The Obama Dreams

Sheila Heti

During the U.S. Democratic pri­maries in 2008, Sheila Heti began col­lect­ing dreams that peo­ple were hav­ing about Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and post­ing them on her blog, I Dream of Barack. She talked to Geist in November about how the project came together. Scroll down to read excerpts from the interview.

The Obama dreams selected here can be seen at I Dream of Barack. Scroll down to read more dreams pub­lished in Geist. The images in this video are repro­duc­tions of paint­ings by Margaux Williamson.

“In the early months of 2008, when the Democrats were try­ing to decide whether Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama should be the can­di­date for pres­i­dent of the United States, a close friend and col­lab­o­ra­tor of mine, a painter named Margaux Williamson, told me this Hillary Clinton dream she’d had where she was shop­ping for Tupperware with Hillary. It was so funny and weird, and I thought, I bet peo­ple all over the coun­try are hav­ing dreams about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, and maybe it’d be inter­est­ing to put them all on the web because the web should have every­thing that could pos­si­bly exist on it. So for about six months I con­tin­ued to get dreams, and I ended up with about eight hun­dred dreams from peo­ple — more dreams about Barack than Hillary by a slight mar­gin, and also the tone of the dreams about Barack was pretty mes­sianic and Barack was like a great bas­ket­ball player, whereas the Hillary dreams tended to be a bit more like she’s a cas­trat­ing bitch type of thing, so it was pretty clear from read­ing the dreams that Barack was going to win that fight.

“People started demand­ing a web­site for John McCain because Republicans felt left out of the whole thing. So I put one up, but there weren’t so many McCain dreams, I think because the lib­eral media cov­ered the web­site more strongly than the con­ser­v­a­tive media. I think that’s the only real rea­son why.

“I edited the dreams a lot because peo­ple aren’t good at know­ing what’s inter­est­ing about their dreams and what’s not, so I would some­times leave details out or reorder things and put them in my own voice because I wanted them to be easy to read and all some­how sound sim­i­lar to each other stylistically.”

—From an inter­view with Sheila Heti in Vancouver, November 2008.

Keanu

Keanu Reeves was voted in as the next pres­i­dent of the United States. He was giv­ing his accep­tance speech, dressed in jeans and a hoodie. He looked good, but we were all shocked. How did he win? Did we even know he was run­ning? I set about urgently paint­ing him a sign, twelve metres long, with a too-dry paint­brush, remind­ing him of all the things he had to remem­ber: Prioritize edu­ca­tion. Provide Medi­care. Cap cor­po­rate prof­its. The envi­ron­ment! There were two brief inter­rup­tions as we fielded inter­viewed reac­tions from Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. They were equally stumped. They didn’t know he was run­ning, but they were gra­cious losers.

Godiva

Barack Obama stopped by with Lorna, a woman I used to work with. They were just stand­ing there, he in a white shirt and dark pants, she stark naked with her long red hair cov­er­ing her shoul­ders like she was Lady Godiva. He had brought her to pick up the baby, which was in the other room. He was explain­ing to me that she would be tak­ing care of it. I was quite sur­prised because Lorna is an unmar­ried woman in her late fifties and has no chil­dren, and I couldn’t under­stand why she would be car­ing for his — her? — infant.

Then they left, explain­ing they had to be on their way.

See-Through

Barack made a cam­paign stop in my home­town. Someone had booked him into a hotel that had a bath­room made entirely of glass, so you could see from the out­side what he was doing in there, but it was clouded glass so you couldn’t see any­thing clearly. Someone made a video of him show­er­ing and posted it on the inter­net. Of course, this caused a hail­storm of con­tro­versy and every­one demanded that Obama explain why he would book a hotel with a see-through bath­room. He coun­tered by explain­ing that it really wasn’t a big deal because it was clouded glass and you couldn’t see everything. 

Speed Stick

Barack was the new youth min­is­ter at my uni­ver­sity. As a ges­ture of wel­come, a group of us invited him out for the night for beers. The evening was a suc­cess, and we returned with him to his fac­ulty apart­ment for some late-night meaning-of-life con­ver­sa­tion. We were get­ting com­fort­able when Barack excused him­self to go to the restroom and came out light­ing his Speed Stick gel deodor­ant on fire and huff­ing the fumes. His adept­ness with the ­deodorant/lighter tech­nique and lack of self-consciousness implied that this was sim­ply his stan­dard nightcap.

Plans

Barack and I had plans to drive to the out­let mall that after­noon. As we left my house and walked toward my husband’s Ford Explorer, we laughed like two old friends. He gave me a play­ful nudge and said, I just love you! This made me ridicu­lously happy. When we reached the car, he had trou­ble fit­ting into the pas­sen­ger seat because his legs were so long. The back seat was down and needed lift­ing. I was afraid he would make me lift it by myself, but he helped me. Then we drove to the mall. 

