Well not really. I cite these two as topnotch purveyors of "dream" content in movies, and I fancied this post would be about dreams, but then who knows what it'll turn into. Recently, and not for the first time, I was treated (by my own subconscious, or wherever these things come from) to a dream populated by a couple of characters from my waking life, viz. some nieces (wife's nieces actually, but like many families we don't make those distinctions). These are young folks (college seniors) who are bright, cheerful and attractive. Interestingly, in the dream sequence they did not appear as themselves, but in fact they were "played" by two young females unknown to me; but I knew - i.e. my dreaming self knew - that these were the nieces, even though my dreaming self realized that "they" weren't really "them." Got it? So anyway, in the course of some rather pedestrian, unexciting action, one of the nieces whose back was turned to me, suffered a costume malfunction, and her jeans slid down exposing her (rather attractive) butt. My dreaming self thought, "How convenient that it isn't really [niece's name] so we don't have to be embarrassed." Perceptive chap, my dreaming self.
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But the real nub of the pith of the gist of today's symposium is recurring dreams. I have not had this dream in many years. I wish I could remember reliably when the last time I had it was, but it was surely more than 10 years ago. But I had it a number of times during my 30s, I think. It was not always exactly the same dream – the “plot” and the “setting” varied. Interestingly, it was a progression of variations, such that the changes that would happen (or appear) in one instance, would continue through the next instance, and probably be built upon, with more variations – often slight - and so on. I should probably set it up – like most dreams, it has “hooks” in reality. In this case the realities in which the dream has hooks are two: one is the old “Adult Entertainment District” in Boston, known as “The Combat Zone” – for many years, lower Washington and Boylston Streets, down to Kneeland and Stuart, were more or less officially set aside as a place where strip joints and smut shops and hookers could operate more or less “unmolested” by the cops. One could walk down Washington and there was an unbroken gauntlet of sleazy bars & “bookstores” and adult theaters. In the late 50s there were just a few theaters and bars where no one ever went “all the way” (strippers in G-strings and pasties, movies were pretty much restricted to boob shots and simulated sex acts) but by the late 60s it was pretty much Katie-bar-the-door, up to and including (as one barmaid described it to me once) “getting your nut.” Oops, ‘scuse me, I was kinda drifting down memory lane there for a minute…
Anyway, the earliest occurrences of this dream seem (as near as I can recall – I don’t remember dreams very often to begin with, and the first occurrence of this one was probably over 30 years ago), I am walking down Washington St. (“down” here meaning in a general direction from Old South Meeting House toward Chinatown,for anyone who knows the neighborhood). The old “Publix” and “State” theaters are there, and lots of smutshops and stripjoints, and I go into a few of each, and browse, and have a beer and watch a girl get naked on stage. In none of these dreams did I ever go into any of the movie theaters, I don’t think. I wend my way down through the Combat Zone, fending off approaches by various more-or-less young females, all offering to do sexual things for me/to me, for money. When I get to the “bottom” of the CZ, somewhere around Stuart St., I usually wake up. OK, so no big deal in this dream, right, pretty clearly the workings of an oversexed (and under serviced) mind.
Here’s where the interesting thing comes in – I spent a year in Korea in the AF (10/1970-11/71). The main US airbase there is Osan, a few miles south of Seoul. Outside the gates of Osan is what’s known as “Chico Ville” or “Chicol Village” depending on how drunk/Americanized your references are. As you might suspect of a village just outside the gates of an American airbase housing about 10000 GIs, Chico had a significant population of what were called “business girls.” And they worked in a bunch of clubs, mostly – places with names like The Stereo Lounge, and “The A-Frame” (not after the chalet architecture, but after the piece of equipment that was standard for Korean peasant to use when lugging huge loads on their backs – sort of a papoose thing that strapped on and had a flat bed you could tie bundles of sticks or hay, or charcoal, or whatnot to.), “The Aragon Ballroom” (honest), and the “Five Spot.” The FiveSpot had five large rooms with dancefloors and room for up to a couple hundred hookers in each. In addition to these “clubs” there were guys who would approach one in the street and offer to lead you to some little hootch somewhere down in the maze of alleyways, and hook you up with a young lady who would do various things for you/to you, for a small fee*. Anyway – after I returned from this assignment, the next time I had this dream, the venue had changed, and it was Chico Ville instead of the Combat Zone, though some of the things that appeared in the dream (smutshops, particularly) were in fact absent from Chico. For a while I had this dream fairly regularly – maybe 6 or 8 times a year. Then, it began getting less and less frequent, and – this is very odd, but I swear it’s true – the “neighborhood” in which the dream took place started going downhill. Many of the joints would appear, but were boarded up, or simply empty. Many of the places that were open had older, and older and seedier and seedier looking girls lurking outside. I don’t remember when the last time I had the dream was, but it was quite some time ago, and I was sad that what had once been so pleasant and exciting a dream, had, like so many things as we get older, faded, and didn’t offer the least thrill anymore.
*All of this information about the Combat Zone, and Chico Ville is, of course, hearsay.
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