brainland:

When I was little I had this recurring nightmare about Prince.  Now I don’t mean I was a precocious urban ironist who totally “got” the music and his presence would seep along my dreamscapes in which I’d be picking daisies with Turgenev and Steve Perry and then Aquinas would burst in and be all like, “Where are my puddings?  Who ate all my extra puddings?” and then we’d laugh and “Here I Go Again” by Whitesnake would filter across the meadow because even in my dream body there’s not one sincere bone. 

Anyway: of course not.  Those people you meet in college who tell you they were listening to the Modern Lovers and Can when they were ten are all lying chodebags who try too hard and if you ever see pictures of them as teenagers, all of their bedrooms are adorned with Stone Cold Steve Austin and Smashmouth posters.  Likewise, when I was a little kid, I didn’t know about irony and my only interests were in picking my nose and watching Freakazoid.  So, I had this recurring nightmare about Prince: my house had a steep driveway, and I remember standing in my garage looking down the driveway and hearing music, faint at first, then cruel laughter and having this urge to flee.  The odor of evil could carry even on that brisk wine country breeze.  

The chase would commence, in the way you know events as they unfold in dreams because pervasive dread informs you.  And I would be on my tricycle, peddling desperately, little handlebar streamers flying.  Then the perspective would shift and behind me he would rise: Prince, on a colossal tricycle of his own design, purple and horribly embellished to resemble a parade float, his minions dancing and fornicating in the tissue blossoms.  But my urgent peddling could not be enough and the dream would end just as He was upon me.  

I had this nightmare about six or seven times until I hit the age when you get really into Prince.  I mention because I recently had a dream about sleeping with Prince, and it actually wasn’t weird.  Well, I mean it was obviously weird once I woke up and thought about it, but while it was happening it seemed reasonable.