Get Out of my Dreams and Into The Judgemental Eyes of the Daily Mail by Smack

Amongst the seemingly endless articles on the DM today about what celebrities wore for Halloween (either not a lot, or a fuck-load of metallic paint if you’re Heidi Klum) an article offering “sex advice” caught my eye. I imagine the sort of sex that the Daily Mail would advise is strictly heterosexual, between British nationals and with no intermingling of social classes, so I thought I’d have a gander to see what that goes like. I was sorely disappointed to see that the article wasn’t offering sex advice at all, because the only sex that had taken place was inside the tiny mind of the reader who had written in. That’s right, it’s a dream interpretation article! In case you’re expecting something more I’m just going to clarify that no sex has taken place here, sorry.

So what’s up, loyal Daily Mail reader?

I know this sounds like a trivial problem, but it’s still managing to disrupt my life. I keep having erotic dreams about my new boss.

In my everyday life he has no obvious attraction for me. I’ve been pretty happily married for 15 years and am not looking for an office affair, but I keep dreaming that I’m having sex with this man, who’s my immediate superior.

None of this would matter much if it weren’t for the fact it affects my day-to-day dealings with him. I’ve started blushing and stumbling over my words in meetings, and find it hard to meet his eye. Is this normal? Am I denying that I am drawn to this man? What can I do?

Now if I were some sort of dream agony aunt this would be an easy one. I’d knock out the following reply in 5 minutes and then go back to whatever I was doing before, maybe constructing a compost heap for my used bog roll or polishing my crystal healing stones.

Erotic dreams are fine. They don’t mean anything because they’re “dreams” and not what we call “reality”. Shagging your boss in “reality” is bad because it’s real and might result in things like divorce and being fired. Shagging your boss, or your mum, or your dog in “dreams” is fine because it’s not real and at best will result in feeling disgusted with yourself for a while over your cornflakes. I’m not going to judge you for doing disgusting things in your dreams. Unless you’re an idiot and write into a national newspaper about it. Then I’ll judge you. But on the whole, I’d advise you stick to worrying about proper things like your family, your mortgage or why you think the Daily Mail is the best place to go to for advice about anything, especially erotic quandaries. Ugh.

I’m not very sympathetic so I wouldn’t be a good dream agony aunt. So what advice did the Daily Mail’s resident dream expert give?

There’s one part of your query that I can answer with ­certainty: is it normal to have erotic dreams about unlikely people?

A quick survey of 20 girlfriends revealed all but two remembered a sexy dream involving someone for whom, in their waking life, they felt no attraction. Bosses were frequently involved in the scenario.

A quick survey of 20 girlfriends? Who has 20 friends they can quickly ask for advice about sex dreams? I think what she might mean is “I went on Twitter and asked my followers, none of whom I’ve actually met, if they’ve ever dreamt about sex and I picked the 20 people were gross enough to tell the Internet all about it.”

All these girlfriends tell tales of having dreamt about shagging a colleague, usually someone horrifically ugly, and then it’s been a bit embarrassing at next day’s meeting. God knows why, unless their colleagues are mind-readers.

So it’s normal to dream about it. That’s okay then, I like being normal. But does this mean that she wants to fuck her boss’ brains out?

The article gives some generic psychoanalysis, possibly taken directly from a Google search:

Freudians would say that dreaming is an expression of subconscious desires. Many scientists believe dreams are about memory function: the brain’s way of making sense of, and storing, data retrieved from the day.

Others say dreams are a way of re-playing long-term memories, based on triggers from the present day.

Then there are those who point to the fact that some people’s dreams appear to be a way of continuing to work through and solve projects from the waking day. I know writers, for example, who say they dream entire sections of their novels.

Dreamy

So we’ve got Freudian theory, scientific theory, and then theory that isn’t accredited to anyone other than the ubiquitous “those”. Great. There’s not really a lot I got there that I couldn’t get from looking quickly at Wikipedia’s extensive dream analysis page, other than the idea that I could start writing erotic fiction.

The good news is that even a Freudian analyst would be hesitant to put that literal an interpretation on things.

That is good news!

One shrink friend says it’s more likely that your dream is a safe forum for exploring taboo desires.

‘Bosses are authority figures who can easily be substituted for father figures: so when dreaming about a male chief you may well be exploring every girl’s love for her daddy.’

Oh God, that’s not good news. Why must good news always be followed by gross, horrendous, incestuous news? I think I preferred it when I thought my dreams were just mere predictions of the future.

So what should this sick fuck do about her awful situation?

In many ways, the key phrase in your letter is the way you describe yourself as ‘pretty happily married’. That’s hardly a ringing endorsement of wedlock. I doubt you would be so unsettled by your dreams if you felt rock solid about your husband.

You are clearly feeling a little unfulfilled and vulnerable to erotic suggestion.

What you need to address here is not your nocturnal adventures, but the disappointments of your domestic ones.

Oh that’s okay then, she just has a horrible disappointing life and for that, the Daily Mail has no advice.

Brilliant.

Comments

1. Aignish Riots says:

   December 12, 2010 at 11:48 am

   Ha brilliant. You would be an awesome agony aunt!

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