(3/27/06) my stuffed dad; brother electrocutes himself; high chair dad; my work ID

(Entered in paper journal at 6:09 PM at Mid-Manhattan Library on 40th Street and 5th Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

It was night. I was outside an official-looking building with a bustling group of people. Some police were bringing "my dad" -- a tallish, grey-haired businessman -- into the building for a trial. He was being investigated for doing two bad things. One was murder. The other was something political and sinister. I didn't want to believe he could do either thing, though the murder didn't bother me as much.

I called after him, but he never turned to me. (I never saw his face through the whole dream.) I ran up to him and grabbed his beige sport jacket. I pulled him back toward me, thinking, I know the cops will be made. But they'll just have to wait. I want to hear my dad tell me the truth.

But quickly and seamlessly my dad became a stuffed figure. I was running through the halls of the official building with "my dad" in my arms like a big musical instrument. the halls were dark with lights coming from "the classrooms." I ran into one and saw a friend there. I ran out.

I was now pushing "my dad" up steps like in a fire escape stairwell. He was a little more alive now -- at least alive enough to stand up as I pushed him.

Dream 2

It was daytime. I was with my brother in an urban plaza. We worked together and were here to count something about some buildings that stood at a distance, maybe across a river, from the plaza. We walked to the barrier of the plaza. I got the feeling my brother was angry at me for not doing my fair share of the work.

I looked out at the buildings -- it was night now -- and began counting, hoping I was doing the hard work to make up for what my brother thought of as my cheating him. But as things went along I felt like I was still cheating him.

My brother now stood on the other side of the barrier. He was in something like a small rail yard or a tight grid of steel rails and power lines. He said he was going to grab one of these lines for sure, to prove something to me. I screamed at him not to. But I couldn't stop him. I plugged my ears and closed my eyes.

I was in a stand of bleachers behind the barrier. I lay down with my face on the ground as if I were expecting a bomb blast. I knew that when my brother touched a wire, I'd feel his pain, too. Even closing myself off completely wouldn't stop it.

My brother grabbed a wire. I could feel him dying.

Dream 3

I was with "my siblings" and my dad and some other man. We were in a room like a thin hall lined with chairs. The "hall" was actually part of a larger room like an airplane hangar made to look like a living room and breakfast bar. The chairs stood about four and a half feet high, with long legs. They were pale wood. The chairs faced each other and were about eight feet apart.

My dad sat in a chair to my right. The other man sat a couple of chairs off to my dad's right. There were at least fifty chairs per row. My sister and brother (?) were running around and sitting in chairs.

I asked my dad if I could sit in the chair he was sitting in. It seemed to me like he had chosen to sit in this chair just because he knew I'd wanted to sit there. I knew he'd move around anywhere to sit in any chair I'd indicated wanting to sit in. I asked my dad if he could move. He just laughed at me and said something snide to me about the other man.

I'd had enough. I wasn't going to let my dad upset me anymore, especially when his friend was around. So I left the house.

Now my brother and sister were with me. Then my mom was driving a car away from "my dad's house." But they forgot me. I ran  after them. They stopped in a driveway not too far away. I reached the driveway as my mom and my sister spoke with some boy (maybe twelve years old) about how good a job he'd do.

Now some younger kids came out of the house with red and yellow plastic jugs of water (kind of like ketchup and mustard bottles).

The kids began a water fight. I got in the way. They tossed water onto me. I laughed but was also angry.

Dream 4

I stood in the lobby before the entrance to a museum. I stood by a couple people, like I was in line behind them. A couple of them were told by the female security guard that they had to have the right ticket to get in. They had to purchase the right ticket from some booths off to my right and then get back in this line.

I decided not even to acknowledge the security guard. I knew if I asked a question or said a word she'd do her best to hold me back in her line. But I had my work ID, and I was pretty sure that alone would get me inside.

