We nocturnals live in a deeper world than most, an imaginarium we reveal to few during the daylight, a hidden stream lived out in private moments. So in that spirit, here’s a recent hit from my soul-stash to yours to tide you over until I publish my forthcoming article on the swelling male crisis in the West. Dreams enliven us, and on this potluck of bachelorhood crotchets I’ll probably publish these as they come to me.My dad and I are in a mountain city in a foreign country, a locale like Katmandu or Lhasa, Tibet in the towering mountains of some far-flung orient. Shangri La for all I know. My father and I are hunched in the dusty field of a crowded stadium as thousands of spectators stare down at us eerily quiet. Over the top of the risers I can see the snow-capped peaks of the Hindu Kush or Himalayas or whatever mountains fit the bill.

From a prominent seat rises an older man about my dad’s age, asian. The dream intimates to me that he’s the despot of this land, with a peasant-to-power look and a weatherbeaten visage amused by nothing he’s ever seen. His hard look could stop a clock.

“How do you fare here?” He asks us mockingly, mostly my father.

My father is wearing a kippa and tallit, something he’s loath to do. He remains seated with me in the dust as he slowly turns his head and retorts like the wise unamused who look past crowns to see the fool underneath.

“The health of this land was good when I left so many years ago,” he spoke as to an old friend, “What of its condition under your hand?”

The old asiatic man stood among his seated retinue with that face of his only a mother could love, and he boldly said, “These people are but children to me.”

At that, those surrounding him rose up to dispatch him, hiding his assassination from our view. The stadium rose in a hubbub and I tell my dad that we need to go – right away.

The next thing I know, my escaped father and myself are fugitives hugging our sides from the bitter cold in our dingy parkas as we struggle in from a narrow mountain pass to what appears to be the staired entrance to a neighboring city at the top of the world.

And that’s all I’ve got. Ideas?

My pops who topples with but a word.

• MyDreams