Too Far

I am stand­ing in the front row of a large, packed arena. The crowd is going crazy in antic­i­pa­tion wait­ing for Barack to come out, the atmos­phere more rock con­cert than polit­i­cal rally. Barack finally emerges, only he has long, bright green dread­locks and he’s bounc­ing around on stage in jeans and a white T-shirt, get­ting the crowd fired up. He passes up the podium and goes straight to the crowd, rip­ping off his T-shirt along the way, and gives every­one in the crowd a high-five. The crowd is lov­ing it, but I find myself filled with anx­i­ety, think­ing, Wow, I’m glad he has finally found his con­fi­dence, but I think this is tak­ing it a bit too far.

Gold

Barack came to our town to hold a rally in a small room in a wooden house. He stayed a long time and there were many side events. His han­dlers kept fail­ing to show up to whisk him away, but he took it all with good humour, enjoy­ing his inter­ac­tion with ordi­nary folks. At one point we all rushed out to a local fur­ni­ture store to see the two gold sofas Barack had just pur­chased. He said he had been look­ing every­where for sofas that were really gold-not yel­low or ­orange. We were proud he had found them in our hum­ble town. 

Drawers

I was at Barack’s house prepar­ing a party for him and his sup­port­ers. It was a huge atrium-like mod­ern space with thirty-foot ceil­ings and a bal­cony run­ning along the sides. Instead of set­ting up, my friend and I decided to look inside the clos­ets and draw­ers at all of Michelle’s leg­endary cou­ture cloth­ing. We pulled out all these Gucci, Prada and Valentino dresses. One drawer was entirely filled with beau­ti­ful gloves. Unfortunately, peo­ple started ­arriv­ing and we had to stuff all the clothes back into the draw­ers and clos­ets. All through­out the party I kept wor­ry­ing because I knew that she would know we had been through her clos­ets and drawers. 

Ceiling

I was at a plan­ning meet­ing with Barack and his han­dlers. They were talk­ing about a tele­vised town hall pro­gram they were going to par­tic­i­pate in that night. I decided to fly up to the ceil­ing to see what Barack’s reac­tion would be. He kept talk­ing with his han­dlers and pretty much ignored the fact that I was hov­er­ing over him. They grew more ani­mated as they dis­cussed a woman who was going to be in the audi­ence. She had con­tributed a lot of money to the cam­paign and Barack wanted to be able to ­answer her ques­tions dur­ing the show, but he needed a way to iden­tify her. Someone sug­gested they paint her face bright red. I thought that was too obvi­ous and sug­gested they just paint a red X on her neck. They liked that idea.

Boxers

Then he is in my bed wear­ing blue striped box­ers. I have a per­fect apart­ment in Harvard Square (not so in real life!). The room has a bohemian look, all earth tones and Indian prints. The after­noon sun is com­ing through the win­dow above the bed. I remem­ber the intense con­ver­sa­tion we shared, and think about how I offered him my bed for a nap. We’re talk­ing less intensely now. I’m reclin­ing on the side of the bed, not touch­ing him, but am very close and the attrac­tion is pal­pa­ble. We fall silent and our eyes meet. Then we kiss very softly. I can feel his desire to relax, to be him­self, to lose him­self here. I real­ize this could never be kept a secret. I know how dis­as­trous it would be for the man about to be our country’s first black pres­i­dent to have an affair with a white woman twenty years his junior. I can­not risk any chance of ­being the woman who will cost our coun­try his pres­i­dency. I put my hand on his chest and say, This is get­ting ­really dan­ger­ous really fast.

Kayak

I am row­ing in a kayak on a cloudy day. I feel tired, humil­i­ated and dis­cour­aged. The other row­ers can’t believe how bad I am. In a moment alone, my trainer, Barack Obama, approaches me in his grey-blue track suit, puts one of his sneak­ers on my kayak and places his hand on my shoul­der. He gives me a good pep talk about deter­mi­na­tion and not back­ing down. He also says, You shouldn’t even be this tired, and gives me proper row­ing tech­niques. Then I feel bet­ter. Even if I am going to lose that day, I at least have the sense that I tried my best.

Bus

I was on a bus com­ing home from uni­ver­sity and Barack came and sat beside me. I don’t know how I knew it was him, because I don’t fol­low the elec­tion at all. He was wear­ing a dirty suit and smelled bad. I was read­ing and he asked me what I was read­ing. I showed him the book: The Lord of the Rings. I’ve never seen that movie! he exclaimed. Then he gave me his busi­ness card from his wal­let. It was really cheap, like some­thing printed off a school com­puter, and Senator was mis­spelled. He got up to get nachos from the bus con­ces­sion and I put my back­pack on his chair so he wouldn’t sit by me again.

Read more of Sheila Heti’s work for Geist.