Unexpected

I can tell you all about how my husband came to receive $20,000. My dream last night wasn’t any stranger than usual. I was walking alone in a park looking at trees and feeding pieces of bread to the ducks along the bank of the pond. As I continued my stroll I came across a playground where children were playing, laughing, running, and just having fun the way kids do. I had always entertained the thought of someday having children but realized that a gay man is not always successful in achieving parenthood. In my dream as the children were playing, one of them came over to me. She was about six years old with long braided brown hair and an adorable smile. She did not stop until her embrace had her arms wrapped around my legs. She looked up at me and said “Hi Daddy”. My heart melted inside me because I knew I had recognized her all along from previous dreams I’ve had. I bent down and I hugged her like I had been away on a long trip and she missed me desperately. As I felt this child in my arms I saw the surroundings disappear and my arms were once again empty.

I wake up only to discover that she had never existed and I have had this dream of my nonexistent daughter ever since I was 27 years old, and at various random transitions of my life. As I was waking I felt so sad that my daughter was not real. I feel almost as if she was once there but then her life is ripped right out of my arms and back into nonexistence. I want her so bad to be sleeping in the next room so that I can peek in on her to make sure she is safe but I know there is only an empty guest bed in that spare bedroom.

I reach to wipe my eyes because the tears are real, and they always appear while I’m asleep having this unconscious dream. My husband Jacob is in the bed next to me snoring quite loudly. I have learned to be comforted by the sound of his snoring. He has had a sleep study and even has a continuous positive airway pressure machine or CPAP, but he always falls asleep before he remembers to put the device over his nose. I just lay here, checked my cell phone for the time, looked at my social media apps for random posts, and deleted some useless emails that come through overnight. I decide to reach for my laptop and browse my favorite sites.

I start with social media and then I move along to a favorite video site where random videos of everyone everywhere can upload their often unimportant yet funny video captures from their smart phones. I eventually end up watching a video with an attractive shirtless hairy man who is touching his body. In this video, the man had just finished working out with weights and was admiring his musculature. The sight of this began to make a familiar feeling occur under my boxer shorts. The video streams, I feel my breathing become irregular and before I know it my underwear is off and I’m fully exposed laying right next to my snoring husband. The man in the video begins to flex the muscles in his chest and then I move my computer up on to my chest. I always wonder why they call this thing a ‘laptop’ when it eventually usually ends up on my chest as I play with my hard-on. As I watch the hairy man flexing his chest and touching his body all over and my hand is in full motion with my husband lying next to me snoring, I feel my stomach drop, my legs tense, and then I release before the video has even finished playing. I lay there for a minute listening to my heart beating and catching my breath with the thought of how to clean up without ruining my laptop or waking up Jacob.

We have been legally married for two years but we have been living together for more than five years already. Being legally married in the gay world hasn’t changed the way we were living with one another. Jacob and I did it because having him on my health insurance was a huge benefit to being married, not to mention that I love him with all my heart. He was always self-employed and having insurances was an out of pocket expense that was just not invested upon. I’m glad I was able to add him to my insurance because he does have some mild health problems and the prescriptions are quite necessary. He had undiagnosed high blood pressure, barely treated asthma and a slew of allergies, as well as pills for erectile dysfunction that I happened to suggest. Although our sexual appetite for one another has diminished little by little, he and I are both still very affectionate toward one another. Every single night, we lay in our bed holding and caressing each other cuddling while we watch the television in our bedroom before bed. I love the way he scratches my head and rubs my back, he loves laying his head on my chest as I touch his back. After listening to my husband ‘saw some logs’ for a little bit I finally fall back asleep. I woke up with the alarm ringing on my cell phone. Jacob had already gone to see his first clients for the morning and I am getting ready for work. After having worked night jobs as a registered nurse for a large number of years it is finally refreshing to be able to work in the day time and live like a normal human. I have loved the type of work I have been doing for the last few years. I am a teacher and I love specifically when I reach that one person and have inspired them to be engaged in learning. I teach one of the best subjects, high school honors biology and the course work can go in any type of direction.

