Genie In A Beer Bottle...

When I was little I used to love watching I Dream of Jeannie on television. The episodes I liked the best were when Jeannie had some reason to go inside her pink and purple bottle, or when her Master had locked her in there for being bad- how there were tiny pillow and curtains and rugs strewn all around in her little round room. I wouldn't mind having to live in a round room with lots of padding- it's a small trade off for being able to disappear anytime you wanted and to be able to have anything you could possibly ever want to have appear in just a puff of smoke.

I used to believe in genies and gins. I always wanted to find a magic lamp and have a genie of my very own. In my mind I would wander along beaches idly- searching for lanterns and bottles and imagine what it would be like to find one of these magical creatures. Not that I intended on only getting my three wishes and then releasing it. Having a genie would be pretty useful I think, too useful not to keep. Back then I would have asked for horses or magical powers, but nowadays, for my first two wishes I would want money and a new house. Then I would ask for three more wishes as my last wish. And then do it again. Etcetera.

I'd be a good and fair Mistress and me and my genie would live in style, but I don't think I would ever release him until I'd gotten everything I've ever wanted. To me, genies live on white clouds in the sky, and are purple and have large gold hoop earrings and wear royal blue turbans. They ride stiff rainbow coloured carpets, sitting cross-legged with a straight back. They always ride with a pot of gold coins beside them and many of them are evil, that's why they get locked away in their bottles and thrown away into the sea in the first place. Not that Jeannie was evil- the Blue Gin had tricked her into her bottle because he wanted to marry her but then he lost her- but then, he was the sort of genie you wouldn't cross the road to piss on if he was on fire. I also liked the episodes when Jeannie would blink herself small and hide in her Master's pocket or in his desk drawer at NASA, and how she was way smaller then a paper clip.

Maybe it was this fascination with genies that led to this dream that I had almost five years ago, the dream that I call Genie in a Beer Bottle. In it I am at my local pharmacy, but for the dream it has morphed into one of the pubs that my Hubby used to frequent. My son is with me. I am wearing this sarong thing that leaves very little to the imagination- it is slipping off and is too loose- and I am unhapy with the shoes that I am wearing, so I take them off and go into the toilets to try and fix up my droopy clothes.

I start stepping on all these used syringes that are on the floor of the toilets, and I am frightened that I will be stuck by one, so I go and complain to the woman behind the bar. The next thing I know there are these two bitches hassling me- they looked like prostitutes but they weren't- they were just two of the 'regulars' of the pub- and they aren't impressed that I am there, on their 'turf' so to speak, especially as I am only there because I am trying to get my Hubby to come home with me.

One bitch grabs my son by the throat and startes choking him while the other one starts hitting me. I manage to fight her off and call out to my Hubby to get the other one off our son, but he doesn't come to help. He says I can take care of it myself. So I do, because I have to, while he continues drinking at the bar. After the fight, both chicks tell me that I wasn't welcome there, and that I wasn't the one for my Hubby, that he belonged there with them, in their world. He is grinning; foolishly drunk.

Somehow I 'caught' him like a genie, in a beer bottle; it was like his spirit was sucked in there or something. The girls were yelling at me, asking me where he had gone, but I just kept my hand over the opening- for the suction was somehow keeping him in. Anyway- I walk to our 'house', which in fact was not our real house but in fact the local baby clinic- and go inside to discover all these people in my house, who just happen to be fucking everywhere in every room, and I yell at them to get out and stop fucking in my house. I don't know why that part happens either...

All of a sudden I am outside, standing near the road and, forgetting that His spirit is in there, I begin pouring out the beer. When I realise what I am doing I want to be able to put him back, but it's too late. He tells me to put him back in. That's where it is safer. Or something like that.

And that's when I woke up. Just not to myself.