Back to England

I'm in a rickety cottage in the English countryside, marveling at how small the rooms are and how they have such different knick-knacks from those you'd find in an American house. The bedrooms contain no people (people seem to be gathered in the common areas of the house), but I sneak through them quietly, opening cabinets and peering at souvenirs on shelves. I note that everyone has a tiny black and white television in his bedroom (I seem to be in the house inhabited by a group of males), and one guy even has a collection of these weird small discs that play music in these tiny plastic music players. I kind of remember something like this back in the states several years ago, but it never really caught on.

A truck rumbles by on the dusty road just outside the window and I think to myself, I wonder if I lived here, if the thin walls would drive me crazy.

Back in the living room, Phil is there with a group of guys I don't know — presumably the people who live in the house. They don't seem British, but perhaps like American ex-pats. I say something to one of them and he insults me and laughs. I defend myself weakly.

Then we're in Phil's crappy car driving on a grassy hillside. The boys are talking about a car sale coming up, and how they're going to check it out. It finally sinks in that I am living in a whole new country now, and not just a whole new country, but a whole new universe.

The operation

I am in a hospital, alone but surrounded by familiar people, and I am there to have an operation to fix ... something. I keep wondering why my parents or friends or someone isn't there with me. I'm called back but leave my bag in the front room, and have to request it once I get to the back waiting area. The nurses are skeptical that the bag is mine. They request ID with my name on it to match with any ID in the bag. They go to retrieve the bag but take so long that I suspect something bigger is happening.

I amuse myself by farting around in the back waiting area, where it's seemingly empty. On a counter nearby is a giant tub of multi-colored pills of all shapes and sizes, some as big as those nasty orange marshmallow peanut-shaped things my grandmother used to eat all the time. I chuckle to myself that I will be taking the bucket home with me after the surgery. In an instant I am trying to take a photo of the pill bucket for my daily picture. I'm worried that I'll get in trouble for photographing the giant, unprotected bucket of painkillers.

The the paparazzi show up. There are maybe eight of them, including a blonde reporter with a microphone and a dude with a giant light he sticks in my face. And big cameras they shove toward me. I sit down, sure that they're trying to humiliate me, and put my head down as far as possible, taking care to not speak at all. If I don't say anything, they can't use but the most brief clip on the news or whatever they're planning to use the footage for.

It takes a while and some creative footwork, but I finally evade them with the help of some burly dancing men who are apparently starring in an impromptu musical all around me. They gather in droves around the back entrance to the clinic and, with coordinated creative flourishes, erect a big sign over the door that says "Blogger Entrance" to distract the media into thinking that's where I'll be heading. I am grateful for their assistance, but still wondering what the fuck is taking so long with my upcoming surgery. I just want to get it over with.

There's a bit more, but it would be unwise to post it here.

Hungry Like New York

I'm in a huge house with several women, including New York/Tiffany from Flavor of Love. We're being filmed and it's obviously for a reality show but I don't know if it is indeed FoL or not. It's very stormy, early morning. New York comes in, wearing a Gucci-logo printed raincoat and swearing a lot about how we'd better not tell anyone that she's coming home drunk in the wee hours. She shoves me on her way to her bedroom. There are injured animals everywhere. I'm trying to follow a cat whose right front paw is bleeding, and I get distracted by Brandon and Luke, who are in the kitchen trying to make me breakfast. I start helping them. We're gathering ingredients, and we hear a low growl. An enormous, slinking black wolf is in the kitchen with us. We all jump up on the counters. The wolf is trying to jump up (why can't he?) and has his front paws on the counter in front of me. I try to punch his face but I'm afraid I'll fall, so I have Brandon hold on to one of my hands while I try to punch with the other, which doesn't work. Luke jumps off the counter and onto the wolf. He grasps the wolf's head and pulls its jaw all the way back, breaking it. Suddenly Luke has a gun and he shoots the suffering wolf as I wake up. I'm so disturbed by the jaw-breaking scene that I wake up crying.

