Walter calls and says he had a dream I stuck my whole foot in his ass and now he can’t stop thinking about it. Walter and I do not have this kind of relationship.
“Why are you telling me this?” I ask.
“My therapist tells me I need to be more honest,” he says.
I let this hang there, listen to him take a drink of something, take a hit from what is probably some kind of vape.
“Well?” he says.
“Well what?”
“You want to?”
“Want to what?”
“You know.”
“I don’t even know where you are these days.”
“I’ll pay for everything,” he says.
The next day, I’m getting out of a car in a squalid section of Copenhagen. I go to the address he gave me and knock on a warped door once painted green but now mostly raw gray wood. Walter opens the door, as breezy and affable as always.
“Why Copenhagen?” I ask
“It’s on the map,” he says.
“Where do you want to do this?”
“The other room. I’m all set up. I have a big bucket of soapy water. For after.”
We go into the room. Other than the bucket of soapy water, a tarp on the floor, and a camera on a tripod, the room is bare.
“A camera?” I say.
“I want to record my dreams.”
“A re-enactment.”
“We’ll see. Better take off that shoe.”
“Which one?”
“Let me think.”
He closes his eyes, trying to remember his dream.
“The left one,” he says.
I roll up my pants leg and remove my shoe and sock. By the time I’m finished, he’s already naked from the waist down, on all fours.
“This is exactly how it was,” he says.
“Should I …?”
“Nope. No lube.”
“I don’t know how this will be possible.”
“We have to try.”
His cheeks are spread. His asshole seems devastated. A shiver runs through me.
“I …”
“Please don’t talk,” he says.
I try to ball my foot the way you’d ball your hand into a fist. I press the big toe against his caulifloured anus. Miraculously, my foot is absorbed into him. I look down at his face. He’s smiling beatifically. My foot is enclosed with a moist heat that spreads up my leg, into my pelvis, up my torso, and all the way to my brain. Things get fuzzy. Walter’s still smiling. I lose all sense of self. I’m in Walter’s dream. The room is spinning around me, colors pulsing and vibrating. I’ve never felt anything like it. I don’t know how long we stay like this. It feels like I’m hearing his thoughts.
“How long are we going to do this?” I think.
“Until we wake up,” he thinks back.
