(5/21/05) my id and fifteen dollars; racist boss and bully girl

(Entered in paper journal at 11:35 AM at Starbucks on 43rd Street and 3rd Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream 1

I was leaving some house or job. I had been told it was okay to leave, as I had done what I had come to do. But as I was leaving I realized I had left my ID and fifteen dollars in a car.

I went to where the car was, along a suburban street (?). The car had been moved, and a few other cars put in its place. The car was now on a lawn or driveway in a yard that sloped up to a house.

The people who were moving the cars were all Mexican. I thought they had stolen my stuff. I looked where I had put my stuff. It wasn't there.

I found the ID. A couple guys stood around the car. I didn't want to act worried, like I suspected them. Then I found the ten-dollar bill and then the five-dollar bill in different places, moved and separated, apparently for safe-keeping.

Dream 2

I was at some meeting or ceremony in an office building, a lobby up on a high floor full of windows. The atmosphere was almost like after a decorative party for children. I feel like there was a lot of pink and yellow everywhere.

Some bigwig-looking guy stood by a window, surrounded by an admiring throng of businessmen. He gave some speech which increasingly included jokes using stereotypes about different racial groups. It started with black people. Then there was some joke about how Mexican people live on food stamps. Then possibly some joke about how Asian people speak funny and look like monsters.

I looked around and saw myself surrounded by young, male minorities dressed to look hood-like. As the bigwig (bald) continued, I loudly whispered to the young men, "Didn't you hear? He just made jokes about you! And he's making a joke about you right now! Don't just go along with it! Make him stop!"

Now I was being carried out the door by two or three tall, young, strong, white businessmen, all of whom assumed I was drunk. They carried me past some couch that faced the lobby windows. I saw a board game on the couch. I assumed the board game was mine. I was pretty sure I wasn't drunk. But I clowned around more and more as the men carried me away, figuring if they wanted to assume I would drunk, I would just act drunk.

Now (I think) I was riding in an SUV with my friends R and CV. We drove on some balconies in what feels now like a tall parking garage surrounding a skyscraper full of malls. I was going somewhere specific with R.

We drove past a doorway to a mall which I recognized as having been the office space I had just been thrown out of. I told CV and R I needed to go back in there and get my Operation board game. R slowed down and stopped in front of the door. But he wouldn't get out. He said, "Go in if you need to go in. But please don't embarrass yourself. That'll embarrass me, too. They really don't want you back in there. You got too drunk last time."

I was still pretty sure I hadn't been drunk that time. I went (in?), to the couch and picked up my Operation game box, which was tattered and had a lot of the graphics layer of the paper stripped off to show only fuzzy swatches of tan cardboard.

I walked past a mafia-like group of three or four oldish, white-haired, heavy guys in polo shirts. The guys spoke quietly but toughly with each other. Then one of them turned to me and asked, "Why did you come back? Did you want to defy us? Did you want to disrespect us?"

I think I justified myself by showing him my board game. He seems to have been satisfied, though he still seems to have told me to leave and not come back.

I was (now?) walking down a hallway that looked like a mix between a back hallway in a museum and a wide hallway in a hospital. But this place was like a mall and a museum mixed together. I was now at the other end, walking "back" out "the way I had come in."

I walked past some girl who was distressed by another girl who was bullying her. The bully girl kept bouncing the distressed girl's basketball at and past the distressed girl in such a way that the distressed girl could never catch the ball. (I don't know how, but the basketball kept reappearing in the bully girl's hand, like a barrel in the video game Donkey Kong.) The distressed girl began crying.

I stepped in front of the distressed girl to catch the basketball. I walked quickly toward the bully girl. For some reason I had to catch the basketball at least once or I couldn't approach the bully girl. I managed to catch the basketball about three times. Each time I caught it it would disappear, with a satisfying feeling, almost exactly like I was racking up points in a video game.

When I realized what I was going I began failing. I would nick the ball with the tips of the fingers on my left hand and the ball would bounce off in a more and more dissatisfying way.