I took my ID out of my pocket and swung it back and forth as I passed the security guard. Nobody said anything. I got a few steps into the museum and then got nervous because nobody was bothering me.

(10/22/06) ruler of the land of chaos; my father's necklace; dimension detectives

(Entered in paper journal at 9:01 AM at Flying Saucer cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

A scene of insects that were smashed. Smashed, they rolled into balls (three) that emitted some kind of acidic gas into ground or carpet, leaving lumpy mounds.

Soon this view shifted into an abstract landscape like a desert made of abstract cutouts. A narrator said the land had become the land of chaos. The ruler of the land of chaos, a weird being like a cutout version of an Atari character, colored red, walked through the landscape (of blue and purple cutouts?) to a character rising from the mounds made by the insect balls. The two of them shook hands.

For some reason I was disappointed that this was what had come of my clear view of the insects, which themselves had been part of some very meaningful activity. The ruler walked into a drawing room or library -- real, not cutout -- and himself became real. I may have become him. I was happy that I at least saw things as real again. But I was still looking for some conclusion or meaning for the poor insects.

The room was beautiful, of dark and heavy wood, but cluttered full of books. As if trying to calm down my worries, "I"/"The ruler of the land of chaos" ran to each man in the room (maybe three men other than "I"/"him"/"us"). The ruler of the land of chaos would hold up his right hand like a wall and run it at the other man as the man held up the thumb of his right hand. The ruler of the land of chaos would make a plane sound ("buzzz!") and crash the hand -- a wall -- into the thumb (a plane).

This only made me angrier -- not only were we now not talking about the insects, but we were making a wall crash into a plane, which was impossible.

Dream 2

I stood beside my mom and sister in a doorway (like the house I lived in during kindergarten) on a sunny day before my dad and brother. It was my dad's birthday. My brother was proud of the present he had given my dad.

I told my brother hello, but before finishing I was distracted by a beautiful necklace my dad was wearing, and I commented on it, something like, "Did that necklace cost $40 to $50?"

My brother walked past me and into the house, upset. I thought I should go after him, and I would, but first I needed to see my father's beautiful necklace.

My dad unclasped the necklace and spoke about it shyly in an almost feminine way. The necklace had beautiful, yellow beads which shone in the sun. They were thick, almost plasticky, warm, and of many different types of circular or elliptical shapes.

My dad tried sheepishly, femininely, to explain how he had gotten the necklace. To explain, he took a bracelet off his right wrist. It was orange with more teardrop-shaped, thinnish beads.

I thought, almost sickened, This is absurd! I didn't ask to see his bracelet. I asked to see his necklace.

I either went to look for my brother or I could sense him behind me, by a desk. He was crying because I had made him feel bad.

Dream 3

I was in a room (bathroom?) full of TVs. A man in a suit stood with his back to me. I could see a little of his eyes by the reflection of a TV screen that was like a rear-view mirror. The man's eyes had the cold, blue ruthlessness of an executive.

The man directed my attention to one of the TVs. At first the show was hard for me to understand. There were two detectives, men, who were also women, but only when something happened to them. This thing drew magic in from another dimension and put it on them. But then it was more like they were always men but in another realm they were always women. A magic mirror would take them into their female existences by accident.

But then it was more like the male detectives had accidentally discovered this magic mirror and gone inside. The female detectives' world was an anime world. The women's dimension/world was very much like the mechanized world of Caves of Steel by Asimov.

There were two women there who were their counterparts. Each had to help the other's female counterpart and each could not look at his own counterpart, or at least could not let his female counterpart know who he was.

The fates of the female counterparts were somewhat determined by the fates of the detectives. But the female counterparts were in their own danger, which the detectives needed to rescue them from. At the same time, the detectives needed to avoid becoming women, although occasionally they did.

 Now it was like the beginning of the first episode of the series. The two detectives were big, fat men. They stood outside some stucco apartment like in California or Florida. One was dressed up in a pale pink sweater and a hot pink skirt. He wore a blonde wig. He looked like Chris Farley. he was going out on a date with a criminal he was trying to catch, a rat-like Latino man.

