Another Sign I've Been Too Long In France

Had a dream last night (I know, "yawn"): Dear Wife and I were traveling, and staying overnight in some obscure-ish American Motel, in a locale possibly not unlike Victorville, or even Chino (God love it). We wanted to hit the pool in the dark, predawn hours--I don't know why.

And I decided to wear a Speedo.

Now, I've never worn a Speedo.

I don't even own any brief-style underwear.

But in the dream I was merely a little self-conscious about my swim wear choice, not mortified, like you'd expect; my dream persona comforted himself and his dream Dear Wife by insisting they'd be the only ones at the pool at 5AM, and therefore ran little risk of offending any "American" sensibilities—also, the hotel seemed practically empty—I was just wearing it so, you know, I'd have less visible tan lines, I explained. It was all I had! I also said, "I wore it in Europe," or "They wear it in Europe," I can't be sure which.

Over the Speedo I wore a robe, and walked with Dear Wife out to the pool; but while standing at the water's edge, and having just unlashed my belt, a dozen or so young girls appeared—unsettling enough. But these girls looked familiar.

In the darkness I couldn't be sure immediately, but they looked like girls I'd known in High School. I was confused because the girls seemed, on the one hand, to be too young to be actual classmates of mine, but on the other hand, looked very much like specific girls I recognized as fellow students during those Chino years. I didn't disrobe, I tried to act unaware, but it seemed they were all part of a junket celebrating a High School Reunion for my Alma Mater. They were dressed in prime late-Eighties fashion, but worn in an unfamiliar, costume-y way. I could overhear little bits of their conversation, and they clearly were not the girls I knew, yet they were using the names of those long-ago friends to address each other in a mock-serious way that sounded like play-acting.

Then it began to dawn on me; they were lookalikes hired to represent the girls I used to know. Not for my benefit alone, no; they all seemed to be actresses of some low order, employed for mimetic purposes; we seemed to have stumbled upon another installment of my High School Reunion, but this time with phony classmate impersonators. These girls had been hired to "hype up" the reunion crowd by imitating notable female personalities from our graduating class as they appeared in the late eighties, aged eighteen.

(Like those actors who are hired to dress like Abe Lincoln or Marilyn Monroe--or Mickey Mouse and Captain Hook, and are even willing to sign autographs in the name of their "persona".)

And evidently, such folk like to kick off such jobs with a pre-dawn pool party for themselves, to, y'know, "get in character."

There was an ersatz Beth Stare, a faux Erin Gibney (with nasal prosthetic, even!), a counterfeit Tara Simonson and Tanya Zimmerman....

And I was standing in a Speedo.

The dream, however, didn't seem bent on challenging my threshold for embarassment and/or sexual humiliation, like that ubiquitous, everywhere-repeated, "naked-in-front-of-the-classroom" jag. No, this one seemed bent on testing my commitment to eschew the frail architecture of embarassment altogether: these girls meant nothing to me, and I had promised Dear Wife I would go swimming in a Speedo ("threatened" may be a better word), and so I would....

The dream ended with me hesitating, shrugging deeper into my robe and whispering to Dear Wife, "I don't know, it's awfully chilly...."