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.

No — not the camera!!

I am taking a picture of my grandmother and noticing that the autofocus is being a little bitchy. So I switch to manual and zoom in and try to focus on her face. But it still looks blurry and weird. As soon as I press the shutter, I hear this sickening metallic pop — like a spring has exploded inside a small tin can — and I look down to see that my beloved camera has blown out like a popcorn bag — its sides bulging and revealing the parts inside that should stay hidden.

I wince and cradle the thing to the ground, taking special care — and instructing everyone around me eager to get all grabby with the trainwreck of a camera — to not touch the sensor, as if it's even remotely salvageable.

The sight of my camera in such a state launches me into guilty panic mode. Panic because I LOVE THIS CAMERA and guilt because I feel like I probably did something stupid to cause its implosion. My dad is there and, being the one who financed the thing to begin with, he instantly (and this is not what Real World Dad would have done) gets gruff and makes it clear that I'm on my own when it comes to paying for the repairs.

My mind spins as I realize there is no way I can afford a new camera or even the repairs on this one (as if it can be repaired). Phil and I run around some asphalt parking lot between strip-mall stores and restaurants, looking for my car so we can track down the paperwork that came with the camera. I realize with a sick feeling in my gut that I never filled out the warranty card. So I run around with a bleak vision of the apocalypse in my head. I flit past a table of sorority girls in some restaurant and dump water on them. And again when I pass back by. One of them follows me and pours water on me. So I respond (sillily) by tossing my glass of red wine on her velour sweatsuit-clad ass.

None of those things brought my camera back, though. Only forcing myself to wake up ended my terror.

I have a new job.
When people ask me what I do, I tell him, "I'm a specter into other people's lives...kind of like Jennifer Love Hewitt on The Ghost Whisperer."
"I'll be home for Christmas when they pay for some goddamn vacay time," I say, rather blase.
My first job assignment is travelling back into the 1960s and reclaiming the fists of justice for a 5-year-old who was urinated upon by his physical education teacher.
"Honey, what he did to you was wrong. And I'm going to right that wrong."
I can't recall what I did to exact justice. It probably involved a golden shower of some sort.

I'm showering with the cute hetero intern from Rolling Stone. His pubes are splendid. They're all bushy tailed and neatly plucked, his adorable eyebrows arching upward as I soap my balls. The downside is that the shower is emitting toxic chemicals and we're soon bespotted in chemical burns. Our skin gradually turns into a bloody landscape of gaping holes and pockmarked grayish pus. We look like rejects from a Cesar Romero pic.
"See what happens when you have the homosex," my Repub aunt says, "your pecker nearly burns off for Jesus."

I'm interviewing George W. Bush for Satan's Journal. But upon hearing that it's a mag for fags and that the interviewer plans to milk his balls, porkpie isn't having any of it.
"Well, it's not like you're immune to false pretenses. Your entire career has been based on false pretenses," I mutter to myself in reference to porkpie.
Even though I'm interviewing George Bush for Satan's Journal, I'm in the offices of Pus Weekly. And the Secret Service isn't amused that I claimed press cred with Christianity Today, either.
"Shitballs," I tell the Secret Service agent, "you could've tapped my ass long ago, but instead, you just assumed I wrote for Christianity Today. What kind of bullshit is that?"
My immediate boss at Pus keeps making flirty glances at the Secret Service agent, too. This unravels me.
"Nina, he's a Republican! Curb your vaginal impulses," I tell her.

Dinosaurs

Last night a slew of miniature dinosaurs populated my dreams. They were everywhere — like in some kind of Jurassic daycare center. And all I could think was, "They really are just big fucking lizards!"

Short but sweet

I'm crushing on an adolescent black boy who wears a retainer made of hay in my favorite picture of him. We have the same friends and all live together in one giant house. My father and stepmother also live there.

My crush and our friends and I go to the movies, where we're serenaded by a gospel choir prior to the film. The singers hand out beaded Sunday hats filled with sips of wine. I keep glancing over to my crush, who catches my eye and looks away. He's so young. I'm not sure how old I am, but my college roommate is there, just hanging out.

Next I'm in the bathtub trying to sludge through all my bathtub duties -- shaving, washing, scrubbing, conditioning -- but I fall asleep. I wake up upset because my family, friends, and crush have all enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner without me.

Closer to God

The potential boyfriend has made the leap from conjugal frivolity to serious "gay lover" and now must Meet the Parents.

Like a wacky Ben Stiller touchstone, the downhome visit dissolves into a series of sitcommy hijinks, with all that's missing is the painfully canned laughter.

We're in the backseat of my parents' Volvo (Volvo?! My parents are Ford pickup men. They do anything Toby Keith tells them), and I keep making not-so-subtle gestures such as groping him in the backseat while my parents natter on about the new Applebee's.

"Have you tried their chicken fried chicken?" my Mom asks Dad while I fondle PB. "It's literally to die for. In fact, I'd kill someone for it."

We're now in the parking lot of the United Methodist Church, and Dad is having trouble parking the Volvo. In fact, he goes into a space lopsided.

"You're doing it all wrong," my sister tells Dad as I continue to prod PB's gonads.

"I know what I'm doing," my Dad says all belligerent, puffing his cheeks like Bill O' Reilly. "I've been driving for 40 years!"

My sister gets out of the Volvo and begins directing Dad into the parking space. He's not amused.

The whole time this is going on, I'm still poking PB's balls. "Maybe after they're done, we can get tacos," I tell him.

Buses gone wild

We are careening along on the interstate in California, past shores and hotels and up and down mountains and in and out of thick smog, obscuring what I've been told is fabulously beautiful countryside. We are in a chartered bus, on a tour or vacation, perhaps, and somehow we've gotten ourselves in a race with another bus — a Girls Gone Wild bus that keeps passing us and going slow and getting passed and then passing us again.

There are three men tethered to what might as well be a noose on the back of the GGW bus, they are hanging there — alive — their faces bruised and dirty and bloody from the abuse they've taken from the ass-end of that bus. They are yelling things at our bus. Our driver gets us close enough to them to realize that they are telling us stories. I can't quite make them out, but they seem frantic.

I can't help but notice that we're speeding along at speeds generally considered unhealthy for big, lumbering buses. Every time we lurch around a curve, I think of that poor team on that bus that crashed in Atlanta, and how awful that situation must have been.

It doesn't take too long, though, for our bus to meet a similar fate. Almost.

We top a hill way too fast, so fast that we take to the air and go flying, flying flying, bracing for impact, wondering what we'll hit — ocean or earth — flying, flying, I don't want to die because my guts were squeezed out, flying, flying, awake.

Sexx Laws

[Full disclosure: I might be dating this bisexual dude, hence my trepidation about entering the bedroom and finding a slithering wet vagina awaiting me for a threesome.]

So last night, I fucked a woman. A forty-year-old virgin.

She had discolored skin, blue plugs of it drooping from her chin and bubbled scars a la Seal. Clearly, this poor woman had been parched in the biggest five-alarm blaze since Ron Howard's Backdraft.

"I like it hard and slow," she told me, even though she never had 'it' in her forty years. She reminded me very much of Ms. Crabtree on South Park, the constantly bedraggled ragamuffin bus driver who says things such as "my cooch hasn't been paid this much attention since I was a ripe flower."

I remember saying to myself, "just picture it as your potential boyfriend's ass...just picture it as your potential boyfriend's sphinx."

In a later dream segment, I started gettin' hot and heavy with the openly gay indie-rocker from Nashville who shall remain nameless.

In real life, I've been crushin' hardcore on this Roxy Music-era guitar slinger, sending him steamy text messages that could make Sue Johanson blush.

But last night in the dream...man. Let's just say that when my cell phone alarm clock blared, I cursed Cingular Wireless president Kathleen L. Dowling's mother.

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.

Political Science

I ripped a page from the Lindsey Turner Dreambook.

Fox News, fresh off their Demo-snubbing at the hands of John Edwards, invited Nashville, Tenn. bloggers to a Town Hall discussion about the hot little 2008 prez race.

Bloggers would introduce themselves to Fox viewers with cheeseball lines such as, "My name is Katherine Coble of Just A Pretty Farce. I want the government to stay the hell out of our lives. In 2008, I want to see Jacob Sullum in the White House. You guessed it, Fred Barnes. I'm a Libertarian."

And then you would have some cocky celeb such as libertarian Denis Leary and he would say something like "Amen, sister!" to Coble's admission.

When time came for me, I wanted to say something like "I'm a liberal with libertarian tendencies. Plus, I've been researching libertarian-socialism on the Internet lately, and I think that label best fits me despite being somewhat of an oxymoron."

But the Fox News brass said something to the effect of "our viewers are dumb as rocks. Your identity would only cause their brain cells to fissure because they're retarded."

So I went with liberal. And here's what I said.

"My name is Joey Hood. I used to have a blog called TV on the Fritz. I believe in equal rights for gays and universal health care. In 2008, I want to see a tranny in the White House. Holyfuck, I must be a liberal!"

Then I had some fat lesbian celeb such as Rosie O' Donnell who snapped, "you go sister friend."

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.

My Happy Place

Dr. Cox gave me naughty punishment sex all over my kitchen. It was ha-ha-ha-ha-hot. John C. McGinley is an attractive man, and right before bed I watched an interview with him wherein he stated that his character's whistling was just a bad habit (organic!!), and that he started calling Zach Braff women's names from the get-go, because Zach is a little bit of a girl (organic, again!!). So his two most attractive features are features that came from the man, not the writers. So I guess, in my I-need-a-sex-dream state, John C. McGinley and Zach Braff played rock paper scissors, and "Johnnie C." crushed Zach Braff's hand.