The second detective asked, "Does he really like girls that look like you? I mean, would he even sit down with you, let alone stay long enough to get caught? He might even just see that you're a man and a detective and kill you on the spot."

The dressed up detective said something like, "Well, let's go back inside. You can help me look so pretty he'll never know the difference."

I knew that what happened next was that the detective went on his date with the criminal and almost succeeded at catching the criminal. But the criminal escaped and jumped through a bathroom mirror into the other dimension. When the detective jumped after the criminal, he found himself in the body of his female counterpart. Eventually the second detective came after him. I don't think he ended up in his female counterpart's body.

It took a while for the counterparts to sort out what happened, and it eventually happened only with the aid of a half-real/half-cartoon character in a black robe and hood (like Star Wars' Emperor, but with no face, just mist). This character had the ability to give the detectives a little more awareness to see themselves in their female counterparts. But he also had the ability to give the detectives physical substance as cartoon bodies in the cartoon world.

When the second detective came into the cartoon world he was almost a specter. Then he was fuzziness that nobody paid attention to or of whom people were very afraid. He was like walking TV static. Then slowly gaining awareness, he was jumbled and melty, and the cartoon people thought he was deformed. When the magic person found the detectives, the second detective had already managed to become somewhat solid, though still a little ugly, and he had been able to find the first detective in the female counterpart and to figure out a way to make the first detecitve aware of himself.

The magic person may have been the one to extract the first detective from his female counterpart. He gave the detectives their complete solidity and awareness in this world. But then he would also give the detectives missions in this world. Sometimes the missions were good, sometimes not good, sometimes just plain silly. The detectives wouldn't do them.

The magic person would react to this refusal by throwing the men into situations where they would be made to see their female counterparts in such a way that the female counterparts almost  understood who they were. Whenever the magic person would give the detectives the silly or bad-spirited missions or throw them into awkward situations, the detectives would wonder whether the magic person weren't really a bad spirit instead of a helper.

Eventually the women came through the mirror (this was few episodes in). The detectives, who may now have been attractive, young men, now had to teach the women, in the same way the men had to be taught in the other world, to become aware and to have physical substance. This, another "trick" of the magic person, was a humorous complication.

All this time, the detectives were still working or solving their mysteries. The women may have become part of the team. They could all travel back and forth with ease eventually. The mirror which had started as a bathroom mirror in a divey restaurant, became a mirror like a door into a weird cornered foyer into an empty, sunny house.

As cartoons, the women looked like anime versions of Alice in Wonderland, except with hair just above the shoulders and pink dresses with less of an outward bell shape to the skirt. But they were invisible in the real world once they got their full solidity.

This is similar to the detectives. As they gained their full solidity in the cartoon world they stopped being visible. When they were fat in the physical world they were identical. But when they became young and attractive in the real world they stopped being visible. It wasn't like they were all really invisible. I just couldn't see them anymore. And, although I could remember all the episodes up to this point, I couldn't remember any of the episodes after this point.

(9/11/07) my dad the murderer; gnear thalk; we really want to talk

(Entered in paper journal at 6:30 AM on B-train from Brooklyn to Manhattan.)

Dream #1

My dad may have been accused of a murder. He was now coming to take me, my brother, and my sister to dinner. I lived in my own house, so they would pick me up. I sat in a room of my house, which was empty except a little clutter, a box of which I sat on.

I spoke on the cell phone with my mom. I told my mom, "I can't sit in a restaurant with that guy! Everybody'll be staring at us and asking us questions the whole time!" I imagined big, fat faces crowding all around my dad, my brother, my sister, and I at the restaurant. The faces all looked like obese versions of a mid-twentieth-century, cruel stereotype of Chinese faces.

