(1/12/05) an exercise in shame; straight queer eye; avenge the unborn

(Entered in paper journal at 7:55 AM at home in Harlem.)

Dream 1

I was in a car with my mother and my mother's good friend's son, RH, on a desert highway or possibly on a highway going past some desert-like industrial district. My mom drove. RH rode in the backseat. He was a child. I may have been a "child" with my "adult" mind.

I said to my mom in a smart-ass way, "I guess it's time to head back and drop RH off at TH the F--"

I was about to say "B" to make the abbreviation "FB." But my mom interrupted me. She said, "I'd watch who you say that kind of stuff around." I knew she meant RH. But now I couldn't take back what I'd said. I knew the damage had already been done.

I was now an adult before a committee of superiors. I don't remember where we were. They told me, "You aren't allowed to say those kinds of things about a person. You should know that."

I thought the people were right. It had been a moment of indiscretion. It was probably even sexual harassment. But then I thought, I wasn't even talking about sex. I wasn't even talking about someone at work. In fact, I was far, far from work when I made that comment.

Now I was lying on a mattress in a tall, thin, thin-walled, pitch-black room. I was on my left (?) side and covering my ears desperately with my hands.

My Aunt M came into the room. She knelt down and whispered over my ears. I heard her perfectly, almost too loud: "Get ready. They're calling you in to a meeting. But really they're just calling you in to fire you."

I walked into a room. MK, one of my coworkers from a temp job I'd worked in 2003 and 2004 in New York, might have been there.

I was now fired. I lay on the top bunk of a bunk bed in a room dark but illuminated by a green light that glowed from behind the bed. The bed was put about three-quarters of the way back from the front window, so that behind the bed was maybe four feet of space.

Two women stood in the empty space. One looked like my Los Alamos Americorps coworker, AL. The other was a blonde girl with short hair and tan skin. She looked like one of my NYC Americorps crew mate KB's friends. She wore only a black thong. "AL" wore full clothing, though I don't know what exactly she wore.

I rolled around on the bed, which I think was bordered on one side by a tall, thin-posted, black-painted, wooden gate. I said, "This is just the kind of thing that happens around here. People think I'm lazy. They think I do nothing. And they're always looking for a reason to fire me. But now they've gone too far. They've ruined me. If I had been in New York, people would have been grateful for me from day one. For some reason people in New York always appreciate the work I do. I'm going back there."

The blonde girl said, "I think you'll have problems with that. Haven't you heard? The people at your Albuquerque Apartment  don't want you, either. You're barred from staying at any of their locations."

I thought, I'll have to find some other place to stay once I get to New York. But chances are nobody will take me.

I was now riding through a big city. But I was now some strange spectator of other events. As I moved through this town, apparently watching this as if by TV, my arms, which I couldn't see, were doing exercises with some coiled-spring-type devices. I would close my arms in together and open them out beside me. I sat at about a 115-degree angle. But I also wasn't exactly there at all.

The TV show followed some guy who, it was narrated, would bring shame on himself in this episode. He had been to all different cities, doing this reality show competition. But now that he had gotten to New York he would break down and stop.

I now saw a huge indoor coliseum. It was night. All the contestants were in a circle at exercise machines like the one "I was on." The guy was maybe forty-five years old, balding, a bit fat, with a panicky look on his face, almost foaming at the mouth. The competition was about to start. But the guy wouldn't start.

There was an empty machine. A young girl, with whom he had made good friends, had not shown up. Her name was either Lake Jones or Jones Lake. The man wanted everybody to stop and look for her. He thought she was in danger. But people were pushing against him, trying to sit him back in his machine.

(Entry continued at 9 AM on an unspecified subway.)

Dream 2

I sat at a huge, fancy dinner table with some friends and the cast of Queer Eye for the Straight Guy. At some point I said that I arranged my house so well I was thinkging of making a show called Straight Queer Eye for XXXXX.

One of the Queer Eye guys said sarcastically, "Oh, like that's a funny title. What are you doing, making fun of gay people?"

I said, "No." I may have tried to explain.

