I awoke that unbearably hot August morning twisted in damp sheets. I struggled to grasp for those dream images that had a way of always scattering the moment I opened my eyes. The bedroom was sun-dappled, dust motes floating in shafts of light. My dream had been erotic and, as I sat up in bed, throwing off the sheet, I exposed the physical evidence of the sexual nature of the dream. There had been a time in my youth when awakening with ‘morning wood’ was an everyday occurrence. Now, at 42, it was less frequent, making me yearn to discover the cause. I wiped sweat from my forehead and stared down at my withering erection, almost as if an answer awaited me there.

Think. I closed my eyes, listening to the sounds of traffic outside my bedroom window, the sirens, the whine of the garbage truck as it made its rounds, and an image came.

I was in a room I had never seen before and I was alone with a man. As I jogged my dream memory to provide details, certain things emerged. The room, for one, was a place I knew I had never seen before. I forced myself to psychically survey my surroundings and figured I was in the bedroom of a run-down apartment building. The walls were old; the paint was peeling; the curtains at the window looked like they were once white, but were yellowed now with smoke. I moved to the lone window and looked out: directly below me were elevated train tracks. I couldn’t see a stop, so I wasn’t able to pinpoint my location exactly. But as a train came rumbling down the track, I knew I was in the city I called home: Chicago.

I turned and looked toward the mattress on the hardwood floor. A man lay amid the cream-colored sheets, his dark skin a contrast to the color and texture of the linens. His eyelids were at half-mast, looking both sleepy and lustful at the same time. The lids shadowed the palest green eyes I had ever seen, all the more brilliant in contrast to his dark (Latin?) skin. He smiled and his perfect white teeth and full lips lit up his stubbled face. He patted the bed, inviting me to join him. I hesitated, the window at my back, feeling a strange sense of foreboding. He certainly looked inviting: his hard, muscular body sculpted from tawny granite and dusted with coarse, curly black hair. He cocked his head.

“Come on, sweetheart.” His voice was deep as he sang a lyric from an old reggae song, “The bed’s too big without you.”

He reached beneath the sheets and that’s when I froze.