I pulled the phone away from my left ear. The display was so colorful and bright. The main colors were blue.

My mom (or sister?) asked through the phone, "Your phone hasn't worked in all this time. Why is it working now that you need to tell us you don't want to see your dad?"

I thought to myself, Wow. They're right. How did my phone start working again?

Dream #2

A woman had gone missing, and two men had found that she had killed herself. They found her in a vacant lot of pale tan soil on a clear, blue day. She was a black girl, tall, thin, with brown skin and shortish, spiky, dark-blonde hair. she had slit her throat and lay in a big pool of blood. She lay in a fetal position on her right side.

The men now stood before a camera (still in the lot, still on a blue day) talking about how it was to find the body. The men were both oldish, a little dumpy, white, with big, round eyes.

The scene of discovery happened again, like for the first time. This time the woman was completely decapitated, her head lying three or four feet from her body. The view panned back up to the two men, who said, "Imagine our shock. Even if she had survived, what kind of life would that have been? Her arms were chopped to the elbows, her legs were gone..."

I now crouched in a library, in between a shelf and a wall. The space was narrow, about three feet wide at most. I had a big book held directly in front of my face. I crouched, relaxed, with my knees against my chest. My sister sat to my left, leaning against my legs.

My oldest nephew came walking from right to left along the aisle and stomped on my sister's legs. It hurt my sister.

I felt helpless to retaliate on behalf of my sister. But I didn't want it to happen to her again. So I told her to sit a special way. She sat pretty much the same way as before, but now she was naked.

I heard a weird story narrated now, by my sister -- not voiced from her physical body, but from a narration in my head. My sister said, "I wouldn't let anybody kiss my boobs before him. But this was very important to him." I had a feeling that the "him" was me. I thought, How could that be? Why would I do something like that to my sister?

My view floated all around the library, slowly, as if some disembodied I were walking around the library.

I heard myself and a friend, like my old friend R, speaking in my head. We were trying to decipher a phrase: "gnear talk." It was in a series of new phrases young kids were using nowadays. I saw the list of new colloquialisms before my mind's eye for a moment.

I thought, Well, "thalk" is a hot walk -- so hot it thaws you. And "gnear" is what you say when a girl is so close you can feel her loveliness. It's as if you were saying, "Gee, she's near," or "g-near," to make "gnear" (except that the "g" was pronounced hard, not soft).

Dream #3

I had a dinner or a breakfast at a place that was supposed to be the apartment of my old friend R and his fiancee L. We sat at a huge table that was littered with items like vases. Everything seemed very disordered. I was surprised to have been here. I thought, These guys aren't mad at me anymore! I felt relieved.

L said, "Come back soon. We really want to talk with you again."

I couldn't tell whether that were true. I looked at R. He looked unpleasantly surprised to see me here. I could tell he was already trying to find a way to keep me from coming back.

(3/23/09) friends among zombies; basement of the lazy

(Entered in paper journal at 7:50 AM at home.)

Dream #1

I was at a checkout stand in a large supermarket. The store was dark, with just a couple of bands of fluorescent ceiling lights turned on. Outside it was pitch black. Some other people, maybe black people, stood by the checkout stands, as if we were all waiting to pay for our items. But there were no workers.

I looked at a tabloid rack to my left. The papers all spoke about something having happened to the President. There was no specific idea of people who may have been involved in any of the related events.  But there was an implication that, because of these events, a war would be started. It seemed like all this news was of a trivial, gossipy nature, fit only for the tabloids.

I stood outside with my dad. It was still pitch black night. We stood out on a wide, concrete lot. Somewhere to my left there may have been a tall, wide, stable, stone building, like for a university. There were a few white streetlamps lighting the lot.

Something dangerous was happening. Zombies may have been attacking the area. My dad was sending me out on a small, ATV-like vehicle to retrieve something. I was afraid to go, even though I knew I had to. The zombies (?) had stopped attacking, but nobody knew where they were. I thought that, riding on such an unprotected vehicle, if I accidentally met a group of zombies, I could easily be "gotten" -- attacked by them.