And I'm so glad he did because that's the hottest dream sex I've ever had. And I'd give details here, but it'd be dirty, dirty, dirrrrrty. God, so dirty.

Long hair blues

I discover a seldomly used front door to my apartment, and on it, a stack of weathered memos and notes is tacked, including one from my landlord telling me to clean out my drains once and a while.

Instantly I know this is because I shed like a Persian cat with the mange.

The Dope Show

I'm currently reading Marilyn Manson's The Long Hard Road Out of Hell, which was ghost-penned by Neil Strauss! So excuse moi for my altered subconsciousness last night.

I found myself bosom buddies with Marilyn Manson, who waddled around his mansion in Prada house shoes with a tottering glass of rum.

"Should we go for a swim?" Marilyn asked. After years of drug abuse, frankly, Mr. Manson looked hard-up and worn out.

He held up powder blue spandex speedos for my perusal. Since I don't like people inspecting my package, I told Marilyn that I was fine in aqua jammies, you know, the ones the British Commonwealth would wear in grainy black-and-white films about public bathing?

Anyhoo, Marilyn's mother came into the picture at this point. And it was none other than Mrs. Cradell, a fire-and-brimstone Southern Baptist from my long-forgotten high school career.

"Hello, Mrs. Cradell," I go, excited to see someone from my past.

Mrs. Cradell takes a long toke from her cigarette which hangs precariously from her lips.

"Oh hello...Joey," she mutters.

As she leaves the room, I corner Marilyn with my neurotic firing line of questions including the priceless "How come your mother doesn't like me?"

Marilyn's answer is simple. "Because you're a faggot," he says matter-of-factly.

I don't understand how this woman loves Marilyn Manson. I mean, the Anti-Christ Superstar crawled from her loins, and she's offended that I have butt sex with men? Outrageous!

Mrs. Cradell returns to the room with a Long Island Ice Tea.

"Marilyn," she says, "everyone in our family thinks that you're mentally retarded."

Well, that settles it.

Even Steph/vens

I'm spending time with Wendy, a friend from looooong ago, who I haven't seen in many years. And together, for some reason, we're hanging out with Stephen Colbert and Steve Carell. And they are wearing business suits, just like they stepped right off the set of the Daily Show.

It's night and we're at some sort of outdoor gathering. The details have faded at this point.

I just remember Wendy confiding in me that she doesn't trust Colbert.

Which, at the time, made perfect sense.

Creepy Crawlies

I'm not sure where I am, but I'm on the move, heading somewhere with something to do, and I catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror and notice something hanging out of my nose. It's long and dark. I reach for it to remove it, and am met with resistance as it does not want to come out. It is attached to the inside of my nose, whatever it is.

A closer inspection reveals that it is a fekking MILLIPEDE up in my nose, attached with its little pinchers. So I tug hard to get that bastard out, and do a little dance of revulsion as I fling it onto a nearby table, where it proceeds to writhe on its back, unable to flip over onto its million little legs.

Shudder.

At some point after that, I am in my parents' kitchen, when I see another millipede crawling on the wall. And another millipede, FLYING AROUND (do millipedes even having wings?), heading straight for me. They are red and aggressive, and each is about two inches long. My mom and I realize that they are coming from inside a duct in the wall separating the kitchen and the stairs to the loft. We watch as another millipede worms its way through a small hole and takes flight in the kitchen. There have to be dozens flying around and crawling up the walls now.

You've not seen creepy until you've watched millipedes flying around, heading straight for your hair. It's fucking demonic!

Mom somehow pulls the infected duct through the small hole, and I imagine millions of millipedes writhing inside it, just waiting to be set free.

THANK GOD I wake up at some point before that happened.

Go right ahead

I'm driving a yellow van these days. I go outside to find it parked in a no-parking zone. The police have left me a note: "If you don't move your car, we'll tow it and fandangle your children."

I like the way you move

There's this guy I like. A situation has presented itself that has allowed us, fortuitously, to be sitting somewhere, making out. For the first time, presumably. It's not all that hot, really, but mostly because he is using his tongue entirely too much. He's sticking it my mouth and swirling it around and around and around and I'm beginning to wonder if he's joking with me and I'm supposed to pull back and laugh at him. With him. But I don't pull back because I want to keep going, I want this to mean something, I'm afraid I won't get the chance again, etc.

And mostly I figure — if this is seriously how he kisses — that I can teach him a better technique some other time. Practicing will be fun.

So kissing leads to more, as it so often does, and I'm relieved because the more is much better than the kissing. There is a rhythm that wasn't there before, a skill, a compatibility.

And that's a relief.

Hair-Hatched Cats

Brooke says to me incredulously, "I can't believe that woman keeps eggs in her hair!" I concur. But then I discover an egg in my own hair. I pull it out and realize that I've been keeping it warm because it's about to hatch. I watch it slowly break open, but there is a clear liquid filling it, that I try not to spill, as the kitten hatches. Then the kitten rolls out and begins to clean himself, a lot bigger than most kittens. I realize that he looks just like Sabian. I think to myself, "Ohh. Cats that get hatched out of eggs must all have that coloration."

The Lynnster Dream Zone

For some reason I've decided to trek down the road from my parents' house. (I am finding it curious by this point in my dreamblogging that I dream about my parents' house more often than I dream about my own apartment, or any apartment I've ever had.) It feels like I'm westward bound, though the landscape is unfamiliar and I see a sort of suburban cluster of stores and a McDonald's on the horizon. I think to myself, Wow, I never knew there was a McDonald's so close to my house. So I head toward it. Along the way, the paved road becomes a dusty, rutted gravel road, passing between expansive, grassy fields lined with rustling trees. I can hear the crickets and the katydids in the grass — their chirps and hums make the air vibrate.

There is a group of young people playing football in the field to my right. Actually, they're probably practicing. It seems more repetitive and stressful than a pickup game. I reach the end of the road and climb up into some twisted piece of farm equipment whose windowed caboose looks down over the group playing ball. Inside, I encounter other people there, and I realize that they are looking at me in frustration, as if to imply that I shouldn't be there and that I'm disturbing this holy practice session. Which, if it's a high school football team, makes sense.

So I climb down and double back. I can't figure out how to get to the cluster of life I saw on the horizon earlier.

[vague and blurry]

I am heading back to my parents' house with the feeling that I'm in trouble. That someone's following me. I think Amy Rose is there. Someone else is with us — someone she knows. We are snickering at the possibility of getting in trouble. I, of course, and wracked with guilt. But we press on.

[vague and blurry]

I am in my parents' house and I come downstairs and there's Lynnster, who I've never met (add that to the tally of bloggers I've dreamt about), but whose blog I read just before bed last night. I've never even seen a recent picture of Lynnster, but my brain managed to take earlier pictures of her and show me what she might look like today. Very interesting trick, brain. Kudos.

Anyway, so Lynnster comes to hug me and is all "Let me see you!!" She is acting like a long-lost aunt, marveling at how I've grown. We chat briefly and then she and my mom go back to kvetching about things, and I completely forget the rest of the dream.

Look at me, I'm an angry Sim

I keep dreaming that I've had sex with someone other than Craig and now have to tell him what I've done. This no doubt comes from the terrible experience of having betrayed a couple of boyfriends when I was slightly younger, slightly dumber, and providing one part of two in immature relationships.

In these dreams, I agonize over hurting Craig because my dream self wants more than anything to be her best self for such a joyful, unconditionally kind man. I get a sense of longing to get back to my sleeping self, who would rather eat a bucket of flaming needles over whole wheat pasta than stay stuck reliving this particular past.

I wake up with a certain ex-boyfriend on my mind, feeling angry that he dare think himself pure enough to punish me the way he did in November. Clearly, we pay our own debts when we hurt someone. Hope that fits in his pocket, but I doubt there's room with such a huge ego taking up so much space.

Frozen Foods Hissy Fit

I am the manager of a grocery store. I am secretly seeing S.T. and hanging out with her daughter, who is adorable (I've never met her in reality). I deal with staff issues, which include employees ducking into the coolers when I'm not looking and ignoring the people waiting to be checked out. I'm in heels, and I keep having to march from one side of the store to the other, reaming people. I can barely find time to hang out with S.T., except when we duck out together for cigarettes. We end up getting in a fight in the frozen foods aisle, and I throw a barrel of raw chicken in the floor in front of her and stomp away. I get outside to smoke and decide I had probably better clean that up, since I'm a manager. I change into work clothes and fetch a barrel of cleaning supplies. On my way in, however, S.T. is by the side entrance with her daughter, crying. I know what she's doing. She's going back to her husband. I don't beg her, because I can't. I just stand and cry, and she cries, and her daughter cries. And then the door opens and a chap (her husband) looks at me and leads her inside. I feel empty.

Then she and I are outside smoking and discussing how it's been since she left. "April is worst for me," I say. "And Christmas." She says, "Christmas is bad for me, too." "Yeah, but you have a family," I remind her. And then she is gone.

She has left "our" gold Oldsmobile there, door open and everything. Lori says, "Did she leave the key?" "Yeah, I think it's this funny-shaped one." I stick it in the ignition, and when I turn it my alarm goes off.

Algor and the Rhythms

I'm back in college, again unable to graduate because I skipped my math class all semester.

My mother and I are sitting at a restaurant table. Someone else is there, but I don't have a positive ID. I'm making a case for my screw-up.

"Do you know what algorithms are?" I ask my mother. "It's that ten times this to this power and you have to count zero, zero, zero, zero, all the way up."

As I'm saying this I'm making air zeros with my finger. Mom is laughing.

What's truly funny is that algorithms are much more complicated than the second-grade process I described. Which might explain why I'm not making it through college in my dreams.

