Plastered in Paris

Oh this is sure some kinda donkey doodoo – but what can I say. I’ve been out of it for a while and it’s gonna take a while for it all to come back, ehh.

You guys just need to hang on while I find a purpose for my being again. All I can say is that is that some where along the way I’m gonna be walking with wood again.

I’m getting a lot of my strength back – I think anyway – not real sure how much strength I had before the little boo-boo to my brain and hardshell skull. But the Hon says that I am and I ain’t about to fight with her over it, ehh. If she says it then it must be fact.

She told me last week that I’ve been talking in my sleep – talking some shit she says and usually it’s about hockey. So she sat me down last Saturday and tells me that we’ve got to dig into this. Get to the root of the changes in my sleep habit. So she got the doctor to order a sleep study. It got approved right away and I had a sleep-over for the study on Tuesday night. Oh and let me tell you guys – sleep studies are some kinda nuts.

The Hon drops me off at the sleep-over clinic at around 9:30 pm. I’ve got some jams with me, my favorite pillow and a paperback. They get me signed in, show me to my room and the bed I’m going to sleep in. I get into my jams and the technician comes in and puts twenty-four different probes on me. These wired up little do-hickies are stuck on my head, up my fool nose, on my chest, shoulders and legs. And I’m expected to sleep. Are they nuts or what?

I don’t think I slept a wink but in the morning I had to fill out a survey about my dreams. I was drawing a complete blank so part of the program was that I had agreed to an injection of fast acting sodium pentothal and their direct questioning if this occurred.

Nuts!

I really hate shots. But I had agreed to do this I guess, so off to the world of absolute subjected honesty.

They had to videotape this whole truth serum thingy and than provide me with a copy afterwards – otherwise I wouldn’t be able to relate any of the following shit to you. Apparently there is some amnesiac drug included in the serum, ehh.

Let me fill ya in on what transpired. Ya might find it just as stupid as I did.

Ok, so they start out asking me some simple questions like what is my name, how old I am and than dig a little deeper asking more personal questions to confirm my subjection to the concoction that they loaded me up with.

The tech, I’ll call her Joan, finally gets around to asking dream questions.

“Mr. Wheats do you remember dreaming last night?”

“Ahh … yup … sure”, I responded.

“Did you have more than one dream Mr. Wheats?” Joan quizzed me.

“Two vivid ones and a couple of maybe little snips of others. Oh and call me Wheats or Jasper, please, I really don’t like being called mister anything. Sounds too stuffy for me, like I might have my head stuck up my ass or something. Just don’t like it. Ok?”

“Ok, Jasper, I’ll make an effort to be more casual, though it goes against the professional nature of this study. Now let’s go over the first dream that you’ve remembered.” She made a couple of marks on the papers she had attached to a clipboard and looked over at me still sitting in my jams on the edge of the bed and said “Was this dream in color or black and white?”

“By golly” I said, “it for fuckin sure was in color! My dreams have been in color since the seventies. That’s when I used to do all them psychedelics. Whoa baby, those were some crazy times, ehh. How about you Joanie girl? You get colors too?”

She made another mark on the clipboard. “Mr. Wheats”, cleared her throat and continued “I mean Jasper, this session is about you not me. You need to keep your responses restricted to only what I ask. There is no need for you to divulge your personal history to me. Ok? Is this clear?”

“Um-huh. Sure. I gotcha.” Damn if I’m not smiling ear to ear in the video.

Ok, Jasper, back to the dream. Was it a good dream? Happy, fun, enjoyable? Or a bad dream? Scary, fearful, intimidating – maybe a nightmare?”

I responded really quick like, didn’t even have to think. “It was fun and exciting but I was scared in the end. It was a hockey dream and I got hurt.”

“Fun, exciting and scary? Was it a nightmare Jasper? Your heart rate and brain activity during your first REM was highly accelerated during this dream. That would indicate to us that it was possibly a nightmare. You also started making verbal attempts during this dream. It came out sort of like ehh, ehh, ehh on several occasions.”

“Sure, sure … maybe it was a nightmare. I was talking huh?” I said.

“Yes, you were trying to talk and yes we believe that this dream could be classified as a nightmare. Tell me some more about the dream. Were you in the dream?” she quizzed again.

“Oh yeah, I was in the dream. You can bet your bippy I was.”

“And where were you?”

“I was in Paris. Paris, France. Everything in the background was like from a Monet painting. So yeah, I’m pretty sure it was Paris where I was at.”

Joan now asked, “Have you ever been to Paris, Jasper?”

“Nope. Canada and Mexico a few times each. And Texas, too, a whole bunch of times if that counts.”

“Mr. Wheats, try to stick to the questions or we’ll be here all day. OK? Now what was the dream about? Was it sexual? The recordings indicated that you were aroused during this dream.” What can you tell me?

“Aroused? Hah, I had boner, ehh? No shit? What do ya know. The Hon will appreciate knowing that I can still get some wood after my brain injury, ehh. Whacha think Joan? She’ll be happy, huh?”

I couldn’t believe I was talking this shit – must be the meds making me a smidgen uninhibited.