Dream 3

I possibly stood at the edge of some barrier and behind a black girl with a nice body in tight, black jeans. I don't know where or when our conversation was.

I said, "How old are you?"

She said, "Fifteen. How old are you?"

I said, "Thirty. We are at the perfect ages to 'avenge the unborn.'" (The phrase was actually a lot strong than "avenge the unborn." It meant pretty much the same thing. But it was so powerful it actually made me sit up in my bed.)

(10/1/05) one more jump; money shame; dykes of hazzard; afterbirth cat

(Entered in paper journal at 8:50 AM at the Tea Lounge on Union Street and 7th Avenue in Brooklyn.)

Dream 1

I was in a plane over a desert. I parachuted out or went out in a very small gliding device. I descended more quickly than I'd thought I would. I descended in front of a skyscraper that was all by itself.  It seemed enormous, incredible. It was metal and glass, black, and relatively plain and boxy.

I landed roughly on the ground. I had been too nervous about the experience to appreciate it, especially the building. I wanted to go again.

There was a soldier- or pilot-like person, helmeted, beside me, tall so that I now feel like I was a child looking up at him. Somehow he "told" me my time here was up and that I had to go back home. I was pretty sure, however, that I had enough time to do one more jump. But then I got a call from my mom.

Dream 2

I was in a back/living room. A teller stood behind a long counter to my right. The teller was tallish, pretty, and blonde. I was trying to impress her, even though I wasn't exactly attracted to her.

I stood before a buffet/dresser. It automatically did transactions or served as a vault which automatically opened to the specific customer's space. I opened my vault. The doors all clanged open. the light in the room was sharp and sour, and the buffet doors all opened sharply and sourly. There were two end spaces that opened like drawers.

The top drawer was the one I focused on. I needed to take out all the money. There were just musty piles of coins and tattered, sticky bits of paper in the drawer. But that's apparently what I wanted. I had to take it out secretively. I didn't want the teller to see I was such a loser. The buffet jolted, though, and the change and mess bounced all over the floor.

An older couple walked up and helped me pick up -- though their "picking up" had nothing to do with the change. Instead, they took everything else out of all the drawers and packed it into a large plastic bag to prepare me for leaving. At first I was offended. Then I just figured, Well, maybe it is time for me to go. I was worried that I hadn't picked up all my money.

Now I was in an office where some pretty, Asian woman had taken me. the change now belonged to a woman, an executive who owned the office I and the pretty, Asian woman were in. It was implied that I had stolen the change, even though I knew I hadn't. I had the feeling the Asian woman had all the money I had lost.

Now the Asian woman sat flirtatiously next to the executive on the leather couch. She gave the executive a whole pile of quarters as a surprise, both for the executive and me. I also realized I had quite a bit of change left on me, that I wasn't as broke as I'd thought.

Dream 3

A comic book featuring two women in a down-south adventure story, like a female Dukes of Hazzard. I tried to figure out whether the women were lovers or just friends. Nothing I could see was really clear.

There was a log cabin. The red-haired woman was throwing an object almost as big as a car. There was a general feeling of dislike for men. One black frame had words on it that told whether the women were gay. But it was very oblique.

Dream 4

There was some reality show following around a man and a woman as the woman gave birth. The woman had the child. Now the man was at his office. He got some bad news about his wife somehow. Now he was pleading with a woman like a secretary to let him use a phone. This was his company, some kind of airline company. But the older secretary, haughtily mild and softly taciturn, would barely let him use the phone. The man was embarrassed to be seen on the reality show, on national TV, using this phone. The secretary was also now embarrassed for having been so petty on national TV.

As the man used the phone, I could see the wive, as if the area around a waist-up shot of the man had been cut out and the hospital room put in instead. The woman lay in a bright yellow room, screaming and moaning. She had had the baby, but now something like an infection was coming out. She yelled to her husband that it might kill her -- it was like a wad of bursting poison which would have been non-toxic had it simply come out immediately as afterbirth.

Even though the woman hoped to live, she said a provisional goodbye to her husband. And now the thing came out. It was a grey cat.