Like many people, I occasionally have dreams about celebrities. It’s to be expected, considering how bombarded with a million types of social media we all are. Some of my dreams have included guest appearances by Penn & Teller, Wil Smith, and Bat-Man.
Henry Rollins is my personal Boogeyman. I don’t really know how this happened, as I was never a huge fan of his music back in the day, though I have on occasion appreciated his stand-up as well as some of his intelligent , well-written blog posts. I respect the man.
Somehow this translates oddly in my subconscious. I once dreamed that he was a mall-cop, and as we rode the elevator together, I flirtatiously mentioned that he was looking pretty good for his age. Clearly the man cannot take a compliment, because this caused him to chase me throughout the mall, occasionally firing his gun. Maybe it came off kind of backhanded and he’s just touchy about his age? Regardless, I dreamed Henry Rollins tried to shoot me because I thought he was attractive.
My latest dream involved me taking a couple of out of town friends to the local AZ Renaissance Festival to visit with some other friend s that worked there. In my dream, the office trailer had and upstairs where some employees had set up a couple of tattoo chairs and were giving discounted tats to other employees in their free time. I figured I’d talk to the girl I’d seen there to get an idea how much the work I wanted done would cost, and when I turned around, she was gone but there was… dun Dun DUN! Henry Rollins.
First he took a red ink pen and sketched a wicked looking skull on the back of my left hand. And while I thought it might look kind of cool if I punched somebody with it, I told him I didn’t really want a tat in such an obvious place, and not one that was random. I then showed him the crow I had tattooed on my shoulder (which I really have) and said I had thought it could be the centerpiece of a larger Halloween image, because Halloween was important to me. I thought the crow could at least be standing on a Jack-O-Lantern or something.
Mr. Rollins’ response was “No, I don’t like this idea”, because *of course* he doesn’t. He then proceeded to take a bunch of sharpies and cover my right arm in his vision of what I should get. It started off with him drawing a cartoon man’s head (which looked suspiciously like his own) wearing some red headphones. The end result was a black and rainbow striped sock looking upper arm, interspersed with what looked like a few political meme images from The 98%’s Facebook page. At the joint, he had covered up the head with black and instead made the red headphones encapsulate the numbers 98.88 fm, like it was an advertisement for a radio station.
This whole time, he’s got a grip on my arm and I can’t leave. In the middle of all this, he turns on the radio and starts bobbing his head to some 80’s punk song I’ve never heard of. My friends step in at one point and tell me they’re tired of waiting for me. I can’t leave. He won’t let me go and I’m afraid to tell him I HATE the sleeve idea he’s designed and I am desperately trying to figure out how to get out of this before he permanently commits it all with a needle. I get more and more frantic and finally wake up, because that’s the only way to escape Henry Rollins in my dreams. Every. Time.
Because my life Is some sort of comedy-drama for some unknown being, there will come a day when I will actually MEET Henry Rollins in person. I’m sure of this. And I am a little horrified that I’m either going to give him a strained laugh, like a colicky dolphin, or just turn and run for my life. And because I won’t be able to do so myself, one of you is just going to have to point him at this blog post so he’ll understand why. Nothing personal, Mr. Rollins.
