...before going to bed, I was bored, really bored, so I looked at CNN.com. There was a story about a guy who decapitated his five-year-old sister with a knife. (CNN used the word "butchered.") I closed the window as quickly as I could, but it was too late.
I dreamed that I was in a polyamorous relationship with Adam and Tina Fey. The three of us were in bed and I was having sex with Tina—I'll spare you the details, except to say that it was awful, terrible. No reflection on her: Neither of us was into it; she looked like she was late for a meeting. At some point, we heard a noise, and only later did we realize that the noise was what scared off the serial killer running loose in our building. (Adam had disappeared from the dream.) I heard a commotion in the hallway, so I went out to the hall, and a writer I used to work with at Travel + Leisure was running around, distraught. "Is Dana okay?" I asked, because the editor-in-chief of Food & Wine lived across from Tina, Adam, and me. She shook her head, crying. The killer had murdered poor Dana, as well as a young butcher named Andrew Carmellini; they weren't together at the time. (In the morning, I recognized Andrew Carmellini as the name of the ex-chef of A Voce, a restaurant in New York.)
In real life, I got up and went to the bathroom. I was concerned that I wouldn't be able to shake off this dream—it was silly and absurd, but also freakily vivid. Sure enough, when I returned to bed, I dreamed that I was in a restaurant, and that I went to the bathroom only to have a serial killer (carrying a machete) follow me inside. I hid in the stall as he tried to eviscerate me from under the door. I don't remember how it ended.
And that is why I make it a point not to watch violent movies. (Apologies to Tina Fey, Dana Cowin, and Andrew Carmellini for being dragged into this; no apologies to Adam, for whom it's part of the deal.) Someday, perhaps I'll also learn not to blog after a gin and tonic and a glass of wine.