Based off of a dream I had
We arrived at the hotel. It was located in the center of a big open plaza. The plaza was surrounded by all kinds of buildings in different shades of white. It looked kind of Italian, but it also reminded me of Assassin's Creed Unity, in some way. Maybe because I had been playing it again recently. The hotel, however, shared none of the structural features of the plaza and it's surrounding buildings. It was enormous, filling almost the entire square of the plaza.
It was shaped like the hull of a ship: narrow at the bottom and broadening out as it went higher and higher. The walls were also made of wood, but didn't consist of planks constructed together like you would expect. They were made of wooden planks that formed a sort of skeleton that you could see through. The wooden beams were placed in an odd pattern, with every other spot holding a beam, and the rest just empty. This design allowed peering eyes from outside to look inward into the structure.
The oddities didn't stop at the outside either. At the bottom there was a fairly normal but very modern and sleek looking reception, like Saburo's office in Cyberpunk 2077. Next to that was what I could only assume as being the elevator shaft: a brushed metal shaft running the full height of the building. It had a marble staircase circling it. The rooms were all brushed metal cubes suspended in the air by chains, with walkways leading up to them. They did not seem to have windows, but I assumed they must have 2-way mirrored glass in them. I also wondered how the rooms received electricity, as I didn't see any cables running into them. Maybe through the walkways? Or the chains? The hotel also contained what looked like recreational platforms. They were big oval shaped platforms also suspended by chains. They had a rail on the edge to prevent visitors from falling down, and were made out of white marble. They were also connected to the rest of the hotel via a walkway.
While I was marvelling at the building's features, the group of people I was with was already at the entrance. I half-jogged towards them, luckily we were only going to stay a few nights, so I only packed one backpack. We were with about 5 or 6 people, all of which I didn't know that well. There was this girl, I can't really remember her name. She looked a lot like my girlfriend, but with shorter hair. We kinda hit it off and probably talked with each other the most out of the people we were with.
Thinking of the people we were with, I noticed the hotel barely had enough rooms for our group. I only saw three suspended brushed-metal cubes, so some of us were probably gonna have to share a bed. After having checked in, I noticed the girl and I were assigned the same room, and we were both delighted of this fact. I convinced myself that I was excited because we had lots to talk about, and nothing else.
Our cube was on the second floor. It's door opened with a keycard, and the inside was surprisingly spacious, despite being quite small. It contained a queen size bed covered with white bed sheets, a red carpet, a chair lined with what seemed red suede, and a white and gray bathroom that reminded me of the bathrooms in Cyberpunk 2077. My assumption about the 2-way mirrored windows was wrong though, the cube had no windows at all.
The girl told me she liked it and was looking forward to these few days. I smiled broadly and agreed. After we got done unpacking (laying our bags on each side of the bed) we chatted a little and decided to head to one of the platforms to meet up with the others. When we got there, we made plans to have a party with a bunch of other people from the town we were staying at. We agreed to do the party tomorrow, as everybody wanted to rest a little from the trip. One guy, however did not really agree with this. He was about as tall as me, had short, curly black hair and light brown skin. He had a "popular kid" look and was acting like it too. Some people agreed with him, and some didn't. I just brushed it off thinking the party would be tomorrow anyways.
The girl and I headed to our cube, and we talked a bit more about our interests and the party. We had some booze with us and decided to crack open some wine to further enjoy ourselves. That made things go a lot quicker, and we both got more corny and tipsy. I noticed she got a bit more flirty, and I did too, unconsciously. Before I knew it, she was all over me, putting her hand on my shoulder while laughing, we were looking eachother in the eyes a lot, laughing, giggling. Then, just as we laughed about some stupid joke, she stopped, and our eyes met again. This time, her face was a few inches from mine. I don't really know what came over me, maybe it was the booze, or the weirdness of the hotel and the room we were in, but we kissed. We both slowly moved our heads forward until our lips locked. She had soft, full lips that tasted a little like raspberry, just like my girlfriend always has.
We kissed for wat seemed to be minutes, but in fact were only a few seconds. We slowly brought our heads back eyes still locked. Her cheeks were glowing a soft shade of red, and I could feel my face glowing too. "From the alcohol, right?" I thought to myself Even though I had just kissed another girl, it didn't feel wrong, and as much as I wanted to stop myself, I was just so caught up in the moment and in her, that I didn't even try. She smiled and stood up, reaching out her hand. I grabbed it and stood up next to her. She had soft, small hands that felt, again, almost the same as my girlfriend's.
