Three nights in a row I had intense, and wonderful, erotic dreams before I became lucid enough to realize that Infra himself was talking to me. We were in a Spanish villa in this dream. There was a cool breeze, and he was pouring coffee at a table. We were naked and he gave me a mug of the best tasting sweet milky coffee. A dream, yes, but ask me if I could tell the difference. Everything tasted the same, the cushion on the chair felt like soft cotton, the mug hot, the coffee, the sex. Infra leaned back, his wide shoulders catching the sunlight, said he wanted to thank me. “You could have just led with that.” He laughed, “And missed out on three exquisite nights with you? No, those three nights are part of the thank you.” Infra was a jinn—but as he would tell you, people called him many things over the centuries—including incubus, daemon, daimon and demon. “That last one,” he’d told me before, “that was the worst. We were blamed for rape, unwanted pregnancies, mental illness, depression, temptation, of turning people queer— all a misunderstanding of the word ‘daemon’. So many people left hurting in the wake. We were hated when we could have been helping.”
Now, in the dream, the breeze through the open archways of the villa brushed the back of my neck. I turned to look at the balcony overlooking a cityscape. Infra said, “I did what you suggested. I found a good place to live, good people to help.” I was happy for him. “It’s an Assisted Living facility in Chillicothe, Ohio.” He sipped his coffee. “Vivid imaginations. Wise souls. So much joy there now. I feel a sense of self-worth that a thousand years of freedom roaming the world has never given me.”
He talked about the Elders, he called them. That he had given them all dreams and come to them to talk to them, long conversations sitting on the edge of beaches, standing on mountain peaks, laughing over a breakfast, and gentle, beautiful erotic dreams. “I have fallen in love with every one of them. I know all the names of their 456 grandchildren, and they are all adorable,” he beamed. I told him that was wonderful. “However,” he said, “I’m running into a problem.” Many of them were religious and had conservative backgrounds — oh, I thought, the demon problem. He said, “No, it’s the erotic part— their dreams are so intense and wild and beautiful but they wake up sometimes with such guilt and shame. They’re embarrassed by their dreams and thoughts. Sometimes I erase the connections between their waking life and their dream life so that they aren’t haunted by their pleasures. But I hate to do that. I want them to remember. They want to remember.”
He ate some blueberries and cream in a small glass bowl. “I’m sincerely in love, Yukon. With all 57 Elders. And they are in love with me too when they are in the dream. I look differently to each of them, of course. But this is my dilemma: many of them can’t handle thoughts of me in their waking life. Their children tell them that they should not be thinking these sexual thoughts at their age. They get laughed at by their families. They start feeling shamed.” I asked if they shared their experiences with each other—how did they react to that? “Some of them have shared. Two of them, sweet ladies, share their dreams back and forth every morning, and become so happy for each other, so I left their connections clear. But many of the women and men kept it to themselves. Several did confide in their nurses, asking about side effects of their medications—did it include intense erotic dreams? They were scoffed at.” Listening to Infra talk about this took me back to high school and no one wanted to admit that they had sexual thoughts. They wanted a sexual prowess reputation in the locker room, but they didn’t want to talk about actual sexual feelings. And if you were queer, you stayed quiet, or like some, they created a life they didn’t have—and tried to keep those two lives away from each other.
“Sometimes they beg me to remember. But what I remember is their shame and anxiety when they are awake.” I could tell he loved them. He wanted what was best for them. I asked him if they were relieved or upset that they weren’t remembering their dreams anymore. “They’re upset at that too.” I touched his big jinn arm. “Then let them remember.” He winced, and I could tell he was afraid of giving them too much to handle. “It’s more important that they have good, wonderful experiences than if they just have believable, expected ones. They have those all day.” I said that they would come up with their own solutions, maybe share their dreams only with safe people, form a therapy group in real life, wrestle together with this Jinn in their dreams and the incongruity of it all. He should give them that choice. I said, “Maybe all of them—all 57 of them—will try to make their waking life more like their dreams. Infra, they will all pull you closer.” He hugged me in the dream so hard that I woke up in bed, and he was still there hugging me in bed. I smiled and pulled him closer.
Bear Witness 