Ummm, yeah

I'm walking through a biodome ruled by penguins. I have to make water, so I find a restroom. I'm comfortably snug in my little stall until a penguin attempts to stick its head under the divider and spy on me while I pee.

Across the pond

We are in England, probably London to be specific, and it's my first time there and things are just weird. Tamara is there, as well as some other people I can't quite place. We are marveling at how the streets of London are covered entirely in cobblestone and brick. We're in some kind of covered outdoor mall that seems almost to be underground. It's huge and there's no sign of grass or anything living — besides incredibly sophisticated Brits — anywhere.

Somehow we get out to the countryside to an apartment building, and I make my way through the rooms — an empty living room, a bright-colored bedroom, a crisply appointed nursery — and wonder who lives there.

We (me and a dude, maybe Phil? not sure) are on a bed in a room that is not ours. We have decided to pass some time by doing what people do... And things are going unremarkably until someone — a youngish blonde Brit — walks into the room, spies us, and walks directly into the bathroom. In our embarrassment, we try to cover ourselves, but end up feeling sheepish. Was this her bed?

Outside there's a rolling field and some children playing. I'm walking down a gravel road with Phil when I remember I wanted to get a picture of something, so I grab my camera and sprint back to the direction we came from. I'm standing atop a hill and looking over some trees across the countryside, when I notice that the sky is darkening and churning at one point. And there it is, a huge, wide, Kansas-tastic tornado on the horizon, twisting and bubbling its way toward me. I snap several pictures and curl my lip in disappointment that the majesty and enormity of such a spectacle can't be captured by my little digital camera.

My feet are always dirty, so I'd never look there

I love dreams like the one I had last night; dreams in which I simply wander around a significant place from my past. My grandmother's house in Nashville is quite possibly the most important setting from my most formative, pleasant, and angsty childhood memories. Last night I wandered from room to room taking in the exaggerated green carpet, the doorways from room to room, the dark wood beams over the den where I wasn't allowed to watch Family Matters if my grandpa was in the room. It was like a ghost town. No one was around and I was slightly aware that the place as I knew it doesn't exist anymore, yet I was as there as I am here right now. I felt the sad sensation of knowing I'll have to leave a place way before I'm ready.

I wonder, was I there? Is there some dimension of memory open to spiritual traveling, as long as I'm asleep? I loved Stephen King's Bag of Bones for several reasons, but the dreams his character described were finished off with the most terrific descriptions of waking up with cuts on his knuckles and dirt on his feet from whipping through the woods in the middle of the night. Or whatever time it gets dark in the Dreamiverse.

I'd like that. I'd like to wake up with sore fingers from whammying the organ in the living room proper or the smell of that green lye soap wafting up from my armpits.

Painkillers

It's weird what taking a Vicodin before bed will do to your brain as it tries to shift from full consciousness to sleep mode. I can't speak for everyone, but for me, it's like it turns off some kind of focus filter in my head, so that every fleeting thought — no matter how random or scary or funny or weird — just goes ahead and voices itself in my mind instead of being stifled by whatever mechanism usually keeps my thoughts fairly consistent and targeted, even just before sleep.

I just wish I could remember some of these fleeting thoughts. They are like bits of fiction I've not yet created. Names and locations and actions and scenarios that aren't from my life or any other life I recall observing. They are almost like pieces of collective consciousness. And maybe they really are, floating in the ether.

So, last night I dreamt a long and epic dream about running from something ... in the dark ... in a car ... though it didn't feel like I was me. I was just there.

And then later I had to choose from a shelf of archetypal outfits to be judged by who, I'm not really sure. Each outfit was contained in a small themed jar of sorts, and each was labeled with a name that was as much a hint as to its contents as it was a confusing bit of extraneous information.

One greenish outfit (that had a lot of weird camouflage-colored plaid) was labeled reporter, while another outfit that was more glammy yet stark white was labeled Interpol (I assume this one and not this one). There were lots of others, and matching handbags to go with each outfit.