Joey and the Fatman

I don't hate fat people. But last night, I killed a poor rotund bastard in my dreams.

The Fatman would loiter by my apartment stairwell, licking his chops as I hovered on the top stairs.

"Top of the morning to ya," he'd say.

"You're not fucking British," I'd tell The Fatman. He wasn't British, and his cockney Westchester accent really pissed me off.

But the little dog-and-pony show and cockney-isms continued, so I eventually I pulled out a handgun. "You're not fucking British," I stammered again waving the handgun at his head.

The Fatman had a splooge of wax encrusted in his puffy brown mane and these big soulful brown eyes, which drooped pathetically as he stared down the barrel of the handgun.

"I'm sorry. You're right. I'm not British," he started.

But I didn't let him finish. I just emptied the chamber into his hunks of lard.

Ka-plunk. Ka-plunk.

The Fatman crumpled up in a ball on the floor. He looked like a beached whale.

But I didn't care. I just stepped over his body and went back into my apartment. Clearly, I had paid my debt to society, ridding the world of one more faux Briton.

All in a day's work.

I lit up a cigarette.

Blips

Something about running away from a murderer stalking me and three kids in the movie theater, Demi Moore giving her husband a striptease, and trying to dial a phone with a busted keypad.

One of these things is not like the other, one of these things just isn't the same...

Kibbles 'n' bits

Dream No. 1: I am looking out the second-floor window of a school or a stadium or an auditorium. There is a line out the front door of people milling about, waiting to get in. A car is parked damn near in the actual line. A dude reaches into the car and pulls out a ginormous AK-47 or some large killing machine and proceeds to rain bullets upon the crowd inside the doorway. I scurry away and look for some place to hide.

Dream No. 2: I drink a Coke with dinner and don't even realize it. All hope is lost, I feel guilty, etc. (In real life, I haven't drunk a sip of soda since October.)

Chain of Fools

I blame Craig Brewer and Lindsey Turner.

Before I dozed off into beddy-bye land, I caught a dose of Mr. Brewer's Dirty South blaxploitation pic Black Snake Moan (released on March 2 with Justin Timberlake!), which features Christina Ricci chained to a rusty radiator. I also read a snarky e-mail by one Ms. Turner, a lethal double decker combo, my friend.

As luck would have it, I dreamt of Ms. Turner attached to a rusty 20-foot chain.

I don't remember much else except that an Al-Jazeera version of Johnny Cash was somehow involved.

Moral barometers regarding chicken and nothing else

I'm at a summer camp for competitive athletes. We're in the middle of our intramural games and I'm hot for a surfer already in a rocky relationship. But he likes me too, despite my shakiness while practicing for the tightrope competition. He seems shy and kind (this particular countenance reminds me of a certain poet I once thought hung the moon) and quite attracted to me. We must be together and we both know it. We casually agree to rendezvous back at the cabin before everyone gets back from practice. At some point, I remember having a boyfriend. But where is he? Can I call him? He's fuzzy and I can't remember...

The gang of campers arrives early. Lindsey naps on her cot wearing thick combat boots. I giggle at her for sleeping in her shoes. I ask what she thinks of desiring another while in a relationship. I could just not tell my boyfriend, right? Consequence and guilt are foreign but I can sense them in the distance. Anyway, it's too late. He comes back and we're surrounded by people. He offers me a chicken nugget and I tell him I don't eat those.

Death and the Olsens

My fellow students and I file into a classroom where the TV is on. One of the Olsen twins has died. Ashley, it seems. Mary Kate is on a stage with a whale's giant corpse. A sonogram revealed a skull in the whale's belly, so someone brought the creature up for Mary Kate to cut open. She ceremoniously slices it open with a knife and reveals the skull. A wrist bone is also found; she pulls a bracelet from her pocket and tries it on the remains. It fits and she concludes that Ashley was eaten by a whale. Not so, say scientists.

School is out and I'm in the backseat of my own car. I sense something terrible is about to happen, so I cover myself with a bright green afghan. A car pulls up behind the car parked next to mine and a passenger fires a machine gun at the rear windshield. The car pulls up behind my car and blasts mine as well. A man gets out of the car and comes around to the side window. He points the gun at me and fires over and over again. I feel the bullets hit my body, but I play dead by rolling my eyes into the back of my head. The car drives away and I get out of my destroyed car. It's now raining and I tremble my way into the parking lot where other students are terrified. Some of us are bleeding, but we're all alive and functioning. Despite the close range of my attacker, I'm not even wounded. I think, I'm lucky.

Man Lover and Man Hater

Mom, Brooke, and I lived in a communal apartment with 15 other people. I was trying to photograph everything when a young kid grabbed my camera and dropped it. "What the fuck?!" I screamed in his face, and he lurched back in fear. Then Ken moved in, and kept leaving to get food on his crotch rocket. I had a romantic epiphany with some dude, who said that we had been smitten with one another for five years, and we locked each other in a passionate kiss. Then Mom was driving a truck, Brooke was in the passenger seat, and I was holding on for dear life in the back. I could barely hold on while Mom flew around corners and squealed her tires. My foot flew out of the truck and hit a sign, ripping my boot to shreds. Finally stopped, I held out my boot and started bitching, when the truck began to move again. Mom and Brooke were down the sidewalk. "Wait, who's driving?" I screamed. The truck began to pick up speed down a hill. Mom jerked, as if remembering something, and said, "Oh!!!" The driver's door slammed shut on an empty cab and I yelled, "Mom!!!" It weaved down a hill, and I held on, bracing for impact, until I saw flashbars from a cop car. I leapt out of the back behind some bushes, knowing that if the cop saw me in the back he'd arrest Mom. I hid there until he passed and followed the empty truck.

Then I dreamt that Lindsey and I got married, which is - I'm sure - a direct result of viewing Michi and Dezarhea's wedding pictures right before bed. We were sitting on a windowsill outside, talking jadedly about something, when LT offered me a ring. She said she had given up, and wanted me to give up, too. I said, "Why not? Nothing's ever going to work, anyway!" It felt more like we were initiating each other into a man-hater's club than actually marrying one another. So wedding plans started, and long, twisting versions of her parents' and my parents' houses became the backdrop. I picked out my wedding garb, and she hers. Hers was brown and pink. I said, "Oh, that will look pretty!" I can't remember what mine looked like. I recall having to ride a bicycle for a great distance, and that was my sole form of transportation. Her Mom was very sweet and understanding, but her Dad kept shaking his head and refusing to speak to us. I knew Mom and Dad supported us, but that they'd be late and miss the ceremony (they got there in the nick of time, even after stopping off to play billiards). The ceremony began, and I realized that we hadn't rehearsed anything! Who was supposed to be where? Which side did I stand on? Who walked down the aisle? Who waited at the altar? What music would play? Certainly not the fucking wedding march! We blundered up and down the aisle, and when I started to drag my train I realized that a sheet and comforter had gotten wrapped up in it. Lindsey laughed as we passed each other in the aisle, and said, "Well, we managed to royally fuck this up!" Finally we found ourselves at the altar, but the person marrying us was saying the wrong stuff. Neither of us knew which finger to put the rings on. "We can change it later if it's wrong," I whispered. Then it was time to kiss, and we both looked at each other like, "This is going to be awkward." We finally managed a swift peck and then ran down the aisle with people throwing purple and red glitter and stars.

Then I essentially had the same dream with Michi instead of Lindsey.

Indoor flying

I can't remember the whole dream, or even when I had it, because it just now popped into my head as I was recounting my recurring dreams last night, but it has been within the past week. I can say that for sure.

The only thing I remember is standing in a bedroom, one with soft red and yellow lighting, at the foot of the bed, facing away from the bed. And I recall realizing I was dreaming, and deciding to do something outrageous — I'm always thrill-seeking when I shift into lucid mode, and the only outrageous thing I can ever think of doing is flying — so I just sort of lurch into the air, and do an exaggerated and very graceful back flip, esentially, even though it felt like I was flying up and then over and finally landing on the bed. The ceilings in the house must have been very high, because I recall looking way down and seeing the bed before I landed on it.

My dreams make flying seem so fucking simple it's laughable.

Over and over

Last night when I was trying to fall asleep, as I hovered in that fragile state between full consciousness and the first cycles of black sleep, I kept dropping into the same dream at slightly different points and then forcing myself to wake up when I realized that I was having the same dream I'd had just a few minutes ago. This happened at least four times. The first time I forced myself to wake up just because. The second time, when I realized I was having the exact same dream as I'd just had, I forced myself to wake up because that was just too freaky. Then it kept happening. Falling back into that dream, starting it over and then making myself wake up because it felt wrong to go to sleep and enter into a used dream.

I didn't stop having that dream until I flipped over and fell asleep on my stomach.

And I can't remember what the dream was about. Just that I consciously took note of what was happening and, luckily, thought to myself, You have to blog about this.

What You Don't Expect When You Order Male Strippers

At the end of a dream that involved lots of my school friends and current friends (Lindsey, Amber, Sarah, Allison, Lori, etc.) I segued into a sort of TV show called "What You Don't Expect When You Order Male Strippers." The theme was duck bills, apparently, and each skit started with a small group of frumpy ladies opening the door in frenzied anticipation, and then the What You Don't Expect part. There were several that involved duck bills, but I only remember the last one. The announcer said, "What you don't expect when you order male strippers." The ladies opened the door. Then a huge gang of black dudes went filing in. The announcer said, "Twelve brothers in duck bills who are wearing nothing but their instruments." And then I watched one by one as each guy in a duck bill made a cheesy pose for the camera, hiding his dangly things cleverly behind his instrument.

You should be dancin'

I'm at a party. There are children running around and adults talking about the various joys and pains of raising children. John Travolta is here. He's sitting on an ottoman and checking his watch every ten seconds. He's clearly ready to leave.

