(8/5/07) my new leotard; the owl man

(Entered in paper journal at 8:20 AM at Ozzie's cafe -- not sure which -- in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I went into a women's clothing shop. It was dim inside. A Hispanic man and woman worked there. The man may have helped me pick some lingerie.

I sat in a room of a (the previous?) women's clothing shop, on a couch in the center of the room, like a couch in the center of the room of an art museum. I looked into another room. The other room was dark and closed off by a locked glass door.

I remembered one of my female friends telling me how the shop was so exclusive that it stays closed except for when people come to buy stuff. Then it opens almost automatically. I thought the clothes must be very expensive.

I headed back into the (first?) women's clothing store. The clothes I had gotten before didn't work for me at all.

This time the woman helped me find some lingerie. She got me a couple nice things. Then she picked out something like a pink leotard with tiny sleeves, like the outfit a dancer might wear, with tights over her legs, for practice. It was just what I wanted.

I sat on the train. A white man and woman sat across from me. The man was saying, angrily, but not out of control, "I've got enough to do dealing with her!"

Apparently the man thought that since I had bought women's clothing I was trying to hit on him (not sure how that connection was made, either by him or me...). The man brought up the woman next to him, apparently his girlfriend, as proof that he had his hands full with his girlfriend and that he liked women, not men, anyway.

Dream #2

I was on a street corner at night. The blocks around me were all massy, roughly fifteen-floor apartment buildings of brick and stone, like buildings on Park Avenue. The sky was grey and stringy and murky, maybe hung with a yellow moon.

Caddy-corner from me (?) I saw what I thought to be a large bird perched atop the walk signal. I thought it was an owl. I walked across the street to approach it. The walk signal had transformed into a ten-foot-tall, black metal box.

The bird wasn't a bird after all, but a man dressed in white, robe-like clothing, with long, silvery-grey hair and a long, silver-grey beard. He crouched away from me, his legs bent so his knees were to his chest, as if he were imitating a bird.

I tried to get a view of the man's whole face, but I was afraid that the man was crazy, and that if I looked directly at the man's face the man would become afraid or angry and run away or attack.

Somewhere nearby I ran into my friend R. This place was far away from R's home. R was out walking his dog. I asked R, "What are you doing all the way out here?" I thought R was stalking me.

R said, "I had to come all the way out here. I had to take my dog to the vet."

We were now standing in the vet's office. I knelt down beside R's dog, who stood to my right side and faced R as he stood at the reception desk. I asked, "Is your dog having another one of her..." (I knew it was a skin problem, but I wanted to be delicate about the issue) "... things?"

R got angry, thinking I had forgotten about his dog's illnesses. R said, "Skin issues. She's having more of her skin issues."

I petted the dog and noticed that a lot of her coat was very thin. It was also brown and white in these patches, instead of black, her normal color.

(8/20/07) bad business and crystal balls in a lingerie boutique

Dream #1

I was in a women's clothing store at night. I was looking at some panties that were on sale. Some panties looked really affordable.

A couple women behind the counter asked if I needed help. I got embarrassed and panicked and picked out something for my friend R's fiancee L. I thought, I'll come back later for the stuff I want to wear.

As the cashier was ringing the piece up, she told me what a shame it was that business was so slow. The cashier said that the world had become so business-oriented that nobody thought about doing fun things like wearing sexy lingerie anymore.

I was afraid that if I told the cashier I hadn't really come in to get this thing for L, but that I'd come in to get something for myself, she would think that I, too, was trying to make business bad. She'd think that I was using transvestism as a ploy, a way to disgust any customers who might come into the shop, to scare them off.

The cashier finished ringing me up. I went back over to the table of panties, thinking again that I might pick up something for myself. I also walked over to some central display of decorative items like glass globes.

(2/3/08) mcdonald's wedding dress; drug dealer's name; fast food snow shoveling

(Entered in paper journal at 8:15 AM at Connecticut Muffin in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was in a clothing store, looking at a rack of panties. The panties were either used panties or bargain panties. I knelt right in front of them. I might have been with a group of people I knew. They were off in some other area of the store.

There was a thuggish-looking man working somewhere nearby. I didn't want him or the people I was with to know I wanted to wear the panties I was looking at. But this was just a small room of the store. In the bigger, main part of the store was a section with newer, nicer lingerie. I was more interested in that lingerie.

I was in a conference room. There were a few big tables. The lighting of the room was bland and fluorescent. The tables were pale peach. The room was empty except for me and PD, one of the heads of the company division of my department was a part. PD stood far to my right, by a dark doorway.

Other people were coming to the room for a meeting. They were probably already nearby. PD spoke as if she were already speaking to all the attendees. She was talking about something being some place other than where we'd thought it would be. She may have been talking about lingerie. I thought about some place PD mentioned, as if I were talking about it in my head with another man.

