I'm Bill Cosby's wife. I like to cook--which is good, because he won't at all. That's the wife's role. He's grown in a lot of ways since his childhood, but that's a side of him that I've just had to accept.

It's hard to cook today. They're installing a better stovetop for me, and I'm grateful, but it gets in the way of dinner. And he gets mad if it's not on time. I'm trying to cook pancakes on top of a single brick. Little tiny pancakes one by one--all I can do. Mind you, this tiny surface is not due to the construction. I've never had a wider surface! That's why they're here--Bill finally bought me a mini-stove with one burner. Nine inches wide! Wide enough for a whole cooking pot or a frying pan! What luxury!

Cos comes home. He IS annoyed about the delay, but for once I assert myself--"Do you know how hard it is to create a new and different dinner every night? Foods vary, cooking times vary--it's like writing a poem to order every day, like standup with the material changed every night."

Cosby apologizes at last. He says this isn't the only kitchen improvement coming. He's going to buy me a real refrigerator at last, not just that little old ice chest.

I wake up and find I'm not Bill Cosby's wife.

NOTES NEXT MORNING, 1994

As a kid I loved Cosby's tall tales of his childhood. But...
• In Cosby's "adult" standup act he describes his wife as if she's another species: a woman. A generic woman. In the dream, I act out the role of a good little wife, meek and making do, grateful for crumbs from his millions.
• Cosby flacked for an empty, even toxic food: Jello. This jars next to his advocacy for child welfare causes. The dream plays on his willful ignorance about food, nutrition and cooking, an ignorance that let him push crap for money. The dream hints it has roots in his old-fashioned picture of gender roles. "Hey, I make the money, food's not my turf". But it is, Cos, if you push the stuff.
• Cosby's rich. Is he stingy? I have no idea. But I am! I saved up fanatically in the 1980s, invested it all, and retired in 1990. Free from the rat race! But at a price. I'm REALLY stingy. Won't spend even on essentials. Worsens my anorexia--a real struggle just to eat and stay warm, with thousands in the bank!
• That tiny stove: I write my dream-stories every night, a couple of thousand words... with a cranky, slow, antique computer! The keys are starting to jam. And the keyboard's built into the CPU in my old model--ergonomic for its era, but once you've beaten the keys to death, the whole thing's useless. Yet I've put off buying a new one, when for me it's a working tool as basic as a stove or fridge.
• Cosby's "family" TV show troubled me--why were the kids ALWAYS wrong? They always make a mistake and learn their lesson. The show was silent on the darker issues that plague so many American kids: ignorant parents, abusive parents, or good old-fashioned well-meaning, narrow-minded, self-righteous parents, trying to instill their God, their values, their sexual orientation, their racism, and all their dysfunctions into their kids. Family-values rape.

This dream may seem like a veiled comment on Cosby's date-rape scandal (2015). But I really did dream it in 1994; that final sentence of the notes, "Family-values rape" was added in 2000 when typing the dream for uploading. It became one of the few dreams on WDB that provoked hostile emails, for my unfairness to Cos... until his trial.

Lately I've been transcribing my 1982 dreamjournal (33 years pre-scandal) and found an even worse Cosby nightmare--his wife serves him with divorce papers, and he's so enraged he threatens to shoot us, and/or himself. Half a dozen more such dreams in the 80s & 90s, all disturbing: I'm his child living in poverty while Cos lives in a mansion; Cos shares the stage with comedian Joe Stalin (unfunny, but you better laugh or else); Cos, my teacher, mocks my writing, honesty and diet (by a guy who flacks for Jell-o!) etc...

So Bill Cosby's Wife was no fluke; my dreams repeatedly painted my childhood idol as trouble, especially to women & kids, long before the current furor--back, in fact, when the pills were poppin'. At the time, I strained to interpret such dreams as symbolic, as really about me--as I'd been taught all dreams are.

Not always!

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