I feel boastful sharing a room with John Travolta. Look at me, I'm nonchalant.

Baby you can drive my car

I'm driving through a town which looks distinctly European. The buildings aren't stacked too high and they've got that thick, older look to them. I can't see through my windshield save for a tiny opening at the bottom. I'm peering out through my steering column in order to drive. Suddenly I lose control of the car. My eyes are closed and I wait for a crunchy impact. When it doesn't arrive, I realize I must be careening off a bridge. Open your eyes, I think. Open your eyes. You're about to die and this is the last thing you'll see.

I obey myself and open my eyes. My bedside table is right where I left it.

Not ready

It's morning. I'm in my old bedroom (the one my brother now inhabits) and it's time to get ready for school. I feel awful. Unprepared. Nothing to wear. I look bad. I don't want to leave.

I can hear my family out in the hall, going about their morning routine. My grandmother is there, asking my dad when he got those new shoes.

I keep walking to the window and thinking, Wow, I sure do have a view now. The view is like that from a high-rise instead of a modest split-level. I can see plots of land far below me, and many houses under construction. It's like I'm watching Sim City 4 — Real Life — from the God view. I keep returning to the window to watch, instead of rifling through the closets to look for something to wear to school. I don't bother because none of my clothes are in there anyway.

The Titty Chomping Christian

I'm at this genteel Southern bar, where the womenfolk wear billowy dresses that barely cover their powered ankles. And I'm sitting at this old-timey bar, downing a bottle of Scotch and watching the new Dresden Dolls video on my video iPod.

The dark cabaret lead singer of the Dolls, Amanda Palmer has decided to make a music video documenting her female-to-male sexual reassignment surgery.

And as I'm showing this video to high school classmate Katherine Heirs and New York cable access iconoclast Barry Z, I notice a haggard-looking country-and-western performer out of the corner of my eye.

She's singing parody songs, but with racially charged titles such as "Mama, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Niggers."

Now as a pot-smoking Christian homosexual, I'm offended by this epithet, so I begin heckling the performer.

"You need to find Jesus in your life, honey," I tell her. But the haggard-looking country-and-western performer shoulders on. She's undeterred.

"Old niggers, children and watermelon wine," she sings.

I can't believe my faith-based heckling isn't getting anywhere. So I do what any rational pot-smoking Christian homosexual does in these situations: I decide to bite the bitch.

I chomp down on a tuft of her left titty, and the country-and-western performer lets out an ungodly shriek.

"I'm taking it to the street, bitch," I tell her between titty chomps.

The incident later shows up on YouTube, of course, where I receive minor fame as "the titty-chomping Christian."

Kissing Daniel Radcliffe

I was in a Harry Potter movie. Someone was talking about doing a hat trick (which is a hockey term and, as far as I know, has nothing to do with Harry Potter). We were on one train, and we saw the big red train that we were supposed to be on. Except we were calling it, "The rail." As we taxied in, Daniel Radcliffe, with his young face and big round glasses, expected a kiss, as the script stated. He leaned forward and puckered, and I leaned in to kiss him. I had masked my attraction expertly, and continued to do so by making sure it was a stage kiss.

Then we got up to the train, and instead of getting to ride in in a car, there were literal automobile cars that were attached to it. We were supposed to attach our car. But, for some reason, I was with the Gold's Gym crew, and Michi and I were expected to attach ourselves. She and I fought for the front spot. I ended up giving it to her and she plugged herself in. Then the train started and we lifted off the ground like kites. I tensed up and we maneuvered ourselves together and hung on to the back of the car in front of us.

The hellish ride was punctuated by what seemed like hours of my wandering long hallways and urgently trying to keep doors shut and people out who wanted to be in.

That Jerk-Off Employee

I'm in an English class, and loving it, when the teacher says we're running out of time and has written each of our names on the board and has told me personally to come up for the assignment for the paper. I'm so excited I can't stand it. A paper to write! As soon as the others begin to file out the door, I dart up front and ask her. Then she tells me that I'm not in her English class any more. Then she becomes Cary Duncan and he tells me that he's not sure where my new English class is, but it can't be that one.

Then I'm in another class and I'm reading a newspaper. But we're all reclined on cluttered sofas that face each other. I am snuggled with a male that I am lusting after (Ken?). But his girlfriend is sitting across from us, staring at us evenly, trying to assess the situation. I don't care, and nestle into the crook of his neck. He nestles against me. We share the newspaper. I am ecstatic to be in his arms. But then, eventually, he gets self conscious and pulls away from me.

I wander through a parking lot, looking for somewhere to ditch my parka. I find a minivan whose hatch is unlocked. I open it and something falls out. I replace what fell and toss my parka into the mess. I throw my keys into the back, take off my shirt, and wander through the parking lot in my tank top. I wander back to my dorm room with an armful of stuff, and when I walk in there's a guy in the bed across from mine. "What are you doing?!" I ask him, seeing clearly what he's doing and that he's my employee Jason, and he replies, "Buttering the bread!" (He's masturbating.) "IS this my room?" I ask, to which he replies, "If you let me finish it is!" I wander through the hallway with my things.

I realize that I threw my keys into that minivan, and if I lose the parka it's fine, but if I lose my keys I can't drive and I'm screwed. I find the minivan and open the hatch. I can't seem to find my keys. I'm rooting around when the family who owns it catches me. They know me, and I realize that the driver is a combination of Dan and Jeff. Dan/Jeff berates me and strips me of my possessions. He puts me out of the van without shoes and tells me to walk to wherever I'm going. It's suddenly night and raining. I find a shelter and suddenly have a magazine to read. The magazine turns out to be the print edition of my dream. I rifle through, amazed at the photographs of what's been happening to me. I read updates and realize that Jason has left my room. I flip to the beginning and there's a bunch of ads for dating. There's a big picture of two guys having sex. I wonder how I missed that part in the dream.

I have created a new blog and it pleases me greatly.

Dead babies

I'm pregnant. And apparently very close to going into labor. I can look down and see a generous bulge beneath my floral-print dress, and sometimes I place my hand protectively over it, the way you see people in the movies do (and possibly in real life, but honestly I've not been around all that many pregnant women to notice).

For some reason, I'm high-tailing it to a hospital (to give birth, I presume) in Philadelphia. I gaze out the window of whatever vehicle is being used to get me there; I'm not sure if I'm being driven in a car by someone I know or if I'm in a bus or a train or what. We are driving through some sleazy-looking sex ghetto where gay men line the streets in skimpy outfits that show off their massive bulges. I wonder to myself why straight men are never so well endowed. I talk to my family on the phone and tell them with amusement where I am. I can't recall their reaction.

I get to the hospital — alone, far as I can tell — and it's a sprawling, dark wood-paneled spread that looks more like a high school from the '70s then a hospital. There's a big plate glass window at ground level that looks onto some sort of campus where I see people walking around, going about their business.

I reach down to my belly and hold it to comfort myself. Something's not right; something is stirring and making me incredibly uncomfortable in a way I can't describe. I take some stairs to an upper level, when it becomes clear to me the other reason — besides having my own baby — that I'm there: To visit Twisty while she has her baby.

[Reality interlude: Twisty Faster is a blogger living in Austin whom I've never met, but whose blog I adore because it's searing and brilliant. Dreaming that she's having a kid is fairly laughable because she is a self-proclaimed spinster aunt, who basically believes that as long as women are the biological child-bearers, they will continue to bear the brunt of social and political oppression. So she's not exactly a subscriber to Babytalk magazine, if you get my drift.]

The entire floor seems empty. I see a stack of paper sitting on a table in a seating area at the end of the hall. I pick it up and see that it's a stack of e-mails for Twisty that she had printed out and placed on the table to share with everyone. Included in the bunch is one I sent her offering up the "Lesbians are people too!" guy for a skewering. [Reality interlude: Yes, I really did e-mail her and tell her about that guy in the hopes that she'd write about him.] It occurs to me that other people must be here, that her loyal group of admirers must have all come out for the birth of her kid.

So I walk down the hall until I get to what I know is her room. No one is in it, but as I enter, I see something horrible: She's hung herself on the back of the door before ever going into labor. She's wearing a red robe and she's just dangling there. No telling how long she'd been there, since the entire floor seems devoid of anyone working in the hospital. I leave the room and frantically search for someone, anyone to tell.

[vague]

I am back in Twisty's room, except now there are about a dozen people there with me. I surmise that they're all internet acquaintances. We are in Twisty's room, mourning. Finally someone speaks up and tells me they know who I am from my pictures and why haven't I said anything? I tell them because I'm the one who saw her dead body dangling there before anyone else knew. At this point I'm an emotional wreck and my belly is giving me fits of discomfort.

I am told unceremoniously — over the phone, I think, almost like an afterthought — that I've lost the baby. My family tells me that they found it in a backpack, like somehow it slipped out of my stomach and into a bookbag and just didn't make it. But I look down and still, there's that belly. It makes sense to me, though; I think back and can't remember being pregnant or having any nausea. I begin to cry and shake because I just don't understand what has happened or what it means for me.

The people in the room are utterly unamused. One even tells me to "get over it." I sniffle and kind of laugh, and say, "This is just like a chatroom." Only I meant "comment thread," because it kind of is. Twisty's commenters can be brutal.

If only

That last awful incident in Murfreesboro is happening all over again. Only this time, one of our friends is taking up for us.

"This is my house as well. You're my guest," he says.

I put on some crazy outfit. Something with leg warmers and high heels and belts that buckle around my neck before gracing my waist. I'm excited because we're going out to celebrate the reunion, the two kids in town and our supporters. Things that matter are being treated as if they matter. Night birds are chirping. Planets are vibrating. We're entitled to at least one more night, if not many more.