But now I was right in front of the bully girl, who was about nineteen or twenty years old, thin, with a pretty face, long, pale, blonde hair, a wholesome smile, and purple-blue eyes. The girl made a comment I can't remember and then said something like, "Let's get out of here."

I felt a "strong" sexual desire for the bully girl and told her her eyes were incredible. She said something like, "You can't bet me in bed by talking about my eyes. Every guy I know has tried that. If I'd wanted to go to be with you I'd already have been in bed with you."

We had walked out of the hallway and into the "office," which was now something more like a well-lit, classic, wooden bar, turned right, and headed down a hallway that looked like an airport concourse hallway that opened out into a large department store.

The bully girl was now my crew mate and friend KB. we were just hanging out and having fun. We walked to a setup like two big dressers placed across from and slightly caddy-corner to each other, i.e.

and surrounded (possibly) by sets displaying beds and bed sets. On the dressers were items for sale: jewelry or knickknack-like items, some of glass, some of crystal, some of gold, some of valueless material. Many had twisty, strange shapes, like modern-art decorative desk pieces.

KB said, "I'm looking for a good library toy." She grabbed something and walked off.

I turned around and looked at the items on the other dresser. The items on the first dresser seemed completely useless. For some reason (I don't know what now) these items looked useful, especially for a library job. I think KB came back and that I tried to tell her about these items.

(2/3/10) demoted; don't take the elevator

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

Dream #1

I was at a desk in an office space. The space was dim, as if half-lit, with the lights over me being off. The desk was like a trading desk, with a number of work spaces at a long table. The table was grey. I sat at the right end. On the wall to my right were offices with their lights on. There may also have been filing cabinets, or some other kind of office furniture, between me and the wall. I was probably alone at the desk.

As I worked on some project, a man came up and stood behind me. He asked me a few questions about what I was working on. I explained it to him. He pointed out certain things that were, he felt, not appropriate to say about our company. This mainly had to do with the fact that we didn't have certain personnel (management?) on our team yet. I didn't quite know this, being a contracted worker, not a permanent employee.

I said I would keep the items out of the report I was working on. The man then told me (the man may have been young, tall, thin, and a bit pale skinned), "Well, I think there are a lot of things I feel uneasy letting pass through with this report. In fact, let's hold on with this report. Come with me. I'll show you someone to talk with to see what work is good for you to do."

I stood up and walked to the left, down a smallish, wideish hallway, to a smaller, but more open, area with more light (tannish-yellow fluorescent). Along the right wall were large, tan filing cabinets. In the center of the room were two folding tables, maybe six feet long each, set end-to-end with each other. Along the wall were offices. Farther up, I could see a conference room, lit by natural light. The man pointed me to a seat near me on the right end of the table. I sat down and faced the filing cabinets.

Another man had come and sit down in the space across from mine, possibly as I had been sitting down myself. The man was extremely thin, and possibly tall. He was white, but very tan. His skin had a hardened, dried-out look. He had blue-green eyes that looked pale, even though they weren't. His head and face were slightly stubby. His head had a few texture-lines, from veins. In a couple places, those veins had been scratched or cut, and patches of dried blood were caked to them. The man wore a vivid, pine-green shirt with thick, dense paisley designs outlined in black.

I though, for some reason, that this man was gay. But I could also tell that the man's job wasn't the same as my job. I was being brought here, I feared, so I could be taught how to do an easier, lower-level job. I was afraid that it had been decided that I was no longer competent to do the higher-level work I'd been doing.

Dream #2

I was in a lobby-like area, possibly on the second floor of a building. The area was wide, tall, open, with white floors that looked like hospital floors.

I walked into an elevator. The elevator had two doors, one before me and one to my left. As I got on the elevator, a couple women from my work ran toward the elevator, telling me not to get on.

The elevator door closed, but I may have stuck my arm in the left door to reopen it, then looked around the corner to find the women, who had been standing before the door.