I picked the reporter jar and then had to run back to get the right size. Not sure what the hurry was, but I felt I was being timed and would be judged on my choice of outfit. I don't remember actually getting the outfit on or how I looked in it. I just remember frantically thumbing through jars and boxes of the outfit's component, looking for my size.

Baby bump

[from Friday night]

I look down, and there's this thing on me -- this distended, somewhat lumpy belly -- that feels not entirely of me and yet mine all the same. I have no idea where it came from, but I observe it for long enough to hazard a guess that, if I am indeed pregnant, I must be seven months along.

Instantly, panic sets in. I didn't plan for a pregnancy. What am I going to do about my job? (For some reason, I start feeling guilty because I am yet another woman on the design desk who has recently gotten knocked up, which means they'll have to find a temporary replacement for me.) What am I going to do about my life? The fear grows as I realize that I probably would not be okay with getting an abortion this late in the term. I tell myself that it will be fine; lots of women have unplanned pregnancies and it ends up being a great thing for them.

Then I try to figure out how exactly I got pregnant. I try to recall the last time I got laid and quickly do the math. No ... it doesn't add up. I have no idea how long my tummy has been growing, and I don't know when any of this could have happened. So I wonder if I'm even pregnant at all.

I'm in some kind of big, bustling room. There are lots of people around. I'm searching for a doctor of sorts. I finally find one. Seems like I recall him being a middle-aged man with wiry reddish hair and a copper-colored beard and mustache. He seems frazzled enough without having to diagnose whether or not I'm pregnant or carrying around a giant tumor in my stomach.

As he takes notes, I can tell that, yes, even if I can't remember how it happened, the reality is I'm going to be having a kid in two months. And the fear, it grows.

I Don't Speak Jazz

I was playing in my old high school band at a carnival at night. Lindsey Turner was sitting beside me with her trombone. Mr. Haffly was directing, and he kept telling Lindsey to be quiet and behave. But she was comical and agitated - like she had just slammed twelve shots of espresso. Lindsey kept pushing her luck and sniping under her breath. He finally ordered her out of the ensemble and to the equivalent of the carnival's "principal's office." She sat there a second and then said, "Really?" but he was serious. I grabbed her sleeve as she passed and whispered, "Meet me outside and I'll drive you home!" Then Haffly told me to be quiet.

Then I was slogging through the carnival looking for Lindsey. The ground was muddy and wet and the cuffs of my jeans were being dragged through the muck. My feet felt wet. I walked all over the carnival grounds, inside and outside the fence. I had a companion, but I don't know who it was. "Where the hell is Lindsey?!" I kept saying. My companion said, "She's with Phil - way over there. Look!" I looked across a great big field and there was Phil, walking through waist-high weeds at night. "Hey, Phil, is Lindsey with you?!" I yelled. "No!" He hollered back and kept trucking. "Why the hell is Phil in that field?" I asked my companion. "Because he's a hiker," Companion replied.

Suddenly I was walking with my sax, so I started improvving while I was looking for Lindsey. I walked past a fence gate, noodling around the "All I Know Is Tonight" tune by Jaga Jazzist, and I walked right past Mrs. Haffly. I didn't realize it was her til I passed her and she said, "Hel-LO?!" I turned and she was glaring at me like, "What the hell?!" I turned and said, "Hey! How are you!" but then I remembered that she was mad at me because I skipped my lesson that day. Steve Haffly sidled up and asked, "Cindy, how did Tamara do at her audition?" and she replied, "She did awful. She informed the judge that jazz is another language and she doesn't speak it." I was appalled. "HEY!" I started to yell, but she walked away. "I did not!" I called after her, and Companion led me away to find Lindsey. My sax was suddenly gone. We rounded a warehouse and I found Lindsey and Mrs. Haffly with their arms around each other heading into the warehouse to hang out with everyone else. "There she is!" I said to Companion, and headed in. "Hey!" I said to Lindsey, and she gave Mrs. Haffly a funny look. Mrs. Haffly said, "Egotistical bitch!" I asked Lindsey who she meant and Lindsey shrugged. "Where were you?" I asked. "Around. Cindy is mad because all three of her female sax players skipped their lessons today." I felt awful. Then Mrs. Haffly walked back by and she said, "Tamara, if you want to do your lesson tomorrow I will drive you home." I smiled, "Okay, sounds good!' I felt relieved.

