Javier Bardem Invades My Nightmares, Kicks Up His Feet and Stays a While.

Rarely do I remember my dreams. But since seeing "No Country For Old Men" I woke with the memories of three in a row. And they all had Javier Bardem in them. Or, more specifically, they had Anton Chigurh -- the psychopath Bardem played in the Coen Brothers' latest film. I'm pretty sure it was Anton, at any rate, because Bardem doesn't normally sport a Nicholas Bradford haircut nor does he carry about a captive bolt pistol as the guy in my dreams did.

In the first of these dreams, I was on a movie set in a motel room. Three actors were lounging in front of a television. I knew it was a film set despite that there was no film crew nor cameras. I was just there and the notion that I was on a movie shoot was somehow intuitive.

Then, as in the Coen Brothers' film, the lock abruptly shot out of the door and in barged Anton with his assault shotgun. He immediately killed two of the actors and left the third actor and myself unscathed. I sensed no fear as I was not part of "the scene". I didn't hear anyone yell "cut", but a film crew sort of emerged out of the dreamstate ether. Grips ran cables and checked lighting. There was a makeup woman and a guy running around with a clapboard. They arrived through the fourth wall, behind which must have been the director and camera. And yet, there was no fourth wall. Or rather, the fourth wall was that of the motel room.

As I waited for the scene to be reset I looked at the two actors who'd been shot. They'd been shot for real. With live ammo. And they were dead. This was no concern to anybody. Not even to me. I sensed heat from the silencer on Anton's gun and, indeed, smoke still wafted from the barrel. Anton, stood back, dutifully having his face powdered by the makeup woman.

For myself, I had to step away from the blood of the actors pooling on the motel room floor.

Movies often influence my dreams. When I saw Blair Witch in 1999, the film had little immediate effect on me. But when that night rolled around, I got this impending sense of doom as I brushed my teeth. I felt as though someone was about to leap from behind the shower curtain and club me over the head. My shoulders tensed involuntarily as if bracing for the impact. When I went to sleep, I had a waking dream of the witch standing in my room, not moving, not saying anything. Just standing there with her thick, black horse-hair covered arms, gnashing her teeth and licking scab-coated lips with a pasty tongue.

The second Javier Bardem dream I had featured me starting a new job. I was to be a salesman of some kind and my manager explained that I would go door to door. I didn't know what I was selling, but it didn't matter because Anton Chigurh came in the room and the manager said he'd be my sales partner and would show me the ropes.

The next thing I knew, Anton and I stood outside somebody's house. I rang the door bell.

He nodded and said, "Good."

I smiled, relieved to get his approval. But then I noticed at his side was the captive bolt pistol. I asked him what it was, even though I knew the answer.

Anton said it was "for the client".

"What does it do?" I asked him.

And with that he peered into me with his cold, emotionless eyes.

"Hold still." he said and lifted the end of the cattlegun toward my forehead. I ducked and weaved, but his hand, holding the pistol head, followed me like a dancing cobra.

"Hold still." he repeated. "I'll show you how it works."

"I don't want to see how it works." I said. I knew from watching the Coens' movie that if you continued to talk to Anton, you had a chance of avoiding getting hole-punched by the cattle gun.

Anton exhaled forcefully through his nose. He seemed annoyed.

"Then how will you be able to sell it to the client?" he asked.

I stopped weaving and shrugged.

"Well, what does it do, exactly?"

"It fires a spring-loaded bolt into your head which kills part of your brain before the bolt goes back into the gun."

"I don't understand the point." I said.

"It makes it so your heart keeps beating while you bleed to death."

"Well," I said. "I don't think any client would want to buy one."

Anton stared at me and, for a moment, I thought he was about to strike me dead right there.

"That's your opinion." he said, finally.

And he certainly had no argument from me on that.

My nightmares aren't always terrifying so much as hilarious. In the week following September 11th, 2001, my wife and I both had dreams about the impending struggle against jihad. My wife described in hers an apocalyptic nightmare in which sprinklers came up all over the city and sprayed a poison into the air that killed people instantly like roaches. She said we hid together in an abandoned church where other survivors were also hiding. And, at some point, a clergy man gave everybody tiny silver fish to eat that made our mouths bleed as we bit them.

In my post 9/11 dream, I found myself on a beach in Afghanistan with some kind of commando unit. (And yes, I realize there are no beaches in Afghanistan.) But there I was, at night. We were preparing for an invasion. I felt a sense of urgency but not so much fear. A commanding officer doled out copies of "An Idiot's Guide to the Taliban." I remember thinking this was unusual and quite hilarious even within the dream.

I don't remember a lot of my dreams. Maybe one or two a month. But the ones I do are often lucid and I retain them for years. And so does my wife. Mostly because she hears about them while I'm still asleep, like the time she awoke to the sound of a terrible bellowing.

She jostled my shoulder until I woke, still in mid-bellow.

"Honey, honey, honey!" she exclaimed. "What's going on?"

I looked at her groggily as I sat up in bed.

"Are you okay?" she asked.

"Yeah." I said. "I was just chasing off a bigfoot. I was shouting at it."

Bigfoots turned up a lot in my dreams back then because I'd been tinkering with a screenplay about some hunters who shoot one. But I could never get through it. My wife, who'd been woken before by "night calls" suggested I finish the thing and maybe I'd stop dreaming about sasquatch. So I did and, low and behold, the bigfoot dreams stopped.

The last Javier Bardem dream I had turned out to be in a prison visiting room. It was one of those open rooms where prisoners and visitors sit across tables from each other instead of separated by panels of glass.

I'm not sure who I was there to visit and I never found out because, before I got situated, I saw Anton Chigurh sitting at a table by himself. He was wearing handcuffs, but he still managed to wave to me.

I took a seat at an empty table and glanced around at all the various conversations. Richard "The Nightstalker" Ramirez was there. He was looking old and sickly as though two decades of not being able to kill people had done a number on him. The Coen Brothers themselves were also present and it looked like one was visiting the other.

The next thing I knew, Anton took a seat across from me at the table. He got right down to business.

"Before you collect your commission, you have to hole-punch at least three clients. And you haven't hole-punched any."

I stared at him, in horror. It seemed like we'd argued about this before.

"I'm not going to." I said.

"Then you won't get your commission."

We quibbled about this for a little bit before Anton suddenly stood up and announced that I had to help him escape.

"No." I said.

But he calmly turned and started walking toward a door where two guards kept watch. In my dreamstate sense of logic, I was keenly aware of the notion that all Anton had to do was pass by the guards and he would be free. And that the guards would not attempt to stop him.

"No!" I shouted. "I won't help you."

But he kept walking and I felt helpless. I went after him and passed by the Coen Brothers. I felt and anger shoot through my very soul and I grabbed the short, curly-haired one by his prison suit.

"This is your fault, Joel." I screamed. "Your fault!"

"I'm Ethan." he said. I nodded quietly.

I let set the Coen Brother down and turned back toward Anton, watching as he walked past the guards without so much as a variance in pace. And through the door he went. Gone into the sleeptime ether.