Shock value

1.

We are riding on a bus, heading who knows where. It's packed with kids I don't know and kids from my senior class. And Jack White, fresh from either the De Stijl or White Blood Cells album. He's sitting in the seat in front of me, next to the aisle, chatting and laughing it up with the more popular students. His hair is delightfully mussed and he's wearing a red shirt (as if you couldn't have predicted).

I suppose I'm trying to get his attention in any way I can. So I'm babbling loud mnonsense to my seatmates, who are giggling at my lack of shame. Suddenly, I blurt, "GOD IS A PUSSY."

Hahaha, I'm cracking up right now even writing that because who the fuck says that aloud, much less in a dream? I'm a horrible person, clearly.

My exclamation fails to get Jack's attention but everyone around me reels in shock that I'd ever let such blasphemy cross my lips.

2.

I am at the Young Avenue Deli with my old friend Amy F. (whom I haven't seen or talked to in real life in a few years). I've just trekked there through what is definitely not Cooper-Young but more dense and old and cobblestoned (probably some Parisian street I saw and internalized when I watched Paris, Je T'aime the other night). I'm ordering food from a plump young lady with short red hair. She is utterly bored with the task of punching my order into the computer and ringing me up. As I stand there by the bar (in this dream, unlike in real life, the food cash register is near the bar, not in the other room; in fact the layout of the place is all jacked up in the dream so I won't even try to explain), Amy and I are talking about newspapers and she begins going off on designers who insert errors into stories and make reporters look bad. (Amy, for the record, is not a reporter and as far as I know, couldn't give two shits about journalism.)

We get in a tiff in which she basically calls me out for ruining one of stories way back when, and she demeans my very profession in the process. I'm devastated that she would be so hard on me for making a very human mistake, which I explained was the result of several people's errors, not just mine. She continues berating me as I look over to the side room and see the popular kids from high school (what is with all the high school dreams lately? yeesh) getting drunk off of bottles of wine (including a magnum of Hogue White Harvest, yum). I've had my fill of being made to feel like shit, so I tell the cashier lady to forget about my food, even though I've already paid, and I stumble out onto the street like I'm drunk, even though I've not been drinking, and try to make my way back home through the cold, damp streets.

Space cadet

Amber and I are in a space shuttle. It's weird, because it's just a giant, open, cylindrical space lined with padding and wires and other spacey things. We're not strapped in. We're just kind of hanging out. And whoever is driving the space shuttle — later I'll see that it's one of our photo editors — is having trouble getting the thing into space.

We'll feel a rumble and then see from the tiny windows that we've got liftoff, and we'll see the earth beneath us begin to rotate (I doubt this is how actual shuttles lift off) only to, a few seconds later, find ourselves on the ground, outside the shuttle, waiting on the technicians to fix whatever problem we're having.

At one point, we're sitting near train tracks and I start telling Amber all about how Regina Spektor read a short story written by one of my other friends, and how she loved it, and halfway through, I realize I'm telling Amber her own story and I feel so embarrassed and ashamed.

I look over and see the aforementioned photo editor tossing big crates around outside the cockpit in order to solve whatever takeoff problems we're having.

Then we're back on the shuttle. I have some vague memory of us storing food in a tiny fridge even though none of the other passengers thought to bring anything. I feel slightly gluttonous because of it.

We have liftoff again. It occurs to me that we are probably going to die on this shuttle, and I suddenly want very much to be off the shuttle or to wake up (I realize I'm dreaming, but it doesn't go lucid on me because I can't control anything). Once again, the ground outside starts spinning around us as we rise toward the sky. I imagine with horror of what it must be like to be in a shuttle explosion. One minute things are fine, and the next ... what? Does everything just get white hot and you stop existing? Death makes no sense to me, even in my dreams.

I wince as we meet the horizon and rise up through the atmosphere. Out the window there is blackness and stars. And then everything kind of happens in a montage — as I'm standing there, looking out the window and thinking about the relative pointlessness of space travel, I see what human space traveling has wrought on the galaxy (I see giant oil rig things on distant planets; it's unclear if it's Earthlings who struck out to look for oil, or if it's just the technology we shared with other cultures in the galaxy). And while it's really freaking cool seeing all that crap, I feel that at any minute the whole thing's going to explode and I'm going to die.

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.