Then the dream segued into a long storyline about electricity and muddy trails that I can't recall now.

Then Alicia came running in to a doorway, crying hysterically. I asked her what the matter was, and she replied, "A lot is the matter!" And I followed her outside and the wheel to her father's maroon Buick that she's using while her car is in the shop has turned sideways and been pushed out from under the car like the axle had snapped into.

If you'd ever ridden in this car, you'd know why I dreamt that.

Huh?

I was in downtown Corinth, and thre was some kind of event going that everyone was flocking to. I was uninterested, and really just wanted to go home and make some ramen. As I walked toward my house, a bigass storm blew up out of nowhere and hovered right on the edge of the historic area, threatening to wreak havoc. Big, bruise-colored clouds, eerie wind, etc. And since I'm terrified of that kind of storm, I started hauling ass. But there was a big swimming pool in the middle of the street. And since I guess it made more sense to me at the time to swim it instead of simply running around it, I jumped in. While madly doing the butterfly stroke across the pool (the butterfly being my least strongest stroke), my pants and underwear came off. I looked behind me, and the pool had become ridiculously huge and the clothes were floating too far away for me to go after them. I reached the end of the pool, jumped out, and ran toward my house. The storm disappeared. People walking by gave me dirty looks and mumbled under their breath, obviously disapproving of my lack of skivvies. *weird dreamy lapse in time* I'm fully clothed and driving toward Savannah. I get a call on my cell phone, and it's a woman at the TennTucky wanting me to approve a $200 purchase on my debit card. I tell her I'm not even at the station, and she tells me that my husband is. Then she asks me to verify that my name is Jessica Barrier Brown, at which point I start screaming to call the cops because someone has stolen my cousin's debit card and is attempting a $200 fraud. I'm suddenly at TennTucky, and this really fat, unattractive redneck is the one with the card but he's threatening to beat me up if I call Jessie and tell her her card's been stolen. Tamara's working behind the counter and saying she can't do anything about it but maybe we should go cruise around in Pickwick. I decide this is a good idea and we go to Freddy T's for sushi and then bump into that Keenan girl we knew in high school. She's turned black. Like, she has literally become a black woman. We chat for a few minutes and she walks away. Tamara sighs and says she always loved Keenan's car.

That's all I remember.

Youza a Big Fine Woman When You Back that Ass Up!

I like sleeping in the nude.

It isn't a mere dalliance in exhibitionism, but a confirmation of my laziness.

It's hotter than Clay Aiken's balls in a bathhouse parking lot outdoors. So I plunge into the crevices of my couch because I'm too damned pooped to hazily unfold my Serta pullout and scrounge around in a stupor for my pajamas.

So in my dream last night, I find Lindsey Turner sitting on my couch jabberjawing about her childhood in rural Tennessee.

My mind is racked with paranoia. Did I remember to turn over the seat cushions and vigorously Febreeze away the possible asshole-and-balls stench?

Lindsey continues to talk, beaming in her Lindsey Turner way.

I get down on all-fours and frantically begin sniffing the couch cushions.

"Continue recalling your childhood," I say.

"What are you doing?"

I sniff a line of couch, convinced that I smell ass.

"I think I dropped some change or something," I say, continuing to snort line after line.

I can't remember much else.

Changing channels

I am at my parents', my dad's in the recliner watching a sporting event of some sort, and he calls me into the den because Phil is part of the teeming crowd, and the camera has zoomed in on him. My dad shushes everyone in the room as the announcer says, "And now we have a very special message from someone in the crowd," and the camera zooms in on the Jumbotron image of Phil, who starts to say something about a very special woman in his life...