I stood out on a dark city sidewalk like in front of a closed-down McDonald's, like the McDonald's on 57th Street, near Sixth Avenue, in Manhattan. The man with whom I'd been speaking in my head now stood somewhere near me. I opened the door to the store while saying something joking to him.

I walked into the store. It was just like the closed-down McDonald's. But then it was like a dim, rundown version of some house I'd lived in during my childhood.

I went down into the basement. Sunlight came in through the windows of a bedroom I'd walked into. The bedroom was like a bedroom I'd had in my last year of college, when I'd lived off campus with some friends. I sat on the floor before a set of shelves in a closet (where my bookshelf would have been in my college bedroom). The shelves were piled with all kinds of girls' clothes.

I felt like my family or friends would come back soon. I wanted to have fun with these clothes before everybody returned. I shuffled through the stuff. I eventually came upon a wedding dress. It was white and lacy, but there were one or two little places on it upper parts decorated with pink and green, flower-like designs.

Dream #2

I was on my cell phone somewhere. Someone was telling me that  people in my neighborhood had confused me with a Jewish boy who was a drug dealer. They said that at some point I had something about my last name that made the people think my last name was the name of the Jewish boy. I told the person what my last name was. But the person said, "I think it's too late. It doesn't matter now. Nobody's going to believe you."

Dream #3

I stood outside in front of my great-grandmother's house. It was a snowy night. A lot of snow had already accumulated. At the very front of my grandma's yard there were steps down to the sidewalk (this was not so in waking life).

On the sidewalk my sister, and possibly someone else, were shoveling snow. I had a shovel, too. I pushed it all the way from the front of the house to the steps leading down to the sidewalk. But when I reached the steps, I was suddenly where the other person had been. The other person was now gone.

I might have been standing in this position with a shovel, but I wasn't moving. I was listening, in my head, to some stock-analysis discussion on the Quick Service Restaurant (QSR) chains, like McDonald's.

I realized that only my sister was shoveling. I thought, I'm the man. Shouldn't I be helping my sister shovel, or should I be shoveling for her? But here she's shoveled so much already. In some way, though, I didn't feel bad. I knew I was doing some kind of work, after all.

I stood at the top of the stairs. The stairs were pretty much shoveled, but chunks of ice still clung to the steps. I chipped these chunks with the edge of my shovel.

My co-worker JBS stood to my left (in the snow of the yard!) and spoke about QSR chains. I was pretty annoyed. I wanted to focus on my job of chipping the ice. But I also felt bad and thought I should listen to JBS out of kindness.

(8/23/08) zit as sex toy; i'm a lesbian with my female friend; lured into dead end

(Entered in paper journal at 9:30 AM at Connecticut Muffin in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I had three small, dry bumps on my face. I thought they were zits, so I "popped" one of them. It peeled off my face like a film or a dry piece of paper.

There was a hard ball of "pus" inside the film. I pulled it out and looked at it. It grew, became a little gooey, and took on a weird appearance. It was about two inches long, bean-shaped, with prongs coming out of it. The "body" itself had some consistency, but the prongs were soft and flaky. It was almost like a toy, maybe even a sex toy, except that it was gooey, like phlegm or pus.

Dream #2

I walked into a small side hallway (to my left) in some place like a mall or perhaps like the shopping areas in Grand Central. A lingerie shop caught my eye. I looked in as I walked past, trying not to be conspicuous, but interested in seeing if the store's style was something I wanted to wear. But most of it seemed to be things like camisoles, a kind of rigid, fancy style that I didn't like.

The hallway was very small and narrow. A decent amount of people walked through the hallway in both directions, mostly young women. All the shops in the hallway were lingerie shops. I knew I would want to stop into one, and I hoped nobody I  knew would see me.

I turned right, into another dim hallway. I saw a rack of panties, of a cloth, cottony, non-stretching fabric. I thought these panties would be fun to wear, but I realized they'd probably be smallish and awkward on my body, like most feminine-shaped but inflexible articles of clothing always ended up being for me. Plus, I felt too fat to wear those panties.

I grabbed the waistband of my own underwear at the back. I realized I was actually wearing a pair of panties like the ones I had been looking at just now, so that I really didn't need another pair, especially sine this pair already fit less than perfectly.

I now realized that, in fact, all I was wearing were these panties and a matching bra or camisole!

I continued walking down the hallway. The atmosphere alternated between a dimmish, plaster-walled hallway like a hallway in a small, dingy office and a marble-walled hallway, like in a well-built or fancy building.

I turned right, into what may have been the end of the hallway. It was a very clean, white-floored, white-walled lingerie shop that also seemed like an enormous dressing room. There were a lot of girls there, but the place wasn't crowded. The lingerie was all brightly colored, like summer, or like sweetgum leafs in the fall.

