My first completely clear and memorable dream in a while.

In my dream, I’m a young teenager again. I’ve just moved in to a strange apartment of some sort with my parents (who aren’t my real life parents) that’s made of trailers that are randomly connected. The yards are mostly gravel and dirt. Everything is grungy and dimly lit.

I sit in the tiny kitchen/dining room reading a new paper when my mom starts talking about our new neighbors. She talks about a man whose name I can’t remember but whose name is a real name of someone famous or infamous in the real world. For now, I’ll just call him John. He was a very prominent member of the anti-LGBTQ community who turned out to be very, very closeted.

I turn the page in the paper and begin reading about this guy. Instead of hearing myself read or seeing text, I see John in a 20/20 or 60 Minutes style TV interview. He’s very buff but scruffy looking. The off camera interviewer says, “You’ve lost your family, fortune, credibility and respect within your church. I think the question on everyone’s mind is, are you going to convert to straight?”

He pauses and looks pretty angry, then says, “No, I don’t think so. I like fucking men. I like it so much that I’ve been painting pictures of it. It’s become my hobby.”

“The sex or the paintings?” the interviewer asks.

“Both.”

The dream cuts to me walking out of my trailer thing. It’s cloudy and wet. It had just rained. I stand on my small porch and look across my “yard” and see John staring at me from his porch. I dodge his confused looks and check out a giant horse trailer that is parked beside my trailer.

I walk around the other side of the horse trailer not thinking there were any horses inside, and I see a dozen horse snouts stick out of the slits for windows at the top. They frantically lick at the air. I reach up and let them lick my hand.

The dream cuts to me walking out of my trailer again. I walk past John who is, for some unknown reason, going inside my house.

“Oh, hi Mr. John,” I say. He tries his best to ignore me but I turn around and say, “Um, I was wondering, do you think some time I could see your paintings? I’d love to get into painting myself.”

He grunts and hurriedly says, “Yeah, sure, whatever kid. I’m busy.”

As I walk towards the horse trailer, a few images of cartoony looking drawings of a brunet man and red haired woman having sex flash in my head. They’re pretty good except for their arms and hands, which are stick figure appendages. These drawings are replaced with really weird impressionist paintings of men having sex.

The images go away and I see that the horse trailer’s roof has been cut off. The horses, who were dark brown before, are now a sickly tan with dark manes. They all look tired and hungry. I affectionately pet every one of them. They look at me lovingly and I get the feeling that I’ve been visiting them for a while now.

I notice one horse, who is my favorite out of the bunch, is extremely sick and dehydrated. He has his head against another horse’s back. He looks so close to death. His mouth is wide open and his lips are limp and flabby, like he has no teeth.

I rush towards a section of the trailer things that is a public area. It turns out to be a bar I saw in another dream. It’s pretty cool. Black walls with specks of white, old hardwood floors and everything is just hip when it comes to decorations.

I see John sitting at a table alone, sipping on a beer. I storm over to him.

“Those horses in the trailer, they’re yours, aren’t they?” I yell.

He looks up and nods.

“You have to do something! You have to let them out! They’re suffering! One of them is about to die! DO SOMETHING!”

He rolls his eyes and puts his head in his hands. “I CAN’T do anything. I have nowhere to put them.”

“Then why do you have them?”

“I had a place to put them! I HAD a nice piece of land but I can’t use I anymore!”

“Why not?”

“Because it exploded!”

An image of an acre or so of land with an outrageously tall wooden fence enters my head. Although there’s no fire damage, the fence is messed up beyond repair.

I slam my fists on the table, knocking his beer to the floor. “That’s not a good excuse. Those horses are dying! You’re going to do something and you’re going to do it! NOW!”

I woke up to a series of three bangs that I thought was a part of my dream, but I think someone was walking on my porch.