I lean in to the television and try to turn the volume up, but the channel changes. I panic. Everyone in the room is all, "TURN IT BACK!!" I try going back to the channel, but I can't find it anywhere.

Highway (Back) to Hell

I've accepted a new job at Satan's Journal. This time, the powers-that-be wisely divvied up the workload. So instead of filling four different positions, my new title is simply "editorial assistant."

For the first time in a long while, I'm literally twiddling my thumbs and watching YouTube clips of The 700 Club.

I look over to see the new intern Kevid smacking his lips to my friend Ryan about my penchant for Pat Robertson. Of course, I decide to mosey over to the cubicle and proceed to chew his ass out.

Kevid cowers in the corner, shielding his face like I'm some goddamned wife beater. "If you have a problem with my watching Pat Robertson, you should come over and tell me like a fucking adult. Grow some goddamned balls," I tell him.

And I pivot smoothly and decide to clean up the office restroom. What else am I gonna do? I'm watching episodes of The 700 Club for chrissakes.

While scrubbing the toilet, the CEO chums up beside me with a glint in his eye. They've hired yet another intern.

"Be nicer to this one, too," he goes. "I've been talking to Kevid again."

"Well, Kevid is a fucking idiot, so of course, you'd side with him," I tell him, looking up from scrubbing the toilet. "It's the one trait you've managed to a tee: hiring fucking idiots."

The CEO steps back and throws his hands up in mock resignation.

"Bye bye," I say sweetly as he ambles out the door. The acid in my voice could burn the enamels off your molars.

As I look down at the doodoo-encrusted rim, I think to myself, "honestly, didn't I quit this job weeks ago?"

How to Keep a Good Man Down

We're watching a low rent Hedwig and the Angry Inch-esque routine at a dive bar in Manhattan.

It's in the Hedwig vein, but with cheap stage production and characters you wouldn't give two shakes of a rat's ass about. In fact, the lead singer is wearing leather pants that hug his package so tightly, you can easily deduct that he isn't a Jew.

It's basically him jumping around on stage for two-and-a-half-hours with butt-rock guitar riffs worthy of the love child of Scott Stapp and a 4 Non Blondes-era Linda Perry.

Kristin Hall and Matt Anderson are there. And we're all pretty hammered. We're talking about ageism in popular music, and Anderson is using that tattered trump card of "oh, once you hit 40, you need to give up on any hopes of being a respectable musician."

"But that's not true," I tell him. "See that woman over there."

And Kristin and Matt crane their drunken necks in unison.

"Her name is Sharon Jones. I just interviewed her for American Songwriter and she's just now getting famous at 50-years-old."

Sharon Jones, looking very much like the queenly matron of funk-soul that she is, sasses herself with a stereotypical fingersap. We clasp hands like two old friends.

"Whatever she is. Whatever she is," Ms. Jones says.

It doesn't make a lick of sense. But since everyone's shit-faced, it seems to make perfect sense.

And here I become a groveling fan. "I loved you since your last album," I tell her. "I'm coming to see you at River to River this summer, too."

"Okay sweet honeychild," Sharon goes. She gets up from her throne. "Whatever she is, whatever she is."

I shoot Matt a knowing look of "see there" and begin yammering about Sharon's music, which sounds suspiciously lifted from my Nashville Scene Critic's Pick of Sharon Jones' Exit/In concert.

"And didn't you know, she's in movie produced by Oprah? I just touched hands with a woman who's touched the hands of Oprah."

I reach under the table and bust out a roll of Saran Wrap, only to begin mummifying both of my hands in clear plastic.

A complete misunderstanding of history

I'm at work, in a newer, more high-tech building (think a more blue-grey version of the HQ in CSI: Miami), going up the elevator, when who but my third-grade best friend Christy Gogle gets on. We apparently work together. She tells me that my co-worker H. is annoyed with me. I don't understand how H. could be annoyed with me; she'd been acting perfectly normal to me! Christy says she's fine now, but she had been really fed up with how I'd been making proofs.

Talk about passive-aggressive.

