The Luv Doc: Dogstar Dick

Dear Luv Doc,

This morning my husband said he had a dream in which he had a second, slightly smaller but fully functioning penis that was located directly under his main penis. He said he assumed it was for anal penetration even though he doesn't remember having anal sex with anyone in his dream. What he does remember is masturbating with his smaller penis even though when he was masturbating his larger penis was flaccid. He says he doesn't remember being awkward or embarrassed at all about his smaller penis, only curious. I looked up penis dreams and couldn't find anything about having a second set of genitals, so I am turning to you, good doctor. What does this dream mean – other than that my husband is a weirdo?

– Wife of a Dreamer

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Well now, I don't quite know how to respond to this other than to maybe option your husband's story as a porn film script. I have been kicking around some working titles and the one currently in the lead is "Dogstar Dick." I also like "Junior Johnson" and "Wee Willy Wanker," which also fit the bill in a crassly alliterative way but "Dogstar Dick" has a multidimensional mojo the others lack. Not only does it reference male genitalia, it also ropes in Sirius, the brightest star in the night sky and the linchpin of the Canis Majoris constellation, whence it derives its name. I personally like to carry the dog metaphor a bit further by imagining the smaller star in the binary (aka Sirius B, a white dwarf) as a little Shih Tzu frantically circling its master, even though the actual orbit takes something like 50 years.

Dogstar is also the name of the band in which Keanu Reeves played bass. I only know this because I saw them at the House of Blues in L.A. sometime in the late Nineties. I was snot-slinging drunk on Russian vodka but I do cherish a hazy memory of meeting Keanu after the show. He seemed sincerely impressed that I was from Austin, although, to be fair, sincerity seems to be the only arrow in Keanu's quill. Dogstar's original name was "Small Fecal Matter" but they changed it to Dogstar after one of the band members came across the term in the Henry Miller book Sexus (Latin for sex), which is part of a larger trilogy called "The Rosy Crucifixion" that documents Miller's life in Brooklyn in the 1920s. Sexus was banned in 1950 due to its obscene content. So, you can see why "Dogstar Dick" is leading the pack. But as I am sure Keanu would agree, at this point in development, there are no bad ideas.

There are also no bad dreams – at least when you're writing an advice column – and this dream is a doozy. Imagine if Sigmund Freud got his psychoanalytic mittens on this one. While he is universally regarded as the father of psychoanalysis, when it came to dream interpretation, Siggy was a bit overly preoccupied with the male phallus. In fact, pretty much anything oblong and erect that populated peoples' dreams he interpreted as being phallic: trees, lamp posts, cricket bats, cucumbers ... oh ... and yes, penises. It turns out, erect penises are totes phallic.

Freud's belief was that dreams are the human subconscious acting out its repressed desires. I won't fight him on that, but given that Freud was a big fan of Bolivian marching powder, masturbation, and cigars, it's easy to see why he might have seen everything through dong-colored glasses.

Given your husband's willingness to openly discuss his dream with you, I would say there is a good chance you have a healthy sexual relationship, so there's probably nothing to worry about unless this is some sort of insane Machiavellian mind game to get you to do anal. Maybe he just saw a rabbit vibrator and his subconscious said, "I can turn your junk into one of those."

In classic dream interpretation, a masturbation dream could mean anything from sexual stagnation to loneliness, to selfishness, to good old Freudian sexual repression, but given the extra bells and whistles on your husband's dream, I would say that all bets are off. Maybe your husband's subconscious is just a weird and wonderful place where Dogstar Dicks actually exist. I wouldn't obsess on it too much, unless you think it's worth a good screenplay.