woke up this morning, my chest a thin film of sweat. It’s a weird, inchoate dream: The first image is of Jeremy Piven. Lightly balding but still handsome, charismatic. And in this dream I somehow know that my boyfriend and I are involved with Piven. We’re all good pals. We’re in a hotel. It isn’t kinky. At least I remember this.

I know what you’re thinking: Jeremy Piven? What can I say? It’s odd. He’s an actor, in case you didn’t know, who often shows up in films alongside John Cusack (Say Anything, Grosse Pointe Blank, Serendipity, Runaway Jury). I saw him in his first film, Lucas, a 1986 teen tearjerker about a social reject (Corey Haim) who makes good on the high school football team. And then I saw him in a hundred other films (he’s one of those actors), and in my senior year of college, I acquired a mild-grade crush on him. Ask my friend Bryan. He remembers.

So anyway, I dreamt of Jeremy Piven, and how we had to solve this mystery with my boyfriend. And the hotel was a real dive, the kind of place where ironing boards stand beside the beds with coverlets of polyester and floral. And for whatever reason, I had to go out and discover something—it was important at the time—and as I came back so anxiously to tell my boyfriend and Jeremy, I woke up. The alarm bleating. How annoying. What was it? What were we doing? I can only imagine.

I dream of Jeremy Piven. And this is what I get.