Then Christy mentions that Anne Frank is doing a book signing downstairs. "Or Ahn-na Frahnk, as what's-her-face would say!" we say simultaneously, referring to the way eighth-grade teacher Mrs. Sharp demanded her class pronounce the historic icon's name.

I get to my desk (by the window!) and put my stuff down, only to head back to the elevator to go down to catch Anne Frank before she leaves. I'm wrestling with cloudy dream facts in my head: Isn't Anne Frank dead? How did she die? Old age? If she's not dead, shouldn't she be really old?

I step out of the elevator into the lobby and see people lined up, all headed toward a table in the middle of the room. Behind the table is Regina Spektor with a mustache — thick and beautiful, with alternating streaks of grey and white — and I think to myself, This can't be the real Anne Frank; this must be her daughter or something. She is hawking some sort of chick lit, with pink curly writing on the cover.

Pueblo Waltz

There's a gay Mexican orgy going down in my bedroom.

Limbs are flying in every which direction, appendages flapping with a wet thhack, thaack thaack...there's also the smell of suspiciously sweet seaweed.

I stand there in the corner, my mouth utterly agog. Who are these people? More importantly, who gave them permission to have a Mexican orgy in my bedroom?

"Look at the chulo, papi," one submissive bottom goes.

I don't know these people from Adam, but I decide to join in. The vocal Mexican guy cringes as I bend over to kiss him.

There's suddenly a loud rap at the door.

"FBI. This is the FBI."

The gay Mexicans dart like mad little ducks, trying to find their clothes. Appendages are flapping, but this time in a not so pleasurable way.

I usher them out my bedroom window ("Wouldn't the house be surrounded by FBI," my rational mind thinks) and slowly open the bedroom door.

"Were there gay Mexicans in your room?" a plainclothes officer asks through the door crack.

"Um, no," I say, biting my bottom lip.

At this point, a visually distraught Mexican woman barges into my room. She's shaking all over.

"Oi, mis ninos," she warbles over and over again.

I point to the FBI agent with a look of what's-up-with-her.

"Oh. That's their mother. These gay Mexicans go across the country, breaking into residential houses and performing sex acts on each other for pornographic Web sites."

I look contemplatively out the window. Should I tell them? But by that same card, it would implicate me in some way, right?

I guess I learned my lesson. The next time strangers are having sex in my bedroom, I won't join in.

Get Behind the Mule

Tom Waits, the mangy old recluse with a voice hardened by molasses and rusty nails, is gracing Middle Tennessee State University's Murphy Center with his presence.

And as any good Waits-o-phile knows, the man rarely makes public appearances. He almost makes J.D. Salinger look like Kiki Preston.

But there's Tom Waits in the flesh. He looks very much like the '70s era Blue Valentine cover, brimming with a raw sexuality and dangerous masculinity. I just want him to pin me against his baby blue corvette a la his Valentine harem, and whisper filthy nothings in my ear.

Instead, Mr. Waits flirts with my roommate, Kevin, licking his lips like a dirty old man while singing about "Chocolate Jesus."

Dejected, I leave Murphy Center in search of cheap booze and nicotine. But the campus doesn't look anything like MTSU as I remembered it.

For starters, there's an Applebee's* right in the middle of campus. I try to find my back to Mr. Waits. (When I left he was playing 'Big in Japan,' wonderfully ironic in its own way since the concert was so sparsely attended.)

But I keep having copious amounts of trouble finding my way back. The bread crumbs didn't work.

I end up in a landfill, tramping through muck as neatly scrubbed Chinese workers shovel away blocks of human feces.

I begin to cry, crumpling up in a pile of shit and smearing it across my forehead for full dramatic effect.

"I need to see Tom Waits," I bemoan, my face literally covered in shit.

The neatly scrubbed Chinese worker laughs her cruel little laugh. Even though she shovels shit for a living, her white suit looks almost heavenly.



*Why do I always dream about Applebee's?

Dystopic Threesome

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

falling brides

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

Purgatory

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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