I’m in a fairly nice restaurant with two friends, both of whom are musicians.  One is from my very first band, so he will be called IronHorse.  The second is the violinist in IrishBand, so he will be called Violinist.

The carpet in the restaurant is hunter green, and the tables, chairs and curtains are white.  We are sitting at a table talking, and then I stand up and walk to the bar to place an order for us.  When I’m finished, I start to put my stack of credit cards back into the clip in the back of my cell phone case.  A guy standing next to me in line reaches over quickly and grabs onto the cards, but I stare him down and keep a tighter grip on them until he finally gives up.  He walks to the ashtray-slash-garbage can, lifts the ashtray lid part, and reaches inside to rummage through the receipts that are on top of the garbage, to find out who I am.  Even though my receipt isn’t in there yet, I realize what he’s up to.  I walk over, grab all of the receipts and take them to the bartender, telling her, “This guy over here is stealing peoples’ identities.”  She gives me a strange look, but she takes the pile of receipts, and I turn and walk back over to my two friends.

I start to collect my wallet, phone, et cetera, and put it all into the pockets of my suit jacket for safekeeping, then I walk back to the bar and pick up what I ordered, which was a large plate of French fries and a bottle of blue wine for the three of us to share.  I set it down and notice something on the ground, so I get down on my hands and knees to investigate it.  Just then, a woman comes over and lies down on my back, with her arm around me.  She rubs my chest and speaks softly into my ear.  She is a prostitute (she is naked, after all; I forgot to mention that) so I decline her advances.  She slowly moves her hand down my chest and stomach to my hipbone, which she begins to rub rhythmically.  I maneuver myself out from underneath her, and go back over to IronHorse and Violinist.  Not used to being rebuffed, the prostitute says, “I promise it’ll be nice,” to which Violinist, staring at her naked body, responds, “It already is!”  She realizes she’s getting nowhere with us, so she walks to a different part of the room.

At this point a guy motions to me to come talk to him.  I grab the half-full (or half-empty, depending on your outlook) bottle of blue wine and go over to where he is sitting against the wall.  He is a short, stocky white guy, with close-cut brown hair.  He is wearing a white sleeveless T-shirt [lots of people nonchalantly call them ‘wife beaters’, but I hate that expression] and a single silver chain around his neck.  On his right hand is a large silver ring in the shape of a dollar sign, which fits over two of his fingers, a bit like brass knuckles. [Minus the clothes and jewelry, he looks like the real-life former manager of AcousticTavern where IrishBand regularly plays.]  He is surrounded by approximately twenty guys, two-thirds of whom are black.  Each member of the group is wearing a bright blue hooded sweatshirt with a white zipper.  They silently watch me as the group’s leader stands up and walks over to me.  He tells me, in a jovial but not exactly friendly voice, “I saw what happened with that guy a minute ago.  I want to help you out.”

“Oh really?” I asked.  “In what way?”

“Well, you could be a part of our little group here, and you wouldn’t have to worry about things like that happening.”  He places a huge wad of folded bills into my hand.

“I appreciate you doing that, but you really don’t have to,” I say.  “I’m sure that was a one-time thing. . .uhhh, occurrence.”

He smiles.  “Maybe so, but it can’t hurt to have more friends, right?”

“It sure can’t,” I say, and put the money in the inside pocket of my suit jacket, next to my phone.  My pockets are bulging.  I turn toward the group.  “You guys want some wine?”  I pull the cork out of the half-full bottle, and hold it out in front of me.  Everyone stares at it blankly, in silence, not sure what to make of its blue color.  I chuckle and say sarcastically, “Well, don’t everybody accept at once.”  I put the cork back into the bottle, tell them that it it’s nice to have met them, nod my head slightly to the gang leader, who has moved back to his original place against the wall, and turn and walk back to the table to rejoin IronHorse and Violinist.

I look over to see that the guy who tried to steal my cards is sitting by himself in the opposite corner of the restaurant.  He is pretending to read a newspaper, but I catch him glancing over at us.  I tell my friends that we should hang out until that guy leaves, but I’m secretly worried that he will try to attack me once we get out of the restaurant.  IronHorse turns to look out the back window of the restaurant, which faces into a large parking garage, dimly lit by orange neon lights.  He suddently becomes agitated, and Violinist and I look in the same direction.  There is a gun fight of sorts happening out there, among five or six different people standing about eight feet apart.  The guns are tiny, and they don’t seem to be doing any damage, but it’s hard to tell for sure.  The three of us walk to the window and peer through it.  The participants in the gun fight are teenagers, and since it’s one-thirty in the morning, they are taking advantage of the open space, running through the empty levels of the parking garage, playing a dangerous game.

The kids run out of view, but we can still hear the sound of the guns, and of the kids’ voices as they laugh and yell taunting threats to each other.  We run out of the restaurant and down the stairs to the lower level of the garage.  We see no one, but we slowly realize that there are many more kids playing this game than we thought, and that we are completely surrounded, albeit at a distance.  We have unwittingly stepped into the center of a circle of kids, and some of the guns are obviously real.  We walk over to stand behind a large, round cement pillar, to figure out how to get back to somewhere safe.  There is a group of guys sitting in the shadows, and a nearby neon light which had been off now begins to flicker on slightly, illuminating the guys.  I recognize the blue sweatshirts of my new-found cohorts.  The leader guy is sitting cross-legged on the ground, and his black bodyguard is sitting next to him on top of a large red rubber ball.  One of the guys in the group says to no one in particular, “He spotted us.”  I smile and gesture widely with my left arm.  “Of course I did.”  The leader walks over to me, and his bodyguard somehow manages to roll the ball while still remaining seated on it.  The leader smiles in that jovial-not-friendly way, and we do that cool knuckle-punch thing that macho buddies do.

I am thinking to myself that before long, I’m going to have to tell the leader that I have no place in a gang, and I can’t imagine how I’d be a beneficial member to the group.  I’m much older than the rest of them, for one thing, and more importantly, I know absolutely zero about the code of the street.  Perhaps that’s exactly why they want me in the group, though.  I could get into places that would very likely be inaccessible to them otherwise.  I’m hestitant to bring it up with him at this point, though, because I have absolutely no knowledge of the protocol for a discussion like that.  Do I pull him aside and talk to him on his own, or do I have the discussion there in front of everyone?  Do I hand him back the wad of bills he gave me?  Do I owe the gang a favor in return?  Will I suffer some sort of retaliation if I attempt to leave the gang?  These are the types of things I’m thinking about.  I’m not worried, I’m just trying to think of all the different options, and directions in which the conversation might go.

That’s when I woke up.

There was one other scene, I think it was in the parking garage, that I wasn’t quite able to recall.  Some sort of interaction between us and the kids.  Or maybe it was between us and the credit-card-stealing guy. . .? Anyway.  Pretty interesting dream.