I had myself a really, well, interesting dream this week, that I think might say a lot about me. But I don’t exactly know what. And I really don’t want to read too much into it either.

I dreamt that I had written a very well-received book about a woman’s adventures trying to keep her brother from going to Hell. Not in a detached, intellectualized sense, but as in Hell: the Pit of Fire. He was being escorted/led there by a devil who had apparently (it was not adequately explained in the dream) managed to trick the brother into following him on a fairly involved journey from wherever he was a the time to the actual, physical location of the Realm of The Damned. His sister enlists the aid of a family friend to try to head them off at the pass and convince her brother not to follow the devil into eternal damnation.

This is just the background story, and of no particular relevance (or revelance—ha ha, get it?) to the rest of my dream. In my dream I was visualizing what the scenes leading up to the climax of the story would look like either on film (for it was sure to be optioned into a blockbuster movie) or in “real life”. So, in my dream I was following the real-time progress of the story at a point about three-quarters of the way through, only even as I did so I knew that I was just seeing in my mind’s eye what was transpiring in the story of a book I had written. About which I was dreaming. In real life. Like, this real life, right here. This one. Dizzy? Me too. Go get yourself a glass of water; I’ll wait.

So at this point in the narrative, the woman and the family friend (played in the dream I was having in my dream by me) have followed the brother and the devil across many states, no doubt through many trials and travails, and have somehow ended up in Heaven. The basic concept was that all souls traveling to one or the other of their Final Destinations must first pass through its opposite along the way. I’m not sure why that was; perhaps it’s a chance to see what you narrowly avoided/managed to miss out on before you get to your everlasting reward. Or maybe it’s meant to give you a tour of the workings of the Afterlife, like being taken through the kitchen of Buca di Beppo before you get to your table. Anyhow, the sister and I, in tracking the devil—not The Devil, just a middle-management imp of some sort, an easygoing-looking guy dressed in casual prep—and his quarry back to Hell, had to first pass through Heaven.

Most of you are familiar with the conceptual device that says that human beings do not have the necessary sensory equipment to look upon things like Heaven, angels, demons, etc., in their actual form without going insane, having our eyeballs asplode, stuff like that. The idea is that, for mortals, these wonders must be presented in a form that our minds can grasp, or else that our minds generate their own, highly filtered and wildly inaccurate models by which we can perceive such things should we come across them.

Got that all? Good. So: in the narrative of this dream I was having about my visualization of this blockbuster work of fiction I had written, my mortal mind was faced with the inconceivable grandeur and majesty of Heaven and chose to portray it as….a doughnut shop.

A really bright, clean, tile-and-stainless-steel doughnut shop.

Staffed entirely by industrious Japanese ladies. In blue smocks. And hairnets.

Big white boxes of doughnuts of every kind came sliding down a big stainless steel chute from a second level of the shop. At the bottom of the chute the ladies picked up the boxes and stacked them according to their contents. Customers came through the twin glass doors regularly, picking up boxes and leaving. No money changed hands, as far as I can remember, and no one ever placed an order or decided what they might like; they just walked up to the counter, were handed a box, and walked out the door, with the counter ladies bidding them enthusiastic farewell in Japanese.

The sister and I somehow managed to enter Heaven through the service entrance, as it were, on the second level. We needed to get to the door on Floor 1 in order to exit and make our way to Hell, so we made a serious mess of things by sliding down the chute, much to the horror of the mama-sans manning things at street level. Boxes of doughnuts flew out of the chute and plopped onto the spotless floor below. Our shoes left streaks of grime on the burnished metal surface, and when we came to a landing at the bottom we knocked over a six-plus-foot tower of boxes, sending fusillades of pastry flying every which way.

When we managed to pick ourselves up off the floor, we found ourselves being severely chastised in Japanese by the owner, a short, somewhat stocky man with a scraggly beard and mustache, wearing a white apron. Or perhaps I should refer to him as the Owner; because as you may have guessed, we were being dressed down by none other than God Himself.

As God excoriated us for causing such an uproar and making such an—ahem—unholy mess, I used up my entire repertoire of useful and relevant Japanese: “Gomen nasai” (“I’m sorry”), I said and bowed deeply to Him, over and over. After a bit God’s tone got a little less heated, a little more gentle, and I dared to look up from my bowing. He offered one last piece of advice—that, of course, I could not understand—and did me the profound honor of offering his hand. I shook it, saying “Arigato” and bowing. We got out of there as quickly as decorum seemed to allow.

Once we got through the glass doors, it was a few steps down before we made it to Hell. I’m sure there was some sort of transition from one place to the other, but I don’t really remember it. One thing I do remember is that it seemed important to the arc of the story that Heaven and Hell exist within sight, even within spitting distance, of each other. Perhaps so that one could look upon those poor souls/lucky bastards on the other side and use their experiences as a way to add further meaning and dimension to your own.

As we descended the steps, we crossed the threshold of Hell, which turned out to be….a barbecue joint.

A dark, murky, wood-beam-ceiling-and-leather-upholstery barbecue joint. With caucasian waiters. In white shirts and black pants. With filthy, grease-stained aprons.

We took a seat at a table, from which we could still see through the glass doors of Heaven, where customers continued to flow in and out of the shop with boxes of doughnuts. Just as a waiter approached us, I woke up.

I told all of this to Margaret as we sat in the hot tub that morning, because if I didn’t tell someone my head was going to pop off and fly around the room on a contrail of high-pressure dream runoff. She laughed her ass off through most of it. She also loved the idea of Hell as a barbecue place. But what she really wanted to know was, how was the barbecue?

“Um, I don’t know,” I replied. “I didn’t get a chance to taste it. I do remember that it smelled really good, but that there was something about it that seemed really wrong. Like maybe it was truly excellent barbecue but it was made from babies or something. I’m not quite sure”

Margaret thought about it for a bit. “Maybe that’s what Hell is like,” she mused. “Maybe all there is to eat is barbecued babies, but the sauce is really good.”

“Hm, maybe.”

“Or maybe,” she continued, “in Hell there’s only barbecue and you can eat all you want, but the barbecue is really mediocre.”

“Uh, I know you never went to Sunday School or anything, but, you do have a basic idea of what Hell is supposed to be, right? Lake of Fire? Eternal torment, et cetera? Do you really think that an eternity of lackluster entrees qualifies?”

At this point it was time for us to get about our day. We got out of the tub to get breakfast, and as I was handing her a towel she mused, “Or maybe in Hell the barbecue is really good, but the only sides left are the yucky ones, like creamed spinach.”

I have no idea what to make of this dream or what it means about me, really I don’t, save perhaps the startling revelation that I like doughnuts and barbecue. But one thing I have learned from this experience is: never ask my wife to interpret my dreams when she’s hungry.