And then I wake up in a bed sweaty with my decisions and no-hard-feelings clauses. I feel sad, then defeated. I know there will be many more dreams like this because the fright and confusion are registered like tender college freshman. Though I know it's silly, I'm pissed that no one cared enough to protect me, to protect us, from a lifetime of bad dreams.

Definitely dreaming

The dude sitting across from me in a booth who we'll call Mike (from a previous dream) is totally charmed by me. I can see it in the way he looks at me with a grin — a genuine, toothy one. And by the way he is laughing at all my jokes and looking at me intensely. And by the way he says, "Lindsey, you need to come see my dorm room some time."

"Yes, I do," I reply, squirming in my seat. It's almost too much for me to handle, finally getting this guy's attention and him making a move like that.

He smiles at me. So fucking handsome. I smile back, wondering what that stubble's going to feel like later.

Two Dreams, Two Rivers

Dream 1: I can't remember this dream as well. I'm with my dad's dad. He leaves his glasses on the bar. There is a birthday celebration going on. I fetch his glasses. He is making me laugh, and I'm wishing I had more time to spend with him. Someone is faking the depth of a river. Brooke and I dive in and thwart their evil plan to lie to the world. We can put our feet on the riverbed.

*alarm goes off. gets shut off. covers go over my head*

Dream 2: I am in some sort of castle by a river. I am with Dan (who later turns into Jeff). I am making note of the rising river, and listening to some bulletin about the river rising. "It is not!" He keeps arguing in a flat, skeptical tone. We are speaking in French. I notice that the bulletin icons on the computer screen turn into red caution bulletins (in the dream they are pretty scary). They warn of an impending surge. I finally convince Dan to get out of the castle, but he is Jeff now. But he jumps out on the OTHER side of the river. As I frantically look for the best way to get him across, the bulletins go silent (as if the little red robot sailboats that feed to them had floated up and out of range to escape the wave) and it just notes in blue text to get to shore and run with shoes on. People are floating by, submerged to the neck, unable to stop themselves. I begin to run, as does Jeff. The wave hits and I am washed around in the wake. I look back and the castle and entire hill on which the castle sat are gone. I thrash around in the mucky aftermath, and then spot the little mechanical bulletin boats back in the water, surveying the damage. Then I'm in the water, sort of effortlessly floating waist deep. I hear the bulletins calling names of people they encounter or find dead. But instead of the actual people there are manila folders floating in their places, with a script of what was being said that the time of the surge. I start to collect the ones that belong to Jeff. Each time I near it I hear what I was telling him. Then I get to the last one and I hear someone else's voice: the voice of the rescue boat worker that encountered him. I look at the stick figure drawing on the front of the folder in red as the man's voice confirms, "He was shot and killed."

I woke up with a start, my arms clinched across me as if I was clutching those manila folders.

Camper time

I am showering in the back of a truck that has been rigged up to be some sort of camper. It looks like it is actually just a house shower secured loosely in the bed of a truck. I have no clue how it's actually operating; the only thing I'm concerned with is how every time I shift my weight to the front of the shower, the truck tips up on two wheels and swivels around wildly. I can't control where it goes well enough to prevent the truck from smashing into a nearby parked car. Because I am apparently showering in the back of a truck parked in a big parking lot.

I get out to assess the damage, and see that I've left two broad, black dent marks in some grey minivan. At that moment, Chris Wage — a Nashville blogger I've never met (this makes two times I've dreamt about bloggers I've never met, cementing my dorkitude for all the world to survey ... as well as teaching me a lesson about reading blogs right before bed) walks up to me, dressed in a dull, grey business suit, and proceeds to flip out over what I've done to his van.

This is some kind of bizarro Chris Wage, though — one who looks nothing like the pictures of Chris I've seen on his Flickr. Bizarro Chris has tightly permed ringlets encircling his extremely round head, and a red '70s mustache and big, tinted '70s glasses. He finishes his freak-out and the goes away.

I get the sense that I'm there preparing for a competition.

[muddy]

An older couple comes out and looks at the van and has a much milder freakout than Chris. Apparently it's their van I've smashed into, not Chris'. Or maybe they all own the van.

By that time I had stopped feeling bad about it.

Old Times' Sake

From 3/1/03

My cousin Autumn died. She came alive in her coffin as I was viewing her. She climbed out with evil, glowing eyes. She approached me and giggled. "I probably shouldn't have done that, should I?"

I was having a party hosted at my parents' house. From an overcrowded bar I was telling Alicia, Alanna, Heather, Dan, Al, etc. that the Hole singer Courtney Love would be there pre-party. Al and I walked through the halls of his "store," which featured jail cells that would soon hold the arrested parents of the dead children I would decorate my room and dungeon with. The dungeon-like basement had a fiery moat and gas flame strips.

I assisted a mother and father by guiding them to the place their son's severed body parts lay and helping them to sprinkle them beneath the bed and in the basement.

Ryan pulled up and I went into a frenzy of throwing clutter into a closet.

Dan and Ryan enter and go down to the basement.

The next morning I awaken and go to leave the still-sleeping partygoers (excepting Ryan, with whom I conversed) and left for work from my yard in Buffalo on a rainy, dim day in my 1994 Cavalier.

I was then at a Chinese buffet. Declining the meats and fats they offered, and accepting a slice of bread, a cup of coleslaw and a plate of coleslaw, I mentally reaffirmed I was on a diet.

Stay in your grave, lady

This post won't make sense without a little background. My youngest sister has a different mother who killed herself about ten years ago. It was quite an intense event for several reasons, but the creepiest part is that Darla (the deceased) attempted to take my then 7-year-old sister with her to the Eternal Waiting Room via drugs, wrist-cutting, and a drive into the lake.

So. The Dream.

I'm watching what might have happened had Darla taken a different path. She's much younger and doesn't seem to have a daughter. She's thin and healthy and excited about getting a new job. She takes her boyfriend, who is not my father but someone younger, to help decorate her new cubicle. She is all smiles as she rolls out a red and tan Persian rug.

I was just an observer in that little blurb. I once dreamed she was back in my family and everyone had forgotten what she'd done. I was like a child, afraid of her and unable to think of how I could remind my Dad before the whole damn thing repeated itself. She seemed to be remorseful and forgiven by someone with more power than me.

In another dream, she's soaking wet and staring up at my window. The image was in black and white. If I think back over the dreams I've had in my lifetime, I can't recall any others so completely devoid of color.

Stabby McChefknife

My mom and I are peering into a dark and unoccupied storefront in downtown Saltillo. We're trying to figure out what the apartment above the old video store/doctor's office looks like. I had heard stories about the place from my friend Wendy when she lived there, and Phil has even been up there a couple of times, I think. But I'd never actually ventured past the wrought-iron door, up the stairs, and into the old place. Just imagine what it must be like to live right on Saltillo's hoppin' Main Street. At least you'd get a good view of the parade during River Day.

My perspective is skewed. Somehow I am simultaneously looking into the apartment from the street and down and into the old storefront. It's almost like I've climbed on the awning and am peering down through a transparent wall and floor. Soon I'm back on the ground, and my mom and I go inside. It's hard to tell if we've gone inside the apartment or the old storefront.

There is a light on — a stark fluorescent one, which means we're probably in the storefront — and tacky, dull, coral-colored carpet on the floor. There is wood paneling covering everything. We see no furniture or signs that this place is even close to being inhabited.

And yet, this tall, stocky, white guy comes out of the shadows. He doesn't seem menacing, so we greet him. You know, sort of a Hi, how's it going? Sorry, didn't know anyone was in here. But the man says nothing and grabs a knife from the counter. A big one, a chef's knife. We realize that some bad shit's about to go down, so as the man is slowly making his way toward us, I reach past him to grab another knife from the pile — which wasn't there earlier — and manage to grab two — another large chef's knife and a butcher knife — and hand one to my mom. We begin to retreat, but he's right there on us and he starts stabbing me in the gut.

I get the feeling that he's got me a couple of times, but I feel no pain or weakness. I want very badly to stab him back, but I'm afraid of hurting him in such a purposely violent way. So I wave the knife in his face and — this gets kinda blurry — I think we run off through the streets of Saltillo and lose him.

Love Triangles

I was living in a dark, shadowy apartment complex. It was night, and everything was either midnight blue, black, or completely bathed in shadows. Two dogs were chained right outside my apartment door in the hall. Every time I emerged into the hallway the barking dogs would make a ferocious leap at me, only to be stopped short by their chains and yanked backwards.

Dan had two girlfriends besides me, and it was driving me insane. I kept trying to reason with him as to why he shouldn't be dating two other women at the same time, but he just kept telling me date details and how one of them loved him.

So I went out to find two more boyfriends. I felt suddenly exhilarated to be man-hunting. The first man I decided I was going to go out with was Mike Dalton. He's actually married in reality, but in my dream he was available.

And then there was the trainer with the sexy torso - Ken. I'm pretty sure he's taken in reality, too, but in my dream we were both lusting for one another, but didn't know it. We were sitting on a bed, talking, and I looked down at the sole of my shoe and thought how nice it was just to be spending time with him. And then he asked me some pivotal question (that I forgot, dammit!), and we started making out. But the kiss was awkward and kind of bad.

Then it was the next day and I was in some fictitious gym parking lot with my parents, trying to find him so I could introduce them to him. He came driving up in a black Eclipse (with the paint still on). I realized that I should have asked him out or something after we kissed. Then he walked through the parking lot with his bag and his lunch, etc, and I pointed him out to Brooke and Mom. There was some sub plot going on with my family that I can't remember at the moment.

