A dream I had last night – fading already, because I dreamed it early in a night filled with other dreams. I should have gotten up and written this at two am, when I woke, for it was brilliantly vivid at the time, that kind of taste-smell-touch memory of intense dreams.

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I’d been in a class – some sort of technical scuba seminar, the kind where you study decompression and theory, but not the kind where you get in the water. This is the sort of classes i love in real life – no nonsense, no wasted time practicing skills I already have; just hard-core tech.

There were only a few of us in the class; a guy I remember (dark hair, little goatee, with a self-conscious hipster look about him) and several generic people I have no memory of. The class itself seemed to have happened just before the dream began, because the details of it are nowhere in my memory, only the sense of what it was and how I felt about it. The dream fades in as the class is ending. We’re picking up our things, filling out some sort of papers, writing checks to pay for the class.

The female instructor was the focus of the dream. She was tall, maybe an inch taller than me. Her hair a sort of sandy red. She was slender, but with the right sort of curves in the right places. She looked tan and athletic. Pretty, just short of the kind pretty that makes you stop and stare, the kind of breathtaking pretty that leaves me tongue-tied in real life.

She had that sort of smile, though; you know the kind, the sort of smile that makes you feel like you’re the only one in the room when it’s turned in your direction. She looked ten years my junior or more, thirty-three, maybe thirty-five.

As we gathered our things to leave the small classroom, two things were known to me, in that ‘previously, on‘ way things are assumed to have already happened in a dream joined mid-story. First, that I had developed a considerable crush on the instructor, and second, that the other man in the class seemed to have a similar interest. We were both dawdling as the class ended, letting the other students leave, waiting for our instructor to walk out. A sense of un-spoken rivalry hung in the room between us.

The instructor – nameless in my dream – stepped out of the room, and I timed my exit carefully to step out behind her while ‘accidently’ bumping my erstwhile rival just enough that he dropped his papers. Then I was past him and kicked the doorstop out, letting the door close behind me.

It was just enough – I somehow then had her to myself, in dream-time the minor delay I’d given him stretched out as long as I needed.

“Hey, I got a minute?” I asked her as she walked away. She stopped, looked back over her shoulder, and then smiled me and turned. She seemed glad to see I’d followed her.

I could feel the attraction, an electric spark between us.

“First, I wanted to tell you how much I enjoyed your class.”

I went on a bit, though I’ve no idea the details; both the topic of the class, and the conversation about it, are gone now, in the light of day. What remains though is her face, blue eyes, a spray of freckles on her nose and cheeks, like Evangeline Lilly, and her look of warm attention.

“The other thing I wanted to say…”

I stumbled here, awkward, wanting to tell her I liked her. I stammered a little, then managed to get it out.

“…I find you really, really attractive, and I just can’t stop thinking, you know…”

She blushed faintly, and looked away, and bit her lip. And then stepped closer to me, across that invisible ‘personal space’ line.

“Oh my god,” she said, half a whisper, her voice gone breathy; “We’re both on exactly the same wavelength here.”

You know the feeling; that spark when someone you’re interested in, someone you’re attracted to, admits or demonstrates returning the feeling. A spark, a thrill.

I put a hand on her arm, and then she was touching me; and right there in the middle of the store or school or whatever public place, we were embracing, and kissing. It had an almost cinematic quality, like I was feeling our kiss, and seeing it. Her hard nipples against my chest, the skin of her waist under my fingers as they slid up under her shirt; the taste of her mouth, the smell of her, the musk of arousal and a faint floral scent in her hair.

At the same time, i could see us; her strawberry-blond hair, her white blouse, now half-un-tucked. Her jeans-clad leg half wrapped around mine and she leaned into me. My tattooed arms, one around her waist, one around her shoulders, pulling her to me.

And behind us, my frustrated rival, knowing he’d lost; raging at his timing, though in truth he’d lost long before I cut him off.

Things blur after this – at some point we are in her car, a frustratingly small honda. She’s half on top of me as we kiss. Her shirt’s half-off, bra unhooked. Her nipples are like fat, pink gumdrops and I want them in my mouth. We need a place to go, but her house is an hour away; we’re debating a cheap motel, lamenting that her car’s too damned small, way to damned small.

We agree on some destination. And then, oddly realistic, for my dreams – we stop to buy condoms.

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I woke here – as usual, arousal ripping me out of the dream before I can near any consummation. But i was struck, as I lay half-awake – by the unusually narrative quality of the dream. I have such dreams rarely, though at least a few of my best erotic stories are inspired by such dreams. But also, I was struck by the reality of it. My subconscious had placed me in an entirely hypothetical, and yet absolutely true-to-life situation in the scuba-related training class; the stumbling awkwardness I am prone to when flirting with a particularly pretty girl is, while not universal for me, frustratingly real. And the fact that my sub-conscious said condoms is unprecedented. I’ve never in my life inserted condoms in a sex dream.

I wish I’d woken enough to write it down at two am. The dream was so richly detailed, and so emotionally vivid. What I’ve reconstructed here is a shadow of the dream I woke from. But it will have to do.