Dystopic Threesome

*I've been pretty excited that water has been absent in my dreams for a while. Methinks it was associated with the soul-death my former job was causing me. But last night it made its reappearance - fortunately in a friendly guise.*

In a darkened apartment with large portions of walls missing I cowered behind a dresser to wait for the bomb's aftermath. I realized the wall I was against was closest to the impact but I was too terrified to move. I had watched the three bombs launch on TV. They had spiraled upward and then their homing devices kicked in and they streaked off to their respective destinations. One went to Alaska. I don't think I heard where the second one went. The third one was headed directly toward the part of Tennessee I was in. "What are the chances?!" I thought. I wondered why the people shooting bombs at us had chosen such remote locations. The bomb blast sent me and the house sliding sideways.

I went to check on Brooke after the impact. She and I were alone in the apartment and it felt like we were children again, left home alone and suddenly sure that an intruder lurked outside the house. We looked for internet access, but both computer stations has been blown away. I walked in off the smoldering balcony from the still night and Brooke gave me a knowing look. I knew I had been in this dream-house before, and she knew I knew how to find the internet. I moved the couch and pulled some iron rails away from the wall and discovered sliding glass doors that led to another darker balcony. I had to help Brooke. I knew this balcony had wireless if I could only find my laptop...

Brooke was talking to me and being open and honest. She was talking about her feelings - and not in the frank, bitter way she does now, with her blue eyes looking jaded and tired through a haze of cigarette smoke. She was talking sweetly and honestly with the innocent expressions of the child that she used to be. I could only stare in wonder and awe.

Then I was on a balcony with lots of people, still at night, and there was a party going on. Sarah Saint and I stood talking. She told me she'd be right back, but soon I found her passed out in a corner. I carried her to bed. I went back onto the balcony and discovered Danny talking to Zach Braff. I quickly joined the conversation and starting petitioning them for a threesome. Zach started to kiss Dan, and Dan backed away a little. "Oh, please!" I begged. "That is fucking hot!" So Zach and Dan kissed, and then the three of us kissed, and I was overcome with elation. We retired to a bedroom.

The next morning I checked on Sarah, but we were in her parents' house. I was trying to show her a sex cream I had apparently used the night before, but her mother walked in. I turned the label toward the wall and thought that if her mother asked what it was I'd tell her "Balsamic Vinaigrette."

I wanted to blog about my experience with Dan and Zach, but I realized that I couldn't betray Zach that way. I also couldn't post the pictures I'd taken on Flickr. I couldn't believe I couldn't tell anyone.

Dan, Zach, and myself walked up a huge down escalator with water cascading down it to reach a park. It was clear that the world had been bombed to hell. We were on our way to the airport, and we were a dating threesome. I realized I could call Alicia and tell her, but she doesn't think Zach is cute, so she wouldn't be excited for me. I decided to call Lindsey and tell her.

falling brides

I was at some band expo to see Danny's band. I was waiting around for them to go on when I heard this amazing jazz fusion band totally rocking out upstairs. So I climbed the mazelike wooden stairs and found them. I stood there with other people from our party who had ditched Dan's band for the horn rockers and watched. They were incredible. I talked briefly with the sax player but I can't remember what he said. And then some guy yelled, "Somebody's falling out of a window!" I ran to look and saw a woman in a wedding dress dangling from an upper window and then let go. I ran to aid her. Her heart was beating but she wasn't breathing. I gave her breaths. Finally medics arrived and asked if I performed CPR. I said, "Her heart was beating but she wasn't breathing so I gave her breaths." Then I was suddenly terrified that her heart had stopped while I was giving breaths and I hadn't noticed. I listened to her chest and heard a heartbeat. "Yeah, her heart's beating," I confirmed. Then we were at a friend's house having drinks and Bob walked in. I said, "BAAAAAAAHHHHHH-B!" and then I noticed he was wearing makeup.

Purgatory

I wish to make it implicitly clear that I use disparging terms such as "Satan's Journal" to describe my job at a fourth-tier subpondscum bar rag for reasons that I find morally objectionable.

Morally objectionable, not as a "Christian," whatever connation that terms dredges up in some people, but as a forward-thinking feminist and homosexual.

