Dining at the Golden Coffin Horse

posted at 11:01 am
on Jan. 17, 2003

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So, those of you who know me well know that I don’t dream.

I been told it’s more accurate to say that I don’t remember my dreams, but since dreams really only happen in your head, if you have no memory of them, I think it’s fair to say that they have no existence at all. I mean, who’s going to contradict me, other than my argument-happy friends?

Well, last night I had a dream, and I remember it fairly well.

Susie and I lived in a condo that was in a hotel on the 10th floor.  The building was older, with wide corridors, with floral wallpaper and industrial carpet in the hallways.

Our condo was a two-story, with two bedrooms on the first floor, and one on the second floor.

My cousin Lisa came to visit us, with her daughter, Charlie.  Charlie was a large baby, like, about 2.5 feet long, but acting like a newborn wearing a soft, fleece one-piece pyjamas with feet.  He was very heavy, but kept rather quiet and unobtrusive during the whole dream, like a good giant baby.

Lisa was staying in the back bedroom, which was very narrow and extended back past the living room.  On the far side of her bedroom was a bathroom, but I didn’t get to see that in my dream.

Then my father came to visit.  It was a little awkward, because I didn’t remember inviting him.  He showed up in a cab outside the condo-tel and we asked him in.

He was somehow oddly hard to control—he tried to change into a different outfit in the living room, i.e. get complete naked to put on something more comfortable after his plane flight, even though I told him he had a whole bedroom of his own. After that, we walked into Lisa’s bedroom, where she was changing Charlie.  Lisa tried to get me to help with that, but I bailed; that baby was huge!

I finally got him into the front bedroom, the one right beside the door.  It had twin bed that were unmade and obviously had belonged to my twin sisters, but they didn’t appear in this dream; I think they’d moved out just before the dream, but I wonder why they didn’t take any of their stuff with them. Perhaps this was a sequel and I couldn’t remember the first dream.

Anyway, we decided to all go out to dinner at a place recommended by my friend Zipporah Lax (that’s her name in real life, too).

It was in “Little India,” the Hindu part of town.  We decided to take separate cars because, hey, it’s L.A.

I got there first, and, following Zip’s directions, wandered down this little crowded alley filled with starving beggars and oddly decorated restaurants and stores.  The alley would meander back and forth, with angular piles of baskets, strange music, people standing in clumps bickering—it was just like the set of an Indiana Jones movie.

I passed restaurants with some interesting facades, but the one I was looking for was at the back of the alley.  It was called the “Golden Coffin Horse,” and their logo was of two men treating two horses really poorly.  The horses were wearing thatched straw coverings over their head and body, so they couldn’t see or maneuver very well, and the men were pulling the horses, who were resisting, and getting hit with sticks or crops or something.

The logo was on the menu in the top right corner, and I remember wondering, not “Why would you picture a man beating a horse on your menu?” but instead “Hey, where’s the coffin?”

Oh, also of note: The wait staff were all hermaphrodites, or at least they were people whose gender was very difficult to determine in public (think Pat from SNL).  They all dressed in New York hipster black, and bustled around looking very serious.  The patrons would always, during a lull in the conversation, be able to discuss whether a given waiter was a man or a women, so, in the dream, I thought it was a good place to bring a first date.

I was alone and probably the first to arrive, and I asked about our table.  They went off to look to see if it was ready and if the other folks had gotten there first.

Then I woke up because my sister turned on the shower.

You can see why it’s probably a good thing I don’t dream every night.

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