There are two kinds of people: those who are in love with Scarlett Johansson, and those who won't admit that they're in love with Scarlett Johansson.
Last night, I dreamed I was in the cast of the latest Avengers movie along with Scarlett Johansson, Robert Downey, Jr, Chris Hemsworth, Tom Hiddleston, Mark Ruffalo, Chris Evans and manymany others. I don't watch the Avengers movies for much reason other than to watch Scarlett Johansson, and I don't really follow the plots... at all, so fans of the MCU: your possible objections to the casting in the movie may be relevant to the MCU, but they are irrelevant to my dream. In the dream, the relevant things were that I was working on a movie alongside Scarlett Johansson and a lot of other movie stars, most of whom, including Scarlett (I was on a first-name basis with the fictional Scarlett Johansson in the dream), are much younger than I am, and very attractive and in very good physical condition. In the dream, COVID didn't seem to exist. However, in the dream, Scarlett was married to that douchebag from "Saturday Night Live" to whom she's married in real life, whose bio centuries from now will consist of the dates of his birth, his marriage to Scarlett, and his death.
So, in the dream, dozens of people in the main cast, to which I somehow belonged, were hanging out after a day of shooting. Scarlett was doing a diplomatic job of dividing her attention between us. At first, I felt wonderful when she was talking to me, and sad when she was not, but then I just felt more and more sad, because, even when she was talking to me, although she seemed very sincerely nice, she was also giving me no reason to hope that I was inflaming her passions, or that I was about to, a delicate balance with which I imagine the real Scarlett Johansson might have had a lot of practice, if she's been inclined to practice it. I began to wonder whether it was obvious to everyone that I had a crush on Scarlett. Obvious, and sad.
At one point, another movie star, whose identity was indistinct to me in the dream, was flirting with me, and I was trying to be nice without giving her any reason to hope that she was getting anywhere with me. She was talking about 1970's disco music: records which were made long before she was born, which were big hits when I was a teenager. She began to speak enthusiastically about Gloria Gaynor's single "I Will Survive," when I lost my polite composure a little bit and said that the Thelma Houston version of "Don't Leave Me This Way" was a much better record.
I said that, yes, I realized that "I Will Survive" had become an anthem for people who had left abusive relationships, and that that was a very positive thing, but "Don't Leave Me This Way," I insisted, was a much better piece of music. The passion in the song, I said, was real, was raw, was intense, and if the passion was unrequited, the pain was cathartic. I compared some of the lyrics of the two songs.
Then I noticed that the young actress was not with me, did not know what I was talking about. Or, it occurred to me, maybe she and everybody else could see and hear that I had a stupid hopeless crush on Scarlett, which meant that everybody knew exactly what I was really talking about. I stood up and turned away and headed back to my room, calling it a night, didn't even bother to say good night to anybody.
Tom Hiddleston caught up with me and asked me if I was okay. It occurred to me that I had just been talking about lyrics including "I can't/survive/Can't stay alive/Without your love." I told Tom that I wasn't suicidal. Then it occurred to me that that was what suicidal people sometimes say. But after a while, although admitting that I was feeling sad, I managed to convince Tom that I was just going to get some sleep. I thanked him for caring, turned down his offer of a hug, and woke up.
