Honeymoon Suite

Get your mind out of the gutter right now. This song is not about what (ahem) happens in the privacy of a newlywed couple's hotel room.

This is about a nightmare the groom has, during the honeymoon.

First, we see the room itself. It is in "France," and the ceiling is painted with "angels in a dance." This is a nice detail, but it also presages another sort of procession, one in a dream. A dream often uses whatever imagery the waking mind had handy as fodder.

Her new husband has a "was not feeling well," a sure-fire killer of a romantic mood, so when they "went to bed," it was, disappointingly, in the literal sense. Sleep does not provide a cure, sadly. He wakes up with a headache.

He describes to her his nighttime experience: "A hundred people" of varying ages "had come through our room that night" and each "asked if he was all right." They each "lined up to touch his hand." But he told each in turn, "They had come for the wrong man."

But did they? He was sick, and they were asking if he was OK, something you only ask sick people. So while he dismissed their help out of pride or shame, they kept coming.

Perhaps superstitiously, the couple decides the dream was not the result of a malady or a reaction to a heavily-sauced French dinner, or even a night of Parisian club-hopping. It is also not thought to be a subconscious reaction to another circumstance in the man's life, such as getting married or simply sleeping under a picture of people in an endless line.

No, they ask the concierge if there had been an incident in the room, "a death, or something strange." She smiles, but says nothing.

Again odd is the new wife's reaction. She does not try to interpret the dream. She does not worry about her husband's mental state, either in the sense of "Gee, I hope he's OK," or "Did I just marry a crazy person?"

Instead, she makes this about her. "What I'd like to know is... with all the people in that room/ Why none appeared to me?"

This may seem like a joke. Of course you can't see figures in someone else's dream. Not outside of a sci-fi movie, anyway.

But she presses her point. "When we sleep so close together that our hair becomes entwined/ I must have missed that moment in the gateway to his mind."

If she is really that concerned about not feeling emotionally connected to her new husband, perhaps she should be asking a different question. She never could have seen what was inside his dreaming mind.

But she should wonder why, with all the people the man imagined asking after his welfare, why were none of them her? To be fair, he didn't seem to imagine any of his family, friends, or co-workers asking him if he was "all right," either.

Still, if any one person should be there, shouldn't it be her? Why didn't he see her asking if he were OK? And not in some queue, either, but at his sickbed's side?

Here is a man so physically miserable, he can't even enjoy his honeymoon. And instead of worrying if he is in need of medical attention, or if he's psychosomatically reacting to whatever it is his dream is about, she is worrying that he's keeping secrets from her... secrets he doesn't even know he has!

What if you were this woman's friend, and received this phone call: "Oh, Paris is fine, and we have a lovely room. But last night, that new husband of mine had a dream, and I didn't have the same dream! I have no idea what the dream means, and who cares. Hmm? Oh, the dream was about people asking if he's OK. Is he OK? No, he was so sick he had to go to bed early and woke up this morning with a headache. But the real problem is that I can't read his subconscious mind."

If she missed a "gateway" to his mind, it may be that it's because she was so focused on her own. And he may have been dreaming that a thousand strangers were asking if he was OK because his deepest wish is that someone-- like the love of his life over here-- would actually ask.

There seems to be a vicious circle, here. He worries that she doesn't care, so he shuts her out... and she worries that he doesn't share, so she retreats inward. He, at least, is trying to reach out by telling her his dream. Now she has to reach back and try to help him understand his dream's meaning.

She's upset that she doesn't know his dream? But she does! He just told it to her!

It's time for her to stop bothering the benighted hotel staff with her problems, imagining ghosts of murder victims, and talk to her husband about himself. About his view of their relationship.

Then, the next time he dreams about strangers asking him how he is, he can tell those dream-figures, "Don't worry about me. I'm fine-- my wife's taking good care of me."