Ribbited for your pleasure

I'm in my old house and there are bugs all over the place. (Lindsey, brace yourself.) Maevis is walking around somewhere and while I'm on my knees looking under the bed I think I feel her lick my heel. Turns out a spider with a full tick-like abdomen has just bitten me. Nothing happens, but I take a cup and trap it and another spider crawling around in my sheets. On my sister's bed are a couple of frogs the color of fresh green beans. I catch one of them in a plastic container and hold the lid on because I don't want to suffocate it.

As I walk downstairs to the front door, the frog becomes irritated and turns a vivid electric blue. I know he's poisonous. I can feel the heat rising from him and I'm afraid of being burned. I open the door and let him go in the pouring rain.

My entire family watches this from the living room and my mother stands up to make an announcement. She tells me I have to go to church tomorrow morning. I tell her to fuck off. She begs me. I tell her I'm 25 and I can make those decisions for myself. I walk to the bathroom to fix my makeup, nonchalant and unaffected by her opinion, still in awe of the frog.

Magical Menstruation

I had a recurring futuristic, apocalyptic dream last night. I can't remember the details (it was long and involved); only the part when I realized I'd been there before. A guy was looking into a fusebox-like fixture and turned to tell me that the menstrual blood of (some type of women, I forget) would resuscitate the fallen of the apocalypse. It would merge with their white blood cells and bring them back to life.

This is a dream I actually had a few nights ago, but I think it's suitable for a debut post.


Last night I had a dream. (That wasn't meant to sound so Raising Arizona but, if you like, you may start humming Beethoven's 9th here )

I was with Brandon and someone else, I think Jessica. We were in on the outskirts of a city which we thought was Memphis. We had Brandon's new pekapoo puppy with us, and he was too busy baby-talking her to help us figure out where we were. We were getting closer to the city and I was getting increasingly nervous about not knowing where to go, or even what our mission was. It occured to me to call Tamara to get Lindsey's phone number and maybe she could help us, since I was pretty sure we were indeed in Memphis (there were no signs anywhere). So I started dialing as we came to stop at a red light. While dialing, I noticed a man walking a lion behind our car. In the dream, this wasn't perceived as unusual. The man turned the lion around and started walking him along the side of the car, toward me. I looked over at Brandon and said, "This lion has huge paws" right as the lion reached his paw into the window and took a swipe at my shoulder. Right then, I reached Tamara's voicemail. I was still trying to act tough and laugh off the pain from the lion's scratching me, and I left a message asking her to please call us back. Brandon burst out laughing and said, "She's not calling back. She's lost her mind." He apparently thought this was hilarious and began laughing hysterically. He leaned out of his window, teen-movie style, wooo-hooing and laughing. So I was trying to drive through this unfamiliar city, repeatedly calling Tamara and getting voicemail, and Brandon was laughing like some crazy person. Suddenly he sat down and got quiet. I decided to call Luke (I don't know why he wasn't on this trip in the first place). I got him and he gave me directions to some friend's house. We got there and the friend, a guy, was watching porn (hetero) and making counterfeit $100 bills. The house smelled like fried chicken and I was getting nauseous. The whole situation felt really nasty and the tv kept getting bigger every time I looked at it, and the uh, action on the screen was getting more lewd. I was shaking my head and saying, "No, this isn't right. I've gotta get hold of Tamara and Lindsey." We ran out and got back in the car and drove to a mall. (?) We were walking toward the entrance and I suddenly had all these dogs on leashes. My mom's poodle, Brandon's puppy, my dad's border collie, and a couple of newcomers. They were all trying to run in different directions. Then this huge german shephard jumped out of nowhere and started attacking the little dogs. I had to get these dogs separated. Brandon and Jessica were just standing there, watching me. Down the street, the man with the lion was heading my way. Finally, Jessica said, "You can put the big one in my Monte Carlo, just make sure the window is down so he can pee." This made sense to me, and so did her car magically being in the next parking space, so I got the big dog in the car and concentrated on getting the small dogs in someone's jeep. Of course, they kept running out. I started crying, gave up, and headed toward the entrance of the mall. Where I ran into a very drunk Tamara and Lindsey. I told them my plight, and they were all, "We'll get you there! We know the way" and beckoning me down this alley behind the mall. I never made it down the alley because the lion jumped on me and I woke up.

Hacked

Last night I dreamed that someone hacked my blog password and posted all kinds of vagina-centric porn — close-ups of naughty bits shaven, unshaven, unaccompanied, and very busy.

Yes, that's right — I had a dream about a blog. The circle of stupidity is complete!

All I could think about was, are people going to be pissed at me when they open this blog at work and see giant photographs of nature's baby-making gateway? or will this give me some kind of porn liberal edge?

Just kidding. The latter never crossed my mind.

Annoyed

Last night I yelled at people in my dreams for breaking one of my gloriously huge wine glasses, and for eating my crackers without permission. Normally I just sit and meekly worry my way through dreams, wracked by anxiety and fear, but last night I unleashed some anger. It was actually pretty fun. But it sucked because I totally thought one of my glasses was broken.

Here's what happened: I am lugging groceries around with me, when I meet an older black man who wants me to have a drink with him. In his hotel room. I am reticent to do so — since when do I have drinks with strange old men in hotel rooms? — but this man seems nice enough and the hotel is busy enough that I assume if anything went awry, people would be around to help me (there's the fear: always assuming someone's going to hurt me). I reluctantly follow the old man around the hotel clerk's desk and into his room. I notice immediately that the sound of the air conditioner is so loud that it would cover up my screams. I think about telling the clerk to come check on me if I'm not out in 15 minutes, but I keep my mouth shut and begin unloading some of my groceries — including cheese and crackers and my aforementioned big wine glasses — onto the coffee table. I pour a glass of red for myself and the old man, and suddenly some short, younger, white dude comes into the room (it's clear that he works at the hotel) and begins chowing down on the crackers I left in the box.

This irks me. "Dude, who said you could have those crackers?" I ask him pointedly. His mouth is full and he looks like a punk ass ICP fan or some shit. "You don't just go around eating crackers when people have left them in the box! That means they're not for you!" I sigh heavily and look up to see more people coming into the room.

One guy who looks like Mike Barbieri from MTSU strolls over to me, wearing sunglasses and, I think, a red bandana on his head, leans down and whispers a song lyric in my ear. (And I can't remember what it is!!!) It was something completely generic and old and busted, I think. Like something that was popular five years ago but sounds like a joke now. Damn, what did he say?

So all these people start filling up the remaining wine glasses (including the Queen's Goblet) and eating my food. I have no idea who these rude guests are. Nor do I know in whose temporary home I am a guest. All I know is I'm annoyed and I want to leave. So I start to gather up my things and I look down and on the floor is one of my big red wine glasses, its stem snapped in half. I scream, "OH MY GOD! Who broke this?!?!?" and no one decides to come forward. In fact, everyone seems to regard my heartache about this glass with suppressed amusement. I continue berating these strangers for ruining my glass, and I do all sorts of fun mental aerobics wondering about where I can go to replace the glass.

Because it drives me nuts to have three of anything, apparently.

Dream Blupdate

After being without 'net service for a while, I'm just putting all the dreams I recorded into one post.

DREAM, 1/5/07

I pass by a vending machine and notice that in a little plastic bubble there sits a kitty that looks a lot like Sabian. I fall to my knees and examine the little bubble, and ask a passerby, "How did he get in there?!" The passerby replies, "He's for sale." I think to myself that I don't need another kitty, but I can't bring myself to leave the poor thing concealed in a vending machine. I ask how much he is, and someone replies "Nine dollars." I have nine dollars, but someone hands me nine dollars. I take the kitty home and notice he has a hurt back leg.

I am throwing a Halloween party, and am picking through Halloween merchandise at some big box store. Everything seems to be on clearance and mixed with the Christmas items.

I encounter a guy in the musical instruments aisle who has a cart full of wrinkled clothing. He is eying the flute on the shelf. "Is that a flute?" He asks. "Yeah," I answer. He takes it down and plays a sweet little melody. He puts it back and begins to push his cart out of the aisle. There is a silver trumpet perched haphazardly atop the clothing. "Oh, you play trumpet?" I ask. "Yes," he answers, bored.

My Regional Manager Matt Custer has a new girlfriend, and only Lori and I know. We have to develop a code to discuss it. Matt wanders in, glowing, and says that she wore the lipstick she had on when they first made out. He sits on the bed and instructs me in the new language code. "Say, 'Matt, we need a LOT of cancellation forms!'"

I get all the way to my apartment parking lot in my car when Matt calls and asks why I dropped a family add on into the system without FAO proof. I tell him I'll be right back to fix it. I sigh and turn around.

I arrive at a dream representation of our corporate office. Someone wants to cancel their membership, but their only proof of move is photos of their new apartment. I try to tell them how it won't work, but I just keep complementing the furniture in the photos.

I'm riding my bicycle, talking to Matt Custer on a cell phone, when Mike Dalton stops his car right in front of me and I slam into his bumper. I hear him wailing with laughter in the cab, and I amble over to the window to glare at him while Matt talks away.



DREAM, 1/6/07

I owed someone $365. For some reason, I had spent all my money and only had a little more than $100 to my name. I was frantically searching for an ATM that would let me overdraw my account. I understood that no one should see me because some thugs wanted their $365, and everyone was looking for me. I even encounter my Mom and ask to borrow the money, but she refuses. Finally I am kidnapped by the thugs, and spend a great deal of time pleading with them not to kill me. They stare at the road ahead, not caring, and make it apparent that they are taking me to their clown friend's house so the clown can kill me. Suddenly I am in my own car. They are chasing me. I turn through the bottoms and through corn fields and throw it in park by a house. I leap out and magically pass right through the side of the house so that I can slide under this person's dresser. I realize that I have chosen the house of the clown, and there is a gun underneath the dresser.