“Yes, Mr. Wheats. Those are the indications but I can’t speak for you wife. Now back to the dream please.”

“Oh, yeah. Right. I was playing hockey. You know, ice hockey. I was playing in a game in the NHL for the LA Kings. Over in France. We were playing against the Islanders. I remember that Butch Goring was coaching the Islanders with John Lennon and Mick Jaeger as his assistants. Crazy – they aren’t even bitched up in hockey like Goring is. And me. I’m playing defense with some French-Canadian dude that I couldn’t understand. But he looked just like Kurt Russell in Big Trouble in Little China. The movie, you know. My Dad was coaching the Kings and Rogie Vashon was our goalie coach. But he was all geared up and would jump up on the bench and jump up and down yelling at us in French and broken English. It was crazy but we were wearing our purple, black and white jerseys; but Rogie was in the old gold and purple uniform. He looked like one of those wind-up toy gorilla’s or monkey’s that spank cymbals together. You know?”

At this point she broke in and interrupted my recollection of the dream.

“Is ice hockey important to you, Jasper?”

“Oh, fuck yeah it is. Nothing but the best!”

“And these people in your dream, are they significant in some way to you?” she asked me.

“Well, my dad for sure is. And Kurt played the part of Herb Brooks, the Olympic hockey coach in that movie Miracle. And Butchie, he’s one of my all time favorite hockey heroes. And Rogie, well, my brothers named their dog after him when they were kids. Jaeger and Lennon – I don’t know about them. No real significance that I can think of. There’s other rock stars that I like better.”

This is kinda cool. I never remembered a dream with such vividness ever before. This cocktail that they shot me up with is something else.

Joan’s making her marks on the sheet and asks me “Do you feel that because your dad was the coach that this reflects his continued control over you?

Without a second of thought I snapped “Naw, ya gotta be friggin kiddin. He’s like a best bud. Been that way for years and years.”

“Ok, continue with what you remember of this dream.”

“Well, I’m still playing in the Paris hockey game, right. I don’t know who any of my other teammates are but we’re going about the business of playing. Skating, passing, shooting, getting in position, checking, getting checked. Being winded and being exhilarated. Resting on the bench. Yelling and getting yelled at. You know regular hockey stuff.”

“Jasper, were there people or fans watching the game? Did you see them?”

I had to think for a minute on that. “No, I don’t remember anybody watching us. I don’t remember looking into the stands at all. It was all on the ice. Inside the rink, you know.”

“Ok, continue”, she said.

“I get a shift with my partner and we seemed to be caught up in some turmoil deep in the opposing zone. All five of us are along my boards and the gloves are off. The Islanders are mixing it up with us. Right now I don’t know what started it but my feelings are that it was something I did. I got one guy holding me from behind with one arm around my neck; sort of in a chokehold. And some guy with fists the size of hams just pounding the shit outta my face. In between blows I can see the guy swinging on me is Keith Tkachuk. He skates for the Blues, not the Islanders. But what the fuck – it doesn’t seem to matter. Right? Ok, so I’m just getting absolutely plastered in Paris and I can’t get a punch in even sideways, ehh. This is the part of the dream that is both exciting and scary. Scary because nobody seems to be breaking up the donnybrook and I can’t even defend myself. This is pretty bad. I can feel every blow that lands on my face. I can taste the blood in my mouth and see it running through my eyes.”

She interrupts again, “So this was pretty violent at this point?”

“Well yes,” I respond, “but normally not in real life. Just exciting there. But here in the dream I can’t use my friggin arms. Right? So that’s what’s scary. Being incapacitated is scary but the fight is just normal old time hockey – no more violent that usual – but violent yes, I guess just the same if your not used to it.”

“At this point, reaching what you describe as the scary part”, she asks, “did the dream come to a conclusion? Did it end?”

“Shit no! Rogie jumped off the bench, skated over to the fracas and straight-arm slugged the bastard that was pounding me right in the back of his neck with his blocker, smacking his head right into the jerk holding me and they both dropped like a cow drops pies. I slipped out of the whole mess, picked up the puck skated toward the slot and threw into the Islanders’ net and we won the game. Completely illegal, but I won the game, shit for sure. That’s how the dream ended. Yup. What else do ya want to know?”

Joan was marking away on her clipboard, looked at her watch and said that I’d be coming out of the drug fairly soon and we’d have to end the session with just a study of the one dream.

“You were probably trying to talk in your sleep while you were getting beat up. I’ll give this report to the clinic’s doctors and they’ll make an evaluation. It looks like you might need some psychiatric help here, though. I’d say that you’re probably nuts Mr. Wheats, but I’m only a technician and, oh my goodness, I probably shouldn’t have told you that, I guess.”

Joan was surely disturbed over that faux pas. It didn’t bother me in the littlest little bit. I kinda appreciated the acknowledgement of my disposition, ehh.

So anyway, I’m waiting for the diagnosis from the docs and whatever follow-up might be required. Patience, they say is a virtue. I can wait. And the Hon is satisfied that I had this looked into. She’s not to worried about me being nuts – as far as she’s concerned I already was when I fell for her.

Jasper here, just walking with wood again, maybe.