Steve - Dreams of Being With You

I had a dream:

I was at my old school. I needed to give someone something, someone named Robyn. In fact, I needed to give them two things, but I couldn't find the latter thing and so I only gave them the first.

They seemed happy to receive it, and smiled. As I gave it them, I smiled at them, said a few nice words, and touched them lightly on their cheek (which was blushed, in a healthy way) with the tip of my index finger.

Then I walked away towards the entrance to the corridor. As so often happened in my old school, I was followed by two year 7s (youngest years at this school) who were jeering and mocking me and saying that me and this girl named Robyn were together. I got used to all this a long time ago, and though others found it harrassing and bullying, I found it amusing and usually humoured them. They followed me in, and to the stairs, where they overtook me, still jeering. I countered, "Well, what does it mean to be together?"

They stopped still, and just stared at me.

Somehow I'd managed to aquire a block of cheese, which was actually two blocks, one white and one dark orange (gloucester or red lescester I imagine), which I held up and used to illustrate my point. I said "What does togetherness mean?"

At the time I wasn't troubled by their stopping and staring. Now I am, for reasons I will explain later.

I walked off, into a room I had just been in that was full of people (as it always was). I saw Scarlett, and she saw me. I knew that we hadn't seen eachother for a while because it had been the Christmas holidays. She seemed pleased to see me, and waited the little while it took for her to make her way to me through the room. We hugged, and said a few words.

We walked towards the stairs. I said "What does togetherness mean?". As we were sitting down under the stairs she said something about not everything needing to be thought through or having an answer (which, if you know my relationship with Scarlett, will seem familiar).

We sat in silence for a time, as is our way, and then she said "There's a well-known lyric. 'For every problem you might have, there is a well-known answer.'" Then she repeated, "That's a well-known lyric." (this should sound even more familiar. Not to dig at her, but it should). We sat in silence again, for a time.

Thee people entered our section of the corridor. On one side was the headmaster, dressed all in black, and on the other side were the two boys I spoke of previously. The boys were stopping and staring once more. Now seems like a good time to add something about who (I think) these boys were, and why it disturbs me so.

These two boys were Aymon Booz and Charlie Froud, now deceased. They died in a four-person (Aymon's mother and father were the other passenger/pilot) light-aircraft crash off the coast of Ireland. They were two kids who used to do a lot of the teasing and jeering of me in my old school, and I was quite fond of and attached to them in that way. They were close friends, and Aymon had taken Charlie on the trip to Ireland with them because of this. The plane went down in very high winds, up to 100mph by some accounts. The light aircraft didn't stand a chance in such a storm. I found out about half a term into my time at uni, a few months ago. I remember thinking, and imagining, how horrible and terrifying that must have been for them, and what they must have been thinking when it was happening. What kind of relationship they must have had, knowing perhaps that they were sharing eachothers' last moments.

In the dream, they were stopped and stared. The headmaster, who sounded and felt an awful lot like one of my writing lecturers, John Hall, enquired as to what was going on. The boys ran off and up the stairs, and as I began to talk the headmaster sat down. I said that I had been asked both the boys and Scarlett what togetherness meant and what it meant to be together. I said "And Scarlett didn't know, and they didn't know," I gestured and looked up the stairs to find them there, three quarters way up, staring down, "and I don't know."

He said "And I don't know either. It's a rather peculiar thing, togetherness. It's very different from distance," and then went on to say "consider walking. Now there are three ways of terming walking. There's walking to, walking on, and walking... with..."

On those last nine words I began to fade out into consciousness again, into waking. The more I considered the terming of walking, the more I was awake. Until I was fully awake, as I am now.