Claire

In some ways, I think I’m being haunted.

It’s odd to me that dreams can be so vivid that upon awakening you’re still suffused with whatever emotion you were feeling at the time.

For example, I have a total crush on Hayden Panettiere.  I’m a big fan of Heroes, though, my favorite new show of this fall season. Hayden plays Claire Bennet, a cheerleader who’s nigh invulnerable. Yes, you have to look past the fact that she’s 17, but I’d appreciate the benefit of the doubt, oh stranger, for I know plenty of women who have purred at a hot young high school stud. That doesn’t mean they’re out trying to seduce them, nor am I preying on teen girls due to some fucked-up mental dynamic.  I don’t even know a thing about her personality, and for all I know she’s the next Lindsay Mylifeisashithole Lohan. However, she’s adorable, and that can’t be denied.

Over the last year or so, the name "Claire" has lodged in my consciousness, wedged into my thoughts like a doorjam. It began with The Time Traveler’s Wife, by Audrey Niffenegger, which was my favorite book of this last year for its inventiveness, precociousness, and tenderness. If you read it, you’ll learn many of the quiet places of my soul.

Something about the name resonates, though, and now I can’t stop noticing it. In books, in movies, in television shows. I decided it would make a beautiful name for my daughter, although those plans have been torn asunder by the cleaving indifference that’s resulted in my singlehood.

It’s everywhere, though.

I pick up a book at the library, and there it is. Main character, author, it doesn’t matter. I read the back of book jackets, and Claire winks at me. I find a new series, and Claire gives me a peck on the cheek. Novels I’ve never heard of.

It’s starting to concern me, this name obsession. Once you start noticing it, though, it’s impossible not to. I’m forever attuned to Claire, in the same way that every time I look at a clock and it says "8:12", I remark to myself how I always seem to look at a clock when it’s "8:12".

8/12’s my birthday, for the uninitiated.

So, Hayden. Plays Claire. And I had the most wonderful dream about her.

No, it wasn’t like THAT.

The vast majority of my dreams about women aren’t sexual. They revolve around warmth, affection, and care. Partnership. It’s togetherness. It’s got-your-back. It’s friendship. It’s love. That’s really quite an insight into my character. No, when I dream about a woman, it’s something transcendant. It’s that looking into their eyes and trusting them, knowing them; it’s a cleaving together, not apart.

Such was my Heroes dream about Claire. Hayden. You know. >_>

In the dream, she had a boyfriend, who was pretty much an ass. A waste of air and space. Somehow, I was dying, and apparently my superpower was to be able to take over another person’s body. Her boyfriend’s, of course. So, that was mostly the dream, us being awesome couple, no real superheroics, except for the overwhelming sense of comfort, warmth, and rightness.

At the end of the dream, I remember confessing to her I wasn’t her real boyfriend, and she reacted with mock chagrin and revealed that she knew and was happier than ever, thus proving that possession isn’t necessarily demonic OR evil.  (Ha! Take that, Exorcist. )

What I was getting at, however, was that presence, that sense, that..that…suffusion. My vocabulary fails to find a word that better expresses it than that.

I woke up with that feeling. My limbs were aglow with it. My heart swelled. I was smiling as I climbed out of bed. I was lightly humming, for fuck’s sake. The shower was relaxing, and my head was in the clouds, awash with memories of my relationship with Claire.

This feeling lasted as I got dressed; it sustained me through breakfast. It nourished me on my drive to work–until, as I brought in the latest truckload of books, I finally felt it quietly slipping away, like a blanket tossed aside at 3 a.m. by my subconscious thrashings.

I mourned it.  It was, honestly, the happiest I’ve been in months.

And it was a dream.

I don’t know what concerns me more. Being haunted by Claire, having dream relationships better than real ones, or the fact that in order to attain the woman in my dreams, I had to take over somebody else as opposed to simply finding her on my own.

If there’s a message I’m supposed to be getting, I’m missing it. If there’s a sign I’m supposed to be interpreting, I lost the manual. I just know that sometimes, it’s better not to wake up.