She put on some music and asked if I wanted to dance with her. It was soft, smooth jazz. Obviously, I agreed. She grabbed my other hand and guided me around the room, all while maintaining eye contact. After dancing around the room for a bit, she stopped and let go of my hands. She moved her hands over my chest, towards my neck and onto my cheeks. I grabbed her by the waist and pulled her in closer. We kissed again, but now much longer, and much more passionately. She pulled me onto the bed and undid my shirt. I took it off and threw it onto the floor. I undid her blouse and she threw it behind me. I could feel the room heating up with our every move.
The next moments were kind of a blur. I remember her voice, her moans, her touch, and the passion between us. It felt like we were the only two people in the world, there in that cube, suspended in that weird hotel. We maintained eye contact for almost the entire thing. She just had me captivated in a way that I cannot describe. All while this was happening, and also after it happened, I didn't feel even a tiny bit of regret towards my girlfriend. Maybe because this girl looked so much like her?
Afterwards, we laying were in eachother's arms in bed. I was stroking her hair, not really thinking about anything. I presumed she wasn't either. After a while, we both put on our clothes again, and laid on the bed for a little while. She then grabbed her phone, and put on some more music. Again, we danced together, basking in eachother's joy.
We decided to head out. When we opened our door, we could hear music coming from below us. We looked down at the platform of the first floor, and saw lights, people dancing and what seemed like a party. Huh, they really got the party to start today? We took the stairs down to the first floor, and encountered the "popular guy" who was an advocate for the party. He was wearing a flowery summer blouse, round sunglasses and a bandana around his head. "Heyyy, go have some fun, eh?", he said as he recognized us. It seemed he got his way in the end.
Okay, so this story is basically a dream I had last night. I was telling my girlfriend about it, about what happened in the dream and about the girl that looked like her, and she responded that she had a similar dream last night. In hers, she was also in a hotel, but it was a big wooden spiral, and she met another dude there that looked like me! She mentioned she also got kind of freaky with him and that they also danced in the exact way that I did with the girl in my dream. Up until now we just thought of it as a weird coincidence, but then she mentioned that they also danced to jazz. After that, they also went to a party and they had to cross a bridge to get there, the same as me and the girl having to cross the walkway to the platform. She asked me at about what time I had this dream, and I told her probably just before I woke up. She told me she had it around 07:00/08:00. My alarm went off at 08:00.
I'm not sure, but I think we might have visited eachoter in our dreams in some way. I haven't experienced this before, but we are very close, and have been together for about 8 years, so I think it might be possible? Maybe?
I did some digging online and found this question on Quora. The answe states that our brains do in fact generate specific waves that are associated with both dreaming and thinking. Also, in the 1961 novel by Robert Heinlein, Stranger In A Strange Land, he invents the wordt grok which means to intuitively understand another person.
Heraclitus said:
The universe for those who are awake is single and common, while in sleep each person turns aside into a private universe.
Maybe this is what happened? Maybe we both had a dream about the same thing, but in our own way? Maybe we both groked eachother's dreams? I don't know, but it's a very interesting thought. Hegel commented on Heraclitus by saying:
The dream is a knowledge of something of which I alone know
By this, he means that you can never tell someone you are dreaming, or explain to someone "what" a dream is. When you are dreaming, you are disconnected and disengaged from the rest of the world, living only "inside" your brain and the images, sounds, feelings and smells it presents you. And yet, despite this vision of dreams being something you can only experience yourself, a lot of the world's cultures have developed elaborate protocols by which dreams can be shared. In The Secret History of Dreaming, Robert Moss talks about that in modern Western societies, dreaming is thought of as sleep experiences. But for many other cultures, dreaming is fundamentally about Waking up. In ancient Egyptian language, the word for "dream" is rswt, meaning "awakening" or "to be awake". So for them, dreams were about waking up, and the everyday life with it's tasks and routines, is spent sleepwalking. Perhaps we "woke up" at the same time and in the same place?
It is weird that this is the first time (that I know of) that I have shared a dream with someone (and above all, my girlfriend). It is said that shared dreaming occurs more frequently in twins, but I have yet to share a dream with my twin sister (to my knowledge).
As far as scientific studies go, mutual dreaming has not really been researched as much. There was a journal written by Deirdre L. Barrett in which mutual dreaming was researched. The journal studied 102 mutual dream narratives. In the shared dreams, the people did not talk to eachother much and the similarity for settings, themes, characters, events and objects was about 80%. The setting in our dreams was about the same, but did not match that much (they were both in a hotel, there was a bridge, the dancing, jazz, getting freaky). The dreamers were not that intimate though, in contrast to my girlfriend and I. It also states that in most cases, the dreamers are not feeling very intimate, and that shared dreams may be related to a need for emotional closeness or attachment.