My name is Lindsey, and I have an inferiority complex

I am at Amber's place, only it's unlike any actual place she's ever lived in. It's more like a dorm or compound of sorts, where lots of people live crammed into a small space. There's sleeping bags and living accoutrement everywhere. I make my way to a small space behind a curtain — a dressing area perhaps — and hey, there's Chan Marshall (Cat Power), wearing all black. She sees me take a pair of green striped workout pants from my bag, and she gestures to them as if she recognizes them. I tell her they're my ex's.

A flicker of recognition passes over her face. "You're Lindsey," she says, as I realize she somehow knows Phil. She has some kind of muddled nearly British accent, which is weird, because she really doesn't.

"Who do you love now?" she asks me. A hundred thoughts flash through my head, but I tell her that I can't possibly get into that. It's too complicated.

The group — Chan, Amber, and a couple of unidentifiable people my brain sorta made up — heads out for a night on the town. I shove some piece of important paper into my back pocket, throw my purse over my shoulder, and hurry out the door. I feel rushed and unsure. We walk a few blocks (it feels like we are in the city, presumably New York, but what part, I have no idea; later it feels like we're back on Long Island) and get to this outdoor concert space where, apparently, Led Zeppelin is playing. We can't actually see the band, but we can hear them and we can see the lights reflecting off the partial walls around us. Wow, they sound just like they do on the albums I have. Hmm.

The concert venue is oddly shaped — there are big rectangular slabs of slate interrupting the flow of the place. I feel like I need to draw exactly what it looked like to accurately describe it. It doesn't really seem like a music venue at all, but more like a public park art sculpture. Occasionally, and to our subdued amusement, we will see the guitar player — Jimmy Page, presumably — walk on the slate walls for an extended length of time, and the round a corner out of our sight. Ordinarily, people walking on walls would creep me out, but it was a rock show, so it was awesome.

I realize that I don't think I locked my car. I just imagine random passersby trying the handle and being delighted when it opens. I fumble around in my enormous and noisy purse for my keys, and manage to accidentally dislodge the important paper in my back pocket. I quickly hit the lock button on my remote, in the hopes that I'm still within remote range. And then I see the piece of paper skitter along the ground toward a giant fountain. I run away from the group, which has more or less been ignoring me anyway (we don't know each other very well) and chase the piece of paper. Every time I grab at it, it lunges toward the fountain a little quicker. I just know the damn thing is going to end up in the fountain and I'm going to lose whatever essential info was on it. I can feel people watching me and silently judging my stupid ass. I make one final leap and nearly go careening into the fountain, but I catch myself and the note, and for one triumphant second, I don't care what people think.

But then I come back to reality and realize that I am a mess. I feel frazzled and disorganized and uncool and frumpy and unattractive and unworthy of hanging out with these new people (this is a feeling I often have in real life, yay). So I take off walking around this harbor/marina-type thing, gazing off into the misty distance, at the boats and the gulls and the ropes. It's beautiful, and I just sort of take it all in. I feel someone behind me, and turn to see it's Amber, who's come to check on me. She's following close behind me, mimicking my steps, trying to make me laugh.

Sleepy McActiondream!

I'm in New York Ciy, although it is entirely unlike any New York I have ever set foot in. I'm on a narrow, curving beach with what appears to be throngs of Spring Breakers. We are mulling about in the shadow of a very large hi-rise whose architecture is quite unconventional. Its contours undulate as they climb toward the sky, so that every other floor bulges outward past the others.

Suddenly I look up and see something flying right into the building, near the base. It looks like a small plane. It crumples as it hits the building, and some middle-aged white guy comes stumbling — miraculously — out of the plane, only to collapse and, presumably, die there in the pile of rubble the crash created.

Everyone panics and starts running around. I inexplicably head toward the water.

We see more planes in the sky, flying low.

Everyone has to decide where to take cover. There are these large concrete block things floating on the water. I and about three other women — who are all blonde and really annoying — head inside the concrete blocks, which someone seals off from the outside so that we're trapped inside. We realize that we've been sealed inside some scary-ass ancient tomb or something, and work to get ourselves out.

I'm not sure how we do it, but by the time the sealed door is open, we are dozens of feet off the water, and someone has attached a rope ladder to the doorway so that we can climb down and swim to the helicopter waiting on us.

The blondes bravely jump all the way down, a la Fear Factor, and I'm the last one out. I self-consciously make my way halfway down the rope ladder and then jump into the water (I can't recall feeling wet in my dream). One of the blondes is struggling and tells me she can't swim. I grab her arm and tell her to kick her legs. We make it to the helicopter. I tell her to watch her head as we hoist ourselves into the thing and take off for unknown destinations.

Food in the House

Jenifer has returned from a "life-changing" trip to the Netherlands and needs some kind of nourishment.

Even though we both currently reside in New York, Jenifer and I find ourselves on my grandmother's piss-yellow linoleum floor kitchen, where I'm rummaging through the refrigerator for grub.

"She has stir-fry and fake chicken," I fib. (My grandmother definitely has stir-fry but has raised a klan of ravenous, gluttonous carnivores. Vegetarianism denotes sissyisms, and a sign of moral decay.)

"Ooh, that sounds perfect," Jenifer says about the faux-chicken, clasping her hands together in eager anticipation.

I pocket the Ziploc package of "real" chicken," deep-fried in sticky fat and oozing lard from its bloody-red pores.

I don't know why I'm telling tales to Jenifer. Maybe it's because I like fucking with vegetarians.