I started off, possibly driving through a fog. I rode through a few places, like back roads, suburban residential neighborhoods, places that looked like secret bases (with chain link fences and barbed wire), something like university campuses, and a shopping mall's parking lot.

At some point I met up with a group of people. We were all riding in a van now. We were riding down a long, straight, slightly graded slope. We were all talking somewhat cheerfully about where we were going next. We were apparently going back to my dad. But I was worried that we really weren't headed that way. It didn't look like we were headed in the right direction at all.

Dream #2

I may have been laying with a large group of people, all of us laying close together, as if we were in a gigantic basement in a gigantic suburban house.

A woman knelt down and tapped me to get my attention. The woman looked like a gardener CA, who worked at a park at which I'd led volunteer groups through New York Cares -- she was shortish and had tan skin, blue eyes, and shortish, squarish, silver and grey hair. The woman said, "I'm not sure, with you young people, what time I should be getting you up."

I felt bad, thinking I should have been up a while ago, and that I was getting lazy.

(10/9/09) broken down spare car

(Entered in paper journal at 9:28 AM at Red Horse cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I had to take my car to the garage to get worked on. I walked into the front area, which looked like the interior of a shed or a concrete floored cabin.

My dad was the mechanic. He sat at a thin, metal desk, something that looked more like a tall toolbox being used as a desk, with an old computer on top of it. I told my dad it was nice to see him. My dad gave me the keys to a spare car. He told me that my car would be ready later on.

I took the spare care and drove down a road which was apparently part of a square circuit of road. I drove counter-clockwise around the circuit. The road was full of desert sunlight, sunglass-yellow, and flanked with business signs and places like car sales lots. I now saw a few amusement parks. I was eventually driving straight through an amusement park, with the road flanked by individual rides or clusters of rides.

Down the road, on my right, I saw an amusement park called Cosplay Land. I thought I might like that. It looked completely deserted, and also looked like it only had only ride. I saw a couple other amusement parks to my left, as well as, possibly, some fast food restaurants. I wondered what people would think of me if they saw me going into Cosplay Land.

Now I stopped the spare care and got out -- possibly because the spare car had broken down. As I walked a ways down the road I saw a cop standing beside a stopped car, talking to the driver, who was still seated in the car. Everything on either side of the street felt to me like scrapyards.

As I passed the cop and car I wondered why the cop had stopped the driver. It may have had something to do with identification, proof of being owner of the car, I thought. There was a lot of trouble going around nowadays with that stuff, I thought.

I was happy I was no longer in the spare car, so I didn't have to deal with any troubles cops might give me about producing proof that I was legally driving the spare car. But I was sure that, after whatever preliminary troubles I'd have to go through with the cops, I'd be able to prove that the spare car was my dad's and that I wasn't driving it illegally.

Then I suddenly realized that I hadn't given my dad the keys to my own car! I'd have to walk all the way back to the garage and give my dad the keys. The time for my car to get fixed would now obviously have to be pushed back. I wasn't likely to have it back by this afternoon, as I'd previously thought I would. When would I be able to have my car back? How soon?

I walked into the garage, possibly after having trudge through a snow-covered mountain path. My feet were soaked, and I dreaded having to walk back out onto that path again.

I gave my dad my car keys. I told my dad I'd see him soon. I told him something like I was sorry I hadn't seen him over the years, and that I was sorry I'd only seen him now by accident because I'd needed someone to fix my car. I did feel bad. But mostly I just said all this stuff because I didn't want my dad to ruin my car out of bitterness that I hadn't spoken with him in all this time.

My dad said he would have my car ready soon, and that after I had my car, he'd make sure to call me so that we could spend time together. He, also, hadn't made an effort to see me. My dad asked me how the spare car was.

