Dreams and things

What a strange dream that was that I just had . I found myself first wandering around with a friend outside somewhere, and I think it was winter weather. We found a door to a house, opened it and walked in. Now we were in an apartment stairway. We rounded the first levels of the stairs, and then we saw another door, which was the one we were heading for.

Suddenly I realized precisely who we were there to see: It was the apartment of a very old and once influential friend, someone I met long ago in my 8th grade year. Someone who wound up-- at lest in my head-- betraying me greatly. The moment I realized whers my friend was heading  - that he wa going for this old middle school buddies door-- I turned back around, meaning to flee . I was about to literally jump down the stairwell, when the old friend opened his apartment door, however. He just about saw me. Half my face felt hidden in the dream. Like I was half down the stairwell already. But he looked right at me the moment my friend knocked and opened the door...

"Antonelli is that you? Holy shit! It's been so long! What the hell are you doing?"

He could see I was trying to flee . I tried to respond awkwardly. "I figured you didn't want to see me, Carmine. It's been a long time."

"Dude no way. Come in. Holy shit. Come in."

So the next thing I know I was standing either at the front entrance of his door in the hallway or acrually in his APT, and I was unwrapping a pack of cigarettes I used to smoke, but haven't in two years since I quit. I tossed the plastic paper opening the pack. Carmine of course wanted one. (Keep in mind the real Carmine actually used to loan me a lot of money sometimes).

I handed off a cigarette to him. Don't think I had one myself, though I can vividly remember handling one of them, staring at the little brown filter . I also remember commenting that I "haven't one in a few days". They all laughed. Bavk then it was seen as downright lunatic to actually manage to quit.

I soon found myself speeding quickly toward the end of the dream, however, and this part is the whole reason I woke up & wanted to write it down: I actually found myself going to sleep inside the dream itself, settling down for what was apparently supposed to be a nap on Carmines couch. This of course is absolutely something that would have happened with the real Carmine too: He had an apartment literally before anyone at all, when he was actually just 16, and he would often let anyone stay who needed.

At any rate the last thing I remember was then being awoken by Carmine. He was standing again at a doorway , and he had opened a door and knocked on the side of it to get my attention and wake me up. "What the hell you doing?" He laughed, "passed out on my couch? Wake up, man."

I apparently wasn't supposed to be doing it. This shocked me. In the dream, at this moment,  it was as though I realized I was literally overwhelmed with fatigue whenever me & my friend had reached Carmines APT. All I wanted to do was lay down. So while they were handling the business of whatever they were doing , I did. But I wasn't supposed to actually sleep. Nevertheless then there he was waking me up. Except oddly enough the moment I got up (in a tired struggle) i back here in my room, on my bed with my dog, at almost 2 in the AM..

The first thought I had, after awakening, was if I had been as young in the dream as I was the last time I really saw Carmine. I was still a teenager back then I feel, probably 19 just about to go on 20. Maybe a bit younger. There's no way I was over 20 when I lost touch with Carmine, because the reason I lost touch with him was over Franny, and I lost touch with Franny at 20, and it had been quite awhile before Franny left my life, last I saw him. So I could not help but wonder after I awoke: Imagine the horror of hanging around as a 19 year old and then passing out for a brief nap on a friends couch, a wee bit drunk, perhaps stoned, only to then get woken up & fall off the couch, & when you open your eyes you somehow realize--- as I have just now--- tgat you're 10 years older? And that all these people you saw are as well? And they're now essentially totally different, lost connections? Impossible to contact? Useless to you? Old and weird....

Who knows. Maybe I had the dream because Carmine died and I haven't heard about it. I purposely stay off the social media here in this "waking dream", mostly because I hate following old locals who annoy me and depress me now. But maybe he died. He was a major drug user last I heard, even though when I knew him he really only drank (obsessively). Wouldn't even smoke pot really. I'll admit it is a bit strange cause a few weeks ago, after many many years, I did get a bit curious of Carmine and typed his name into google looking for him. I found an arrest from very long ago he had apparently suffered in a cop log, then I found an old Photobucket he had used (I had actually then searched his then  often used online alias to find it ) and from there I found a Twitter he set up, but had apparently not used for long.

There was a picture of him as he existed 6 years after I knew him, plus a short description he wrote of what he did with his life. Said he liked driving Cadillacs and of course had all his bio written about how he'll never let you forget he was originally from the Bronx, NYC. In fact it used to even be his nick name: "New York Carmine" we called him when we were kids. He had about 40 different baseball hats back then-- always dedicated to the city or the Yankees especially-- and he used to have a tattoo on his forearm too (even when he was 13 he had it, in pictures, I vividly remember seeing) which was dedicated to the Bronx. Carmine seemed as though he was 20 when I met him in 8th grade. He had transferred in that year from the Bronx, you see, and he almost never showed up. In fact I think he might have dropped out from even 8th grade.

I just somehow happened to get his out of school info quickly enough before he did, and began a correspondence with him that at first was mostly online. My most vivid earliest memory of Carmine in 8th grade took place one morning for me on a sick day that turned into a long sick night, and was then about to be a new sick morning : I was awake, coughing my brains out probsbly?  and sitting on messenger at 430 am. Back then of course no one was logged in that late. Yet then there he was: "New York Carmine has logged in". We both immediately saw the other was on. Sending messages.

"What are you doing up?" I said. "Surrly you're not sick, you have to go to school by 730!"

"Nah." he said, "I ain't been in lately, same as you dawg. I was out all night. My boy Jorge came down from the city to see me. Ain't seen him in a minute since I moved down here."

"Oh wow. What are you doing?"

"We was just shooting the shit and now I think we about to take off for a ride to the city , to see what's good."

"But it's 4:30 in the morning. On a Tuesday. What the hell you gonna go to NYC for? Ain't it a long ways off?"

"No way." he said, "if you know how to drive and yu drive real fast you can get there in just 45 minutes from here dawg. For real I never would have let my parents move me out here if it wasn't. I'd die if I was any further. Fuck, I told you that before man. The Bronx is everything!"

"Right. Shit. I can't believe it."

Then he logged off, supposedly to go to New York, but it seems my memory, in some way, has never logged off from that brief exchange: I have actually often thought of it over the years (and was just in fact thinking of it the other day) because Carmines telling me that one could reach New York in just a mere 45 minutes by car, from where I lived, was ...I don't know how to quite describe it ...but it was shocking, almost Earthquake type news to my then 8th grade self.

Who knows though. Like I said, maybe he died. He always lived a pretty risque life and fancied himself a gangster. He probably went and bought himself guns the moment he was able. Maybe he even had them when we were kids and just never showed me cause he knew everything used to scare me. He definitely always had a very large assortment of knives. Strange that I saw him in a dream. I often hate remembering him thanks to the "betrayal". Even stranger that I wrote it all down. Alas I am keeping to the promise I made to the ghost of William Burroughs that lives in my head: When I've got a strange dream, or at least one that seems strange to me, I ought to sit and write it the fuck down!

___