I looked at myself in a mirror. I was wearing a pair of vivid pink, almost hot pink, gingham panties and a matching shirt/tank top. I probably looked just like a woman. I might actually have been a woman.

Now I saw KB, an old friend of mine and one of the people I'd worked with on my Americorps program in 2005. I tried to hide myself. But KB didn't seem to mind how I looked. She was more interested in being able to see me after such a long time. But I was still upset to see her while I looked this way.

We were in an adjoining room, which was even more like a fitting room than the last room had been. There was a door outside on the back wall. It seemed to lead out to a foresty area, like around the visitor center at the National Park where I'd done my Americorps program in New Mexico in 2002. The door was open. Bright, comfortable sun flowed in.

KB was sitting on a deep-blue-green couch. The couch was full of girls. I seemed to be having a conversation with KB as myself. But as the girl I also (?) was (?) I seemed to be cuddling with KB and kissing her.

Dream #3

I was walking down a street in a relaxed shopping district type area (which kind of reminds me of some shopping block in Queens). I was on the shady side of the street on a sunny, slightly breezy day. The sidewalk was busy with people, but the overall mood was relaxed.

But I soon found myself constantly having to get out of the way of different groups of people. The first group was a group of white teenage boys, all tan, with golden blonde hair, very cheerful. Then it was two or three tall, smart-looking black men, who were all laughing with each other. I didn't feel stressed out by these people, but I felt overwhelmed, like I was avoiding a tide which would sooner or later carry me away.

These groups of people had been coming toward me. Now I had to get out of the way of a person who was walking in the same direction as I. He was a white man, maybe in his early twenties. He might have been walking with another man who was like him. He carried a bundle of twigs on his shoulder. He had straight, brown-black hair and olive skin, and he wore a dull, navy blue shirt and dull, army green shorts.

The twigs, which the young man might have been carrying for his mother, were supposed to serve the same decorative purpose as cherry blossom twigs or willow twigs. In fact, I even called them willow twigs. The wood was a rich tan color, like on young mulberry trees, and the leafs were compact and vivid green, ridged very tightly, somehow (not completely) like rose leafs.

I had to swerve completely off the sidewalk to avoid this boy, and even as I did this, the edges of the branches still brushed against me, as if the boy were purposely trying to get back in my way.

The sidewalk was now in the sunlight. I walked behind a mailbox and then back onto the sidewalk. I was walking toward a subway entrance (a lot like the PATH train entrance at Hoboken). The building was brick, very clean, topped with a pristine, arching, aluminum or stainless steel structure. The building seemed to back into a grocery store parking lot. This area was even busier, like there were a fair somewhere nearby.

A young boy cut in front of me as I headed down the stair. I got competitively upset and hustled to cut him back off. But as we went down the stairs, which curved to the left, it was very hard for me to walk. It was, in fact, hard for me to move my legs at all.

The young boy and I seemed to be going at the same pace. I thought I could do something like slide down the handrail or even hold onto the handrail and "fly" or "hover" down to beat the boy. The boy seemed to have the same idea. But when I saw he was going to ride the railing down, I decided not to. I decided that riding the rail would be cheating. I could beat the boy, I thought, just by moving quickly, or perhaps by flying.

Nevertheless, I grabbed onto the railing like I was going to ride down it. But it was all covered in brown packing (?) tape. I could feel that, underneath the tape, the railing was broken in a lot of different places. It wouldn't be practical to ride down at all.

Now I was on the right side of the stairwell, where the boy had been. I was sliding down the railign, but the stairway was getting narrower and narrower. The stairway narrowed to a point and became a wall, I saw, before it even reached the actual floor of the subway platform. I'd have to hop the railing to get to the train.

The boy had stopped a few steps up from me, i.e. behind me. His mother had been calling him. He ran back up the stairs to meet her. Originally, I knew, the boy had been heading down the stairs to the train in order to take care of some task for his mother. But now it was like he was an overzealous boy who had headed for the train ahead of his mother, thinking he could be independent of her. Now he was being lightly scolded for having run ahead. The boy would have to go back up the stairs to his mother and then come back down with her.

But I also knew that the boy had run down the stairs to "trick" me. He wanted to rev me up into a competitive state so I'd get stuck in the exact position I was in at this moment -- facing the hallway that narrowed into a  blunt wall. The boy knew well enough to stop ahead of time and head back out of the station, never having had any intention of coming down to the level I was at.

I felt tricked, frustrated. But I still also had to catch the train that was arriving at this station. I was now more concerned with how to get over the railing so I could get onto the train.

(2/23/09) antigone-stic boss; manga duckling; panties at kmart; feet hard as shoes

(Entered in paper journal at 9:07 