I may now have been walking away from the garage. I thought to myself, I hope that my dad never finds out I got all the way here without having used the spare car. I also reflected that the reason I'd gotten out of the spare car in the first place was that I'd thought it had broken down. I thought with dread of what my dad would do when he found out his spare car was broken.

(1/28/10) dance how you want; hungry or not?; uncle not getting better; her first lesbian lover

(Entered in paper journal at 7:10 AM at the Starbucks at 49th and Madison Avenue, in Manhattan, right across the street from where my office was at the time.)

Dream #1

I was in a park-like area, like the plaza area like the MetroTech Commons park in Brooklyn, except hillier, with the rolling ground covered with Belgian blocks or stone tiles.

I was listening to music that I was playing on a boombox. I danced to the music in a slow, backward and forward "locomotion" movement. I smiled and cocked my head up and down like I was happy with myself, like I thought I was smooth and impressive. I suddenly got afraid that I would go crazy if I allowed myself to act like this, or that, at the least, people would think I was crazy.

My great grandmother appeared before me. She was short: she stood up to about my chest. I may have told her what I was doing, as if I was uncertain whether I should be doing it. My great grandma told me, "Well, keep doing it! Enjoy! Have a good time!" My great grandma walked away. I think we were planning to meet each other again at some point.

The boombox was now playing either classical music or an NPR-type show. I jumped around among Belgian blocks which had been pushed upward like little stubs. I may have thought of myself as a little bird while I did this. I was moving my way around a little planting bed with a small shrub-like a boxwood in the center.

A couple of girls sat at a green-painted, metal table to the right of the planting bed. They may have been talking about something having to do with their job. I was hopping around naively, as if I were oblivious, like a child, to what the women could were talking about. But I actually was connecting to the things they were talking about.

Dream #2

I was at my great grandmother's house, in the kitchen. The light may have been a bit brighter and warmer than usual. I stood before or sat at the tall stool before the kitchen counter. My great grandma came (from the dining room, to my left?) and stood across the counter from me. She told me that I must be hungry. She asked me if I wanted something to eat. She may have offered a grilled cheese sandwich.

I was indecisive. I thought that I was hungry, but that I'd possibly be smarter waiting to eat until some dinner that I was heading to later.

My great grandma got a little annoyed with me and asked me, "Are you hungry or are you not hungry?" She was now mixing something like oatmeal in a big, black pot. The oatmeal looked gooey, like it already had milk in it, and i had red strips in it, which I thought of as something sweet, like long strips of stuff like the pink pebbles in Pebbles cereal. But the strips also looked like long strips of tomatoes or red peppers or even meat.

I told my great grandma that I was hungry. My great grandma may either have spooned some oatmeal into a bowl or left the iron pot in front of me. She then walked into the living room. I thought that I really didn't want to eat the oatmeal if it had tomatoes or meat in it.

I walked into the living room. A couple of my family members, at least my mom and brother, were in the living room. My mom sat in my great grandma's usual favorite chair. My brother was farther back in the room. Looking out the front window, I could see that it was night.

My great grandma opened the front door and walked out. She may have been bundled up in a padded, beige jacked and a wool cap, so that she looked like a little kid. She said she was going somewhere. The TV was near the door, instead of farther back, on the left side of the room, as it would have been in waking life, when my great grandma was alive.

The TV started showing a program about my cousin N, who had done a lot of really good stuff, apparently, with cars or a car company. I and my family members were very proud of N. We wanted my great grandma to see.

I called to my great grandma to catch her before she headed out the door. But she didn't seem to hear. She kept moving, very slowly, apparently, out the door. I called louder, but she still didn't hear. Finally I just walked up to her, grabbed her, pulled her back into the house, and forced her to look at the TV.

As I held my great grandma, I was kneeling down, so that I had to reach up to get my arms around her waist. I basically had my great grandma pinned in place. I was holding her so that her arms were pinned to her sides.