As I scrub my body in the steaming hot water of the morning I dropped the luffa. I reached down to pick it up but the slippery tub did not grip my feet as I was bending down. I fell and I hit my cheek on the faucet and my shoulder on the edge of the tub. “Motherfucker”, I scream! I fell hard and I was bleeding on my face where I hit the faucet. I was able to get up and wash off the blood.

As I was drying off I could see the stinging scrape on my right cheek. It wasn’t as bad as it felt but maybe the bruise that will develop later on will show a better battle wound. I got dressed and as I was putting on my shoes I noticed in the bedroom window a black bird that was outside staring at me. It was one of those crows that is seen eating garbage in supermarket parking lots, not afraid of me at all and just sitting on the outside window ledge looking in as if he had something to tell me. I had never had this type of interaction with a bird or any other undomesticated animal before so I thought it was interesting. I am ready to grab my coat and head out the door.

I don’t have very far to drive but where I teach I prefer to go to a parking station and then take public transportation the rest of the way into town where the school is located. Nothing eventful on the drive to the park-n-ride but I could feel the bruise on my cheek from my fall in the shower start to throb slightly so I decided to take a detour for some over the counter pain medication at the drugstore on the way.

I got off the bus just two stops before the school near a drug store where I am a frequent patron. Of course, the pain medication section is its own entire row of drugs with various brand names that catch the eye. Knowing what I know as a former nursing professional myself, all over the counter drugs are only acetaminophen, ibuprofen, or aspirin with a tiny bit of naproxen thrown in. In my days as a registered nurse I knew not to take so much acetaminophen because of the long-term side effects especially on the liver, stay completely away from aspirin because it will give me uncontrolled nose bleeds, so I grab the most inexpensive bottle of ibuprofen and checked out at the counter but not before noticing this little black book with handwritten pages left on the shelf next to the stocked medications. I took the book and asked the clerk if it was hers or if it belonged to someone in the store and then she informed me that I had been the only customer in the last 30 minutes. So I figured I would investigate it’s source more thoroughly once I got to the school.

I decided to walk the rest of the way to the school because it was only a quarter of a mile down the busy street. As I was strolling down the sidewalk during morning rush hour, I was honked at by several passing vehicles. “Hey Mr. Mitchell, see you in second period”, a voice says out of the side of the passenger window. They were all students of mine waving, high school juniors and seniors who were driving in for their first of the morning classes. It was getting close to the first morning bell to ring and it wouldn’t be too much longer before tardiness was a consequence. Of course, I did not have to be right on time myself because my first class did not begin until the second period. As long as the science department head did not stroll along my still locked classroom I should be in the clear for being tardy for work myself. The department head very rarely had anything to say to me the first thing in the morning anyway.

I came to the intersection of the busy street just before the school and I looked to see the crosswalk sign change to the man that indicates it is safe for me to cross the street. I continue my nonchalant stroll off the curb of the sidewalk and step out onto the street. My case with graded papers in one hand and my cell phone in the other hand. I looked down for perhaps half a second at my cell phone as I saw a text message light up the screen of my phone and I’m about one quarter of the way to the other side of the crosswalk. The cell phone and the little black book slipped out of my hand. I was not worried about it because I do have a very good quality phone case and screen protector on the phone itself. I bent down to pick up the device that had become my main source of all my life’s events. My cell phone, which is much more than a telephone, is now my primary source of the world’s news, my banking information, where I post all of my social media thoughts and has become also more of an interactive diary. It was on the ground and I only needed half a second to bend down, reach for it and be on my way. As I rose up and as I was standing in the middle of the crosswalk still, I couldn’t see it coming but I did hear the tires screech just feet from me. The $20,000 life insurance policy was just enough to cover my final expenses.