I Dream of Crowds, Now
Crowds of unfamiliar faces packed around me in public areas, close enough that the compounding heat of our bodies becomes a presence of its own. The rustle of jackets and jeans brushing mine. The smell of someone else’s shampoo. Proximity suddenly pervades the flash-circuiting wants and worries of my REM sleep.
When I was a kid, I’d walk the lengths of my neighborhood in dreams, over and over, along the berm of the road or diagonally through other people’s yards and fields. No one ever came out to stop me. I walked alone in those dreams, neighbors forever inside and ignorant of me. The world was my playground. It offered neither teammate nor opponent.
Sixteen years on, my dream of Fairview Road boiled over.
The lady who owns the horses jogging in full ponytail-swing, that gaggle of kids on the corner playing without boundaries, people laid off from work planting flowers out front to pass time, the college freshman next door kicking out his frustration against the pavement, Ralph walking his dog through it all, and me oscillating between anger and fear on the yellow center line of the road.
You’re too close! Did I say it out loud? I pulled my arms in close, claustrophobic, panicking. No one left six feet of space. No one cared. Where are your masks? We’re going to get sick!
My neighbors ignored me in favor of laughing mailbox chatter. Isn’t this just crazy? What’s the world coming to?
I woke unsettled.
That was week one of isolation. Three weeks on, social-distancing continues, but not in my dreams.
In my dreams, I struggle through crowds, and I’m increasingly thankful for it. I rarely know who I’m talking to—who I’m leaning against—but I love them for how their unmasked breath disturbs my hair.
Last night, I found myself in a playground. With wood chips under our rubber-and-metal perches, ducking under slides to shelter together from a drizzling rain, I sometimes got my arms caught between the pressing weight of strangers. I didn’t know them, but they made me laugh, and sometimes I returned the favor.
Kids ran around us in the park. I thought one of the girls looked like me at seven; she even wore my old pink raincoat. She even had my same hair in those same pigtails. She was even alone.
What brought you here?
I don’t know, I answered. But I’m glad I came.
It was a heavy man my age who’d asked. He sat so close, our knees touched, and I could identify his breath from mine from everyone else’s in the mosaic of people whose heat held back the chill of spring weather together.
We didn’t know each other, but we knew what each other had been through.
In my dream, those were one and the same.
Hayli McClain (COVID captive in Manheim, Pennsylvania) earned her Creative Writing BA from Susquehanna University. She will begin her MFA at the University of Memphis this fall, provided the state of the world allows it. Although social-isolation provides a lot of time for writing, biking, and watching Midsomer Murders, she's really starting to miss her wonderful friends. She longs for an impulsive weekend adventure in a people-packed car with Hozier's Almost (Sweet Music) blaring full-volume out the open windows.