things in our relationship. And just like the dream- what he suggested actually turned out to be the bset thing, getting out of Portland and lifting ouselves up out of boredom, hopelessness, and poverty. This may be what that dream was about...