To see comely male bodies, slathered in oil, packages neatly enshrouded in layers of spandex to deliver that one-two punch of homosexual males as nothing more than cases of meat, subject to their own hedonistic whims. Well, to me, that is nothing short of pure evil. I don't care if I did get to interview Tori Amos and Cyndi Lauper.

For my roommate's birthday, I smoked a bowl, of course. And my mind and inner consciousness thought about the daily moral struggles I encounter there.

"I really need to find another job" was the common refrain.

And in dreamland, my mind continued on that same, beaten path.

There I sat, in a sterilized Chelsea veggie burger joint, my napkin crumpled after a fit of tears. Happyhappyjoyjoy was there. While others consider their job to be a mindfuck of Office Space and Requiem for a Dream, Happyhappyjoyjoy thinks Satan's Journal is the best place on earth. A homo DisneyWorld.

"You will have miles to go before you sleep," he told me. "Miles to go before you sleep."

Depp Trials

I am making out with Johnny Depp. I find myself in the backseat of a car with him and I'm having a crisis of conscience. He leans over to kiss me and I freeze with wide eyes (exactly like the scene in Back to the Future where Lorraine leans across the car at the dance to kiss Marty McFly) . "I am dating Dan," I think to myself. "I can't do this." Then Johnny asks me to come back to his hotel room and I agree. We encounter Dan on the way, and he is crestfallen. "But, honey, I love you!" He pleads. "I'm sorry, Dan," I reply. "It's Johnny Depp."

Don't Stop Believin'

A milquetoast family of whitebred, Country Living subscribing Americans debates me on the moral clarity of my Repub aunt at a posh Brentwood country club.

"Well I think she's a real bitch," the mother of the clan sniffs, throwing back her cardigan over her hunchback shoulders.

"She's Southern Baptist. They have the moral clarity of Nazis," the Dad remarks.
I can't believe what I'm hearing. Sure, my Repub aunt's no saint, but who is really?

"You know," I tell them, "she really means well. And to people who don't know her, sometimes she can come across as pushy or overbearing. But don't call her a bitch.
She's a good person and certainly not that."

All four of the Family Milquetoast look at me like I just ripped a noxious fart.

We're now standing in the salad line and junior Milquetoast is lifting his plates to the heavens as if they are some holy sacrament.

"And by the way," I tell them, "you aren't exactly the harbingers of liberal tolerance yourselves. I heard what you said to the black couple over there."

Mama Milquetoast is aghast. She nearly chokes on the ice cubes she's been sucking.
"Me?" she says, putting her hands on her heart, all emotionally wounded.

"What's next? Are you going to berate an Asian family?" I ask. "Are you gonna go, 'ching-chong-ching, please to meet you, sir. Ching-chong-ching?'"

Daughter Milquetoast, bless her heart, strokes her flowered hairpin and looks about ready to burst into a fit of tears.

"And you son," I say, pointing to junior Milquetoast, "are you going to befuddle Mexicans with all your 'yo quiero Taco Bell' talk?"

By now, a crowd of onlookers puddles around the proceedings and you can hear the collective gasp. Spoons are dropped into bowfuls of french onion soup.

I turn to leave and now, to me (the dreamer), it's painstakingly clear. I'm the hero of a new ABC television series from the creators of Ugly Betty. The series follows the misadventures of a twentysomething with a heart of gold and his sidekick, a Stuart Little-esque titmouse. We've just witnessed a crucial scene in the series finale.

The camera pans as a black hand reaches out to grab me. It's the hand of Isaiah Washington, the disgraced fag-spewing actor from Grey's Anatomy. He's playing the role of the country club owner who yearns to kick me to curb after my "ching-chong" incident.

"Talk to the civil rights leader I befriended in episode one," I tell Isaiah. "He's a good character reference."

Music swells (is it a power ballad from Journey?) as I reach the staircase and dig through the confines of my shoebox. Sure enough, Stuart Little is there crumpled up over a mouse-sized issue of Satan's Journal. It's the one with Rufus Wainwright on the cover.

When Stuart sees that I spot his deviant homosexual ways, he scurries into the corner of the shoebox under his miniature lamp.

"Aw Stuart," I croon, "I love you even if you like taking it up the ass."
And cue commercial break.

