HE HAS A DREAM in which he and Belinda are picnicking in a pretty spot, in a woods somewhere, their blanket spread out in a mossy glade, a brook flowing nearby, just the sort of idyllic spot one always hopes to find for a picnic. In the glade the sun is shining bright and strong, but woods and shadows surround them. Then, all at once, but without any sense of suddenness, in that unannounced, unheralded way that people arrive in dreams, no snapping twigs, no rustling branches, another woman is with them, and she sits down on their blanket as if they had invited her.
Have they invited her? Matthew isn’t sure, but he has the feeling that he and Belinda know her, know her well, in fact. Yes, she’s a friend of theirs. They’re glad to see her. The three of them are relaxed together, relaxed as one ought to be on a lazy day at a picnic in an idyllic spot like this. Even though they know this other woman so well, Matthew can’t quite tell what she looks like. Her face is indistinct. It’s quite a while before he realizes that she looks like, that she is, Liz.
Then the little glade is charged with sexuality. Liz stretches and settles onto the blanket. Rapid dream time takes over, and in almost no time at all Liz is completely undressed. There she is, all of a sudden, naked, luxuriating in the soft air, the sun, on the blanket cushioned by the moss. Matthew has dream-sharp, dream-fuzzy impressions of her smooth skin, the dark triangle of her pubic hair, her small breasts, tight nipples. And then Belinda, to Matthew’s great surprise, begins undressing, too, but Belinda undresses in slow dream time. Matthew is surprised that Belinda is being so bold. It isn’t like her; even in the dream Matthew recognizes that it isn’t like her, and this makes him aware that he’s dreaming, because he has to admit that it’s incredible that Belinda would be stripping to lie naked in the sun in a woody glade with him and Liz — who has never looked better.
Now the weather seems to have gotten a lot warmer. Both Belinda and Liz have tans, though they were rather pale when all of this began. Matthew didn’t really notice how pale they were at the time; he realizes it only now, now that they’re brown and oily. Liz raises herself onto one elbow, looks at Belinda for a moment, and then caresses her breast. Belinda, with her eyes closed, stretches, savoring the caress as she had been savoring the sun. Then Liz kisses her.
“I don’t think I’m ready for that,” says Belinda. She isn’t annoyed. She’s almost apologetic. She seems to be suggesting that she might be ready at another time, even in a little while, perhaps, but that she isn’t ready just now.
Matthew drifts up from sleep, out of the dream, almost to wakefulness. He has developed a notable erection, one of his stiffest, largest, and most pleasant. The entire dream episode has made him very happy. It has made him feel that he is potentially a party to a more exotic life than the one he’s currently leading. In a while, he sinks back into a deeper sleep. He won’t remember this dream when he wakes in the morning, but the idyll will return to him later, when he sits with his coffee to make his notes, as if it is new, and it will return again from time to time for the next couple of days, whenever he works on his review of the Alley View Grill.
In Topical Guide 428, Mark Dorset considers Sexual Fantasies: Déjeuner sur l’Herbe from this episode.
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