December 9, 2007
About two weeks ago I had yet another dream about Anderson Cooper. They’re all a little different, but share the same basic theme: worried about his safety, I implore Anderson to stay home and abandon his plan to go on another dangerous mission.
In this latest dream, Jazz singer Nancy Wilson and I stand at the edge of an airstrip on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. It seems as though we practically will a struggling plane to make it to the airstrip and land safely.
Passengers disembark from the small jet. I see that one of them is Anderson Cooper. He’s dressed in jeans and a dark blue t-shirt, which barely contains his biceps. There’s a look in his eye, a squint really, that’s all business.
As he sweeps past Nancy and I on his way to covering a nearby conflict, I yell to him, “Please be careful.”
In the past two years, I’ve had about a half dozen similarly themed dreams. One time we were in an Italian restaurant having lunch as he was besieged by fans. The waiter asked if we wanted to move to a table in the back but Anderson thought that if people felt strongly enough to acknowledge his work, the least he could do was say hello to them.
He was scheduled to leave on foreign assignment right after lunch and, as usual, I was unable to persuade him to stay.
Another time I hid in a cabin on a Navy vessel in another failed attempt to keep him from a dangerous mission.
Sadly, I can not remember all of the details from my favorite Anderson Cooper dream, but here is what I do remember from this July, 2005 dream:
I’m in San Francisco with Anderson Cooper, but it looks more like a movie set with a backdrop than a real city. We are standing on the tracks of a rickety old wooden roller coaster as I plead with him not go out into the streets to cover a dangerous earthquake.
“But I have to. It’s my job.”
Anderson’s mother, Gloria Vanderbilt, shows up with Cabaret performer Bobby Short.
“If you must go, Anderson, you two should make this official before you scurry off.”
As we’re both wearing suits, this seems the perfect time for an impromptu gay wedding. Anderson kisses me hard on the lips as his mother looks on approvingly and Bobby Short serenades us with a Cole Porter tune. *
*I can not swear to it, but I think the tune was either “At Long Last Love,” or “I’m In Love Again,” which is the song Bobby Short sang in “Hannah And Her Sisters” when Woody Allen told Dianne Wiest, “You don’t deserve Cole Porter!”
Oh, and to those of you who say my self portrait needs a few more pounds in order to be accurate, all I can say is that's EXACTLY how I appeared in the dream!