Manifestos and monkey bars

I guess I'm a teacher, 'cause I'm wandering around an elementary school like I've got some authority. A Muslim child is following me around, bugging me about the buggery going on in the minds of Americans. He's spouting some serious propaganda, but I can't recall any specific sentences (or words, even) coming from his diatribe. He's loud and obnoxious and clearly believes in everything he's saying, but I keep shooing him away.

"We have nothing to talk about," I say.

He continues to follow me until I try losing him by crossing a cavern by way of monkey bars. As soon as I turn my back to him and begin to cross, it occurs to me that he could easily shoot me in the back of the head.

In the year 2000

Rosie O' Donnell has a new syndication deal. Oddly enough, it bears a striking resemblance to the previous Rosie O' Donnell Show, except she's more lesbiany. Instead of a faux love affair with Tom Cruise, she talks about Manheiming Camryn Manheim on the set of The Practice.

Her first guests are Steven Segal and Salma Hayek.

That is all I can remember at this point.

Thanks for your time.

Keep your eyes on the prize

I'm meeting with the big fish of Satan's Journal. He's peering down at me from behind his wood-paneled desk and rattling off his usual list of offenses while I sit on his couch with a measured indifference.

"I find your little feministy digs at this organization to be abhorrent," he says. "You need to go out and schmooze at gay clubs more and masturbate to porn every once in awhile."

While he impugns my gayness further, I begin licking myself like a bloodhound dog, my leg jutting against the wall as I lick my crotch.

"What the hell are you doing?" he wants to know.

There's a dead pause, and without missing a beat, I say, "I think I might have chiggers."

I crumple to the ground and begin smudging my ass against his carpeting. "I'm pretty sure I have tapeworms, too," I tell him.

"Jesus Christ," he goes, "and you call yourself a Manhattan homosexual."

Don't read this, Universe

I finish a month of birth control pills and realize that I forgot to take the first little white guy marked "Take me first!" So I've screwed up a whole month and could be in danger of going pregs. I decide to find a doctor willing to prescribe Plan B but encounter religious types and judges pointing out that this is my second time resorting to such measures.

"But I'm being responsible," I whine.

I have the feeling of been-all-over-town-and-still-coming-up-short, so I decide that I have no qualms with taking RU-486. I am 486, as long as 486ers don't have unwanted children.

Breaking bottles

For some reason, I'm alone and walking through the parking lot of that gourmet pasta shop and eye doctor on the corner of McLean and Madison. It's just me and my purse, and I think I'm in pajamas. I stake out an unoccupied area of the lot (for what purpose, I have no idea), and notice that there are several people standing around, throwing beer bottles and delighting as they shatter on the asphalt.

One woman engaging in this apparently sanctioned activity sees me, and I laugh with her about how I don't want her to start chucking those things at me. She has no problem with that. Which is why it surprises me when some other dude at the far end of the lot starts chucking bottles just over my head, lobbed high at first, so they'll miss me, but later thrown just past my fucking face.

And then another dude starts throwing bottles toward me. A few near-misses later, and I'm abandoning my purse and taking off across the street, admonishing these assholes for having their fun a little closer to my skull than I'd normally prefer. I realize with a sinking feeling that my purse has all my earthly belongings in it, and I'm leaving it there in the lot. The asshole dudes are descending upon it, and one other dude is coming straight for me. So this is what it must feel like to know things are going to end badly, I think. I reach my purse and wonder why I didn't just sit in my car — which is apparently there — to avoid the bottles. One dude puts his hands on my and another grabs at my purse. I try to yank it away.

I notice, before I come to, that a soundtrack of gangster rap had been swelling in the background as the conflict got more and more heated. I think to myself, Do my dreams always have music?

I honestly can't say.

Apartment-sitting

I am in an upscale walk-up apartment, completely alone. I've seen this apartment before, either in another dream or on TV or somewhere. Never in real life, that I recall. It feels like I'm babysitting, because I have an obligation to be there, but there's no kid around. In fact, most of the rooms are completely empty.