DREAM, 1/7/07

Apocalyptic rays of radiation have taken to baking the earth in periods of three doses for a duration of about one minute each, every ten or fifteen minutes. Civilization can't figure out how to stop it, but I somehow figure out that the floor mats from the floorboard of your car can block them from harming your body. I curl up in a floorboard, caution others to do the same, and wrestle with floor mats that just won't cover every inch of me. The next sun blast comes, and small triangles of my skin are singed. After the three blasts, I emerge with my floor mats and continue my quest to warn others. I enter my grandparents' house to warn them, but they aren't there.

DREAM, night before 1/8/07

This was a long, involved dream, but I can only remember a bit of it. There were snakes advancing all around me at the Hippy Shack property. I was squirting them with a high powered hose, but this just seemed to attract them. Around us were the rotting skins of every reptile we had slain there, still lying in the places where they met their deaths. This may have been why the live snakes were so pissed at me.

DREAM, last night, 1/9/07

Someone is putting in a community pool at a busy intersection. It has lots of bells and whistles, such as gigantic hoops through which foam footballs could be thrown. People are milling about in the water, giving the hoops yearning glances. But, alas, they cannot use them because the footballs would fly into speeding traffic.

Then my mother and my sister are walking ahead of me down a sidewalk. I know we're someplace around Interstate 40, and cars are zooming past. There's a notion of stress. Mom's wearing a coat. Brooke is wearing a sleeveless black shell. I look down and see that I am wearing a black tee. I wonder why she and I are constantly hot.

Then I'm in my old bedroom at home and Mom is yelling at me because it's messy. She's Mom, but she's really Lori. She refuses to let me clean. She has apparently given me all the chances she's going to give me to clean it on my own. She's picking up great fistfuls of clothing and I'm noticing that most of what she has in her hands are long-lost favorite shirts. She decides that I also can't wash towels or whites. She takes a big box of my CD's. I plead with her not to. She says that each time she has to pick something up after me she's going to take another CD. She starts writing the stats on The Board, which is just like The Board at work, with unit numbers, percentages, and meticulous details of Mom's CD acquisition. I think, "Great, a peppermint bitch at work, and a peppermint bitch at home." She stops short of giving herself a goal. I realize that she can't calculate any percentages unless she goals herself, so I start to suggest it. Before I can say anything, she adds a big $100 to the board. "I'd like to shoot for getting $100-worth of your used CD's." She smiles, caps the marker, and stares me down. I am furious, but I have to swallow it. I think, "Just do like you do at work. Just smile and swallow the hate." She leaves and closes the door. I look around. I certainly am glad that the cleaning's done.

DREAM 1/13/07

I am spending the night with my grandparents in Covington. Dan has come along, but he has brought one of his friends, too. I am trying to go to bed when I discover that they are in bed together. I pull the covers back to climb in and find them in an embrace. Dan yanks the covers out of my hand and seems really angry with me. At first I am jealous, but then I think, "What's the point of trying to save the relationship if he's gay?" They cuddle as I put my things into the bedroom I normally sleep in. D-aw comes in and makes a derogatory remark about Dan's friend's hair. Then it's morning and Dan and his buddy are showering together. Dan comes out and he has cut his ponytail off. At first it looks awful. As I am making up my bed I can't stop discovering pillow shams that are supposed to fit into the pillow display equation. The more pillow shams I find, the further out the pillows protrude from the headboard. Then the headboard (and entire bed) has been scooted away from the wall.There's a big hole that the headboard had been covering, and it looks into a big empty house. A frumpy woman sits in a chair, with no other furnishings, in a pink housecoat as we all gawk. "There's someone there!" I remark. D-aw and her friends crowd around. Mom and Dad are there. "There's nothing in the house," I say in my snottiest Ew-what-a-weirdo voice. Someone chimes in with, "Yeah, she doesn't do much business." That's when I notice a fellow coming out of a warehouse door wearing a yellow hard hat. Then the woman is suddenly at the window. She waves and smiles like the zombie from Evil Dead. "Sorry," I mutter, and start to replace the headboard. "No, it's all right. I get so lonely here!" She surveys my room and suddenly I'm the only one in it. "What are you, a hotel decorator?" She asks with a snide laugh. "It's my grandmother's house," I reply dryly. Then everyone is back and one of D-aw's friends is telling her that someone lied when they said her house wasn't connected to anything, and that someone should have caulked around that hole. Then I find myself in that room, for some reason, and understand that I am supposed to be staying there. I balk at the thought of sleeping in a hotel bed. I imagine sliding between the covers and cringe. Dan peeks in and a strand of hair falls to his chin and suddenly he looks hot. I don't want any part of him, though, so I don't mention it. I peek in and see the view into my grandmother's house. Then a bus is there to pick me up, and I'm running around gathering my things. I run into the casino where Michi is waiting for me to go on stage to collect our royalty checks. Mine is $95,000. We walk back through the casino and I plop my things onto a table to fit them in my bag so I can get on that bus. People keep slinking past and snatching things and I have to wrestle my stuff out of their hands. Some guy is fretting, walking around looking for the chips he lost. I find them. But they are pieces of metal in a key box. I know they're important but I don't know why. Michi's eyes light up. "Give me those!" I hand them over. "What are you going to do with them?" I am confused. They can't be worth more than $95,000! Then the bus is beeping at me, so I run. I get outside, slide open the door to a van, and suddenly realize why I should have hurried. There are kids filling every imaginable seat. To ride, I'd literally have to sit on children. "One sec while I grab my bottle of water!" I shout, and head into another house. While searching for my water bottle I realize that Mom and Dad snuck out sometime during the night to go visit their friends in Middleton. When I finally come back out the van is pulling in, as if they'd left, thought better of it, and reluctantly returned to collect me.

DREAM 1/15/07

I dreamt that I pick up a large, light brown leather bag off a shelf. It's only $20. I remember at some point a woman tried to sell me one, saying that they would be huge and expensive later, but I had ignored her. This bag was ginormous, and hung down past my knees. In it I could fit my regular purse, my lunch, and my workout gear. I went to try on some clothing and ended up leaving with some unpurchased clothing in my bag.

D-aw unwraps a gift from me. It is a perfume that Mom introduced me to. It's spicy and unusual. (Mom only wears patchouli oil.) "If you don't like it, let me know and I'll exchange it." D-aw sniffs it. "I hate it," she replies. (D-aw only wears Estee Lauder Beautiful.) I let her smell my Jessica McClintock. "This smells like honeysuckles," I say. She sniffs it and looks bored. I let her smell my Clinique Happy Heart. "Do you like this?" She sniffs. "I love that," she says, and I frolic back to the store with the perfume she hates to make an exchange. At the counter I notice a white ruler on which my name is written, noting that I had taken clothing to try on and hadn't returned with it. I continued my transaction nervously, hoping that the clerk wouldn't remember me.

I needed to accessorize my new look with the oversized leather bag. There was a jewelry store named Journeys that I needed to find. I checked the mall map. I was pretty close. I had come into that mall entrance before and seen it there, with it's shiny silver chains and gaudy silver pendants hanging everywhere. I walked through the jewelry and looked for big beads and huge pendants. I grabbed a silver chain with crosses on each end and threw it around my neck like a scarf. I walked past several mirrors and studied how awful it looked with my outfit before flinging it onto the wrong rack.

I was running down a gravel road. Someone was with me that I was trying to keep pace with, but I wanted to go a lot faster than they did. It was padded gravel. Mom and Dad were driving around, participating in dramatic shenanigans with Jackie. I enter a house, and the environment is hostile.

Someone is shooting fireworks.

Me & My Gun

I’m working at an upscale restaurant, the type that’s been featured multiple times on Martha and glossed the pages of Town & Country.

Except, it’s obvious that I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.

I just butcher patron’s orders completely. I can’t even understand a muttering Frenchman customer, so I do the thing that comes naturally. I pull his order out of my ass.

“Would he like roasted African fly atop his house salad?” I ask myself while typing his order into the computer system. “Maybe he’d like grilled walrus instead of the grilled salmon.”

When I present the grilled walrus and charred goat testicles to the customers, frankly, they’re not amused.

“What the hell is this? I ordered the spring Chesterfield salad, not some goat’s nutsack,” a disgruntled man says.

“Oops, sorry Charlie,” I say.

I also begin picking unwanted food from the customer’s plates, another service retail no-no.

“You didn’t like your chocolate bonbon?” I ask an elderly woman customer. “No? Well, sister friend, that chocolate bonbon is going right in my stomach.”

...
I’ve returned to high school for some reason beyond my understanding. But of course, I’m in the high school parking lot with my Dad, my sister, Laura and her friend Deena. You get the feeling that everyone’s graduated from high school and we’re just there for shits and giggles sitting in the parking lot after school lets out.

Maybe we’re just lusting after the schoolchildren? That’s what I’m doing, mind you.

I’m ogling a sweaty, shirtless 17-year-old jock type who straddles the back of his pickup truck with a pack of teenage girls.

“Someone needs to tell him to put his shirt on,” Laura says.

I shake my head. “Fuck that shit,” I tell my sister.

Laura, however, is adamant about getting him to put a shirt on. “Daddy, can you tell him to put his shirt on?”

My Dad does, but here, the dream gets a little fuzzy. I vaguely recall the wa-wa punchline being my Dad gets his ass kicked by a muscle bound teen dream jock and the kids have to track him down in the school gymnasium.

“Do you know where they took my Dad?” I ask a doe-eyed, soulful musician type. He’s barely sixteen if a day.

“No,” the boy replies.