Dream #3

I was at "my dad's house." I sat at or stood before an oval dining table of dark wood. The table was covered over in cluttered papers. The floor around the table was similarly cluttered. The carpet was grey. The room was dim. To my left may have been either a large window or a sliding glass door.

My dad sat before me on a stool before something like a breakfast bar. The breakfast bar was kind of incongruous in its setting, being nowhere near the kitchen, and kind of serving to separate the dining table from the living room.

My dad started talking to me about some football game between the Indianapolis Colts and the New Orleans Saints. I laughed and listened, as if I knew what my dad was talking about. But then he started asking me about specific players. I didn't admit that I had no idea who they were, but my kind of blank responses to his questions gave me away.

My uncle R came into the room. My dad and uncle may have decided that it was time to go. We left. My uncle R was much taller than usual, and thin. We walked through a hallway, which had glass walls on the other side of which were restaurants and shops.

My dad asked my uncle how he was doing, if he was getting any better. My uncle said he didn't think he was. My uncle said he needed to stop and go to the restroom. We stopped outside a restaurant which may have been a Chinese or Indian restaurant.

My dad and I stood in a little alcove before the door. Two small steps led up to the glass door of the restaurant. The alcove was just a little square, maybe six inches by six inches. The walls of the alcove were yellow and stucco-like. There may have been a small table with a potted plant on it. Just inside the door of the restaurant were a curtain of little red lights.

My dad and I stood silently for a moment. Finally I asked my dad, "Do you think Uncle R will get better?" My dad had possibly been looking at the wall, his left profile to me.

We now stood in a different hallway. One wall was still a window-wall to the restaurant. The wall across the hallway was possibly, however, to the outside. My dad shook his head sadly, to tell me that no, my uncle R would no get better.

My dad still looked "like" my dad, but he was much shorter, white, with pale blue eyes and pale, grey hair. He now acted like a little kid, or even like a little puppy. He began cuddling with me, hopping all over me. He was, I thought, trying to make it clear that he was happy to see me.

(At this point I stopped my paper journal entry so I could head into work. I then restarted my paper journal entry at 8:30 PM, when I got back on the B-train into Brooklyn, after work.)

Dream #4

A woman sat in a restaurant ora cafe. Something suddenly reminded her of a former lover of hers. She caught her breath as if thinking how silly it was to have forgotten. The woman was a fair-skinned, white woman with slight, chestnut-brown hair. The restaurant she sat in was dim.

After recalling her lover, the woman remembered a scene with her lover. The scene took place in a dark room, lit only by a candle or two. The two women were on a bed. The woman's lover was an Asian woman with long, silky, black hair. She wore a pink teddy with black lace trim. The teddy may have been pulled down below her breasts. The lover knelt on the bed, her legs wide apart, and arched her breasts up in ecstasy. The woman may not have been visible.

The woman was now in a bookstore with another woman. The bookstore was lit with fluorescent light. The store was wide, with high ceilings. The shelves were all pretty close together. They were tall, made of a kind of cheap wood, dented or chipped a little, or with the finish kind of wearing off. The place had a run-down feel, like an old public library.

The two women were far back in the shelves. They spoke with one another either in French or in English with French accents. Their words were palpable, very soothing, as if I were haring them from under a blanket while I had a cold.

The women walked up to the front desk. A very tall man walked up and stood beside them, across the counter from the cashier. The man was possibly overweight, a little pear-shaped, with long, scraggly-curly, grey hair. He may have worn drab, green and black clothing.

The man tried to strike up a conversation with the women, ostensibly about the books they were buying. But the woman asked her fiend, loudly enough to make it understood she wanted the man to hear, but also with an intonation of mock-embarrassment, "Oh, do you think I should tell him about this book?"

The friend said, "Oh --  you mean that it was the book you read with --"

The woman interrupted, "The book I read with my first --"

I knew that the woman would next say, "With my first lesbian lover."