I start out at the front door and give myself a little tour of the place. The apartment is classy, with nice hardwood floors, white-paneled walls, molding, the whole deal. As I walk through the rooms, I notice that it's dark outside, and every light in the place is on. First off the foyer is the office, I presume, which leads to another foyer-type room that I suspect would be a kid's playroom (that contains nothing but a set of dumbells), and then finally what I suspect would be the kid's room. It's trimmed out with mirrors on the two far walls, making it look like an incredibly huge room. It is also completely creepy. I stand there, looking at myself and around the room through the mirror. The pressure and weirdness becomes intense.

So I scurry out, and back through all the rooms. I notice that I'm hearing some kind of low drone coming from the walls. It also freaks me out. I feel completely alone and yet so not alone. I make my way back through the foyer and into the other wing of the house, where the living room is. It's well-lit and furnished, unlike the other wing of the apartment. I look around and realize that there's no TV (I instantly think of Amber's TV-less babysitting duties), so I grab something to read (a newspaper?) and sit on the plush leather couch. I settle in and lean back, only to see a little spider web with several huge egg sacks hanging between two cushions. I jump up and do a little ew-gross-spider! jig, and continue walking around the place.

Keep moving, keep moving.

The living room is trimmed out with the craziest details. Chandeliers and mirrors — even mirror illusions. There is a white baby grand piano behind a wall, but the wall is bent and mirrored so that it's like you're looking at the piano right there in front of you. Beside it is a little room, sort of shaped like a squared bubble, that's trimmed in tiny mirrors that look like diamonds sparkling. Inside is a tiny stool you can sit on to watch someone play that piano. Only it looks like no one should sit on the stool because it's a valuable heirloom from the Renaissance.

I sit down in a chair and realize that there is a TV after all — it's one of those old floor units that looks like furniture. I turn it on and watch a bit, trying to turn it down to not disturb the downstairs neighbors, but realizing that after to turn the volume down all the way, if you keep trying to inch the volume down, it just gets louder. Even the mute button doesn't eradicate the noise. So I turn the TV off and pass by the couch again, to give those egg sacks a closer look.

How can a spider have enough time to spit out this many egg sacks on a couch that's regularly used? I wonder. And then I see it — crawling up the back of the center cushion. It's big — not bird-eating tarantula big, but at least half-dollar big — and a deep red color that I don't see to many real-life spiders in.

It skittered up the back of the couch cushion and — get this — took a flying leap onto the floor like it owned the fucking place. (Which, I suppose, maybe it did; no one else seemed to be taking care of the place.) It skittered around on the floor, toward me, away from me, with business to do, and I instantly launched into KILL IT mode. I looked for things to use to squish it and came up short. I chased it around with a folded newspaper and realized that its super-spider speed would present my scared ass a challenge. Every time I'd lunge for it, it would scuttle toward my feet or — horrifyingly — leap over my head. I finally gave up when I realized it was hopeless. And when I realized I was drooling everywhere and woke up.

Return to AHMC

I am back at AHMC, and I am nervous as hell. Al leans in my face and says, "How's it going, Uncle Tamara?" I am nervous again. Something's wrong that I can't fix and need to keep everyone from finding out. A sick knot of anxiety sinks into my stomach. I am at the back desk under a flourescent light next to Ericka. Everything I say she is discounting, attacking, and being snarky about. She is deliberately antagonizing me, like a cat staking its territorial claim. Al walks back by and says, "What's new, Flash?" I reply, "I don't know, Al, I guess I'm just realizing that some things never change."

My roommate proceeded to get plastered last night, coming home with a shit-faced grin, rubbery lips and fumbly stutter. Ah, the language of a drunkard.
And last night as I dozed to sleep and committed myself to a dream about the Rolling Stone intern, I could detect the faint blubbering from his room across the hall. It sounded like a sputtering car.
Since my roommate is a world renowned douche, I chalked it up to his being a drunken idiot.
"If you don't shut the fuck up, so help me God, I'm going to come across the hall and beat your ass," I hollered.
The blubbering continued followed by a high-pitched whine. He sounded like a kitty going through a vasectomy.
Again, I didn't know he was puking his guts out in a bag perched beside his bed. I thought he was just trying to piss me off, and keep me from hazy homosex.
"Motherfucker," I yelled again, "you need to shut that shit up! Nobody wants to hear your goddamned drunken horseshit."
I didn't hear from him the rest of the night. Sadly, I couldn't return to dreamland.
And thank Oprah that I apologized to him the next morning.