“Do you want to have sex with me?” I ask him. I have a .38 caliber handgun, so this seems a tad threatening to the poor boy.

“Um, okay. Yeah, sure,” he says.

“Do you want to drop your pants or should I drop them for you?” I continue.

This isn’t helping find my Dad, but it sure is a nice diversion for pedophile-rapists in the reading audience.

So then, the doe-eyed 16-year-old and I start making out and groping on the pebble-strewn asphalt parking lot. Just going at it like two dogs in heat. Laura is somewhere in the background, looking on and shaking her head in disapproval.

I remember my putting the handgun on safety, though. God knows that I don’t want anybody’s ass getting shot.

Even though I'm sodomizing a fresh-faced innocent, I'm still a hand-wringing liberal at heart.

Home improvement

I am in a Home Depot or Lowe's-type place — a huge warehouse of doorknobs, shower drains, paint cans, and fireplace screens. Grooved tracks zig-zag their way through the floor. I ask someone (my mom?) what they are and she explains that these big forklift-type machines run on them, from enormous shelf to enormous shelf, plucking housewares from sixty feet up in the air.

Phil's with me, as is this cute guy I'll call Mike. I am looking, apparently, for two things (one is some sort of back support block, the other I've forgotten), while Phil is looking for birthday supplies.

Mike leads the way as Phil and I kind of tag along. He has a list of items in one hand, and with the other hand, he points us toward our destination. He takes us to dark corners of the store that I didn't know existed, and the pilfers through random stuff to get exactly the item I had come for.

I am amazed that he can do this so effortlessly. I grab his arm and laud him gratefully. "It is so awesome that you can find all this stuff!" I say, even though he really only found two things for me. Apparently they were that obscure and important.

Mike seems nonchalant, kind of like he is in real life, but less aloof than normal.

"We Hi-Tone kids only spent $10," Mike tells me proudly, pointing to the receipt. That means Phil's birthday cake and balloons cost something like $100. I remember wondering how the hell he's gonna pay for that.

We are walking out the door amid a flurry of activity — people zipping here and there and carrying giant pots and hauling slats of wood on little rolling carts — when Mike glances over his shoulder to see a woman pulling a rolling pallet behind her very nearly runs over some toddler who's wandering around aimlessly. We scrunch up our faces in a mutual "that was close!" grimace, and Mike turns around and walks backward, facing me, out the door. His shirt said something. But I can't remember.

High school musical

I am in what seems to be a high school laid out in the shape of an H, having a hard time navigating it, despite my crude understanding of its layout. Amber is there, but she's on her own schedule. We meet in the hall and exchange quick updates before shuffling off to our next classes.

I enter a classroom and take a seat. The class — subjectless, as far as I can tell — is being team taught by two women — Mrs. Hudson from West Hardin and someone else I recognized but whose identity, since waking, has evaporated. They are horrible teachers. All we do in during the class period it watch lame movies. The first is a cartoony morality play type thing, about which the entire class hoots because it's so bad.

This kid named Chris Irons is sitting beside me, uncomfortably close, but we are sitting in a circle and somehow, over the course of the movie, I don't realize that he is getting closer and staring down my shirt (the brown empire waste one), with his head practically resting on my shoulder. I notice this and reflexively smack the shit out of his face, sending a whip-crack reverberating throughout the room. People who didn't see my lightning-fast reflexes are all, "What was that?!?"

"Sorry dude, but that's not cool," I tell Chris. He seems sufficiently embarrassed.

I am getting increasing annoyed because no one is paying attention to the stupid movie and everyone's being rowdy and disrespectful to the teachers (even if they are totally incompetent). There are some girls up front that are tossing around these Chinese New Year flying top toys that hover into the class. I catch a couple and toss them to one of the teachers, and she puts them inside a big box of confiscated toys.

Mrs. Hudson dims the lights and puts on the next movie. She sits in a desk near me and turns to the kid behind her and says, "This one's a little Jewy."

I am geninely shocked and ask her to repeat herself. She does, without flinching.

I can't sit through the next movie because the class is so annoyingly rowdy. I turn to the door and see my family there, leaning in, watching the goings-on. I gather up my books, walk over to where both teachers are now sitting, ask them if we have any homework ("No, just relax, get settled in!") and walk out, relieved to get away from the immature nutjobs around me.

My family has gone to sit at a picnic-style table in a common area of the school. They must be waiting for me. I dread talking to them about the ridiculous class experience I just had; I suspect that my dad will say "that's why women don't make good teachers; they're not authoritative enough" or something to that effect.

I'm listening to my iPod and a Lucero song is on while I duck into the bathroom to collect myself. I'm looking in the mirror, studying my face, when Phil calls (or, more accurately, beams his thought transmission into my head, because I don't recall actually talking on the phone) from somewhere and says that he recorded what Ben Nichols (Lucero's lead singer) said last night and today he's putting it to music. Or something.

I wake up with "Hate and Jealousy" in my head.

Zombie Gonzo

We are at some sort of food place where there's barbecue or sausage links or something involving pork you can eat for breakfast. It's Christmas Day (or some sort of holiday) so we feel bad about ordering and making the people there work.

The ferrets are there, too, and they're scuttling around, playing. We are aware that Gonzo isn't alive, but he's sure as hell there, nipping at Felix and hopping around making clucking noises.

The details are sort of lost. But it was good to see him again.

Quack

I'm working at Kroger and ducks are allowed to use our bathroom. Unfortunately, they're leaving toilet paper all over the place and making a huge mess. I go to the manager and ask if we could please move the toilet paper dispensers higher up on the wall so the ducks can't reach.

"Ducks don't even need toilet paper," I say.

While I'm waiting for him to take action, I roam the aisles studying colorful cereal boxes and cup after cup of flavored yogurt.

Running From Commitment

I'm having problems remembering my dreams from last night.

I was with Seth T. and we were in a cozy setting, chatting and hanging out. We hung out for a long while before I remembered our past and decided to tell him how glad I was that he had gotten clean and stopped taking oxy-contin and heroin. He was teaching now and was totally functional and successful, and I wanted to recognize that verbally. But our visit was going so well and I didn't know how to bring up his serious past drug addiction without ruining the vibe.

I was at work, talking to Lori about taking my friend Sarah T. to hang out. Lori kept suggesting straight places, and I nodded politely, not wanting to tell her I was seeing Sarah T. Lori said that she and a friend were going out tonight, too.

Then Sarah T. and I were going to hang out. I was trying to talk her into going to a gay bar. We had been seeing each other secretly for a while, and I wanted to go somewhere where we could be open. First I ended up taking her to see some ancient ruins. We wandered through, and at some point I spun around and realized that all the ivy-covered remains combined made up something incredible that I recognized, but I can't remember what that was now. Then my Dad came be-bopping up the hill in a tie-dyed tee, swinging his keys and grinning. He ducked into the arch of a statue.

Then I was at the gay bar with Sarah, but it was more like a redneck restaurant. As Sarah and I wandered through the packed booths, to my horror I noticed Lori sitting in a booth with four others. As I passed I said, "Oh, my god! Nice suggestions!!!"

I looked around and noticed some old ladies were there. They were dancing and having a swell time, and I reflected on how most women I knew that were that age would think you would go to hell for dancing at a gay bar. Then I thought one of them might have a gay friend. Then I thought that having just one gay friend could send all that homophobic Bible-thumping straight down the toilet. I thought maybe everyone should have just one gay friend.

Then I was there with a guy named Clifton, who is not the Clifton I went to high school with. We were slow-dancing, sort of, and I felt like a country woman slumping barefoot in horse manure and cat pee. Then my grandpa walked in, followed by a string of people, one of which was my Dad - in a yellow tee, swinging his keys and grinning.

Clifton was arguing with me about telling people we were dating. I thought we were just having sex, but he wanted to actually date and tell people. I was horrified because he was ugly, and I couldn't bear for people to think we were a couple.

Lori sat me down in a booth and asked, "Why can't he just agree to have sex?!" She was dumbfounded. "I don't know!" I lamented.

Then Lori and I were jogging through an abandoned mall. It had been vacant for years and years, judging from the ruin it was in. There was no trace of the commercial sparkle that had once filled it. It was dark and musty and all that was left was a maze of doors. We were jogging through the doors when suddenly I realized that we were being chased by someone. I led the way up a set of filthy, carpeted stairs and turned into a room of the very people we were trying to avoid. I started fighting them back, but Lori turned and fled. "Lori, don't leave me!" I called hysterically, but she was gone. I threw objects at my antagonists to keep them back as I edged toward the door. I had fought them all down when I heard someone that I knew was bad ascending the stairs. There was nowhere to hide, but I lay down in a shadow. Lucas Parris came barreling in and started ripping things out of the way, much like Michael Myers flipping the tables in Halloween: H20. He got very close a few times, but when he finally saw me I kicked the shit out of him and we engaged in a fistfight. I ran down the stairs and started shutting doors to check for locks. None had them. Each time I paused to scan for a latch Lucas got a little closer behind me. Finally, at the last door, a lock appeared and I turned it. The fact that the doors were glass did not bother me. I tore down the hall, leaving him behind.

Then I was in a large store that was filled with crap I would never buy. I kept browsing and looking urgently for something I might enjoy, but nothing at all appealed to me. Then I found a little novelty box, much like they sell by the registers at book stores, but the name was a clever reference to the vagina. On the box top was a picture of a woman in lingerie, crouching and holding a wish-bone (the shape of the whole clitoris?). I broke it open and discovered a creamy lubricant in a lip-balm like pot (perfect for purses!), a keychain vibrator, and flash cards featuring vaginal trivia. I realized that all the boxes had been broken into and the last piece stolen (a Transformer that changed from a lip-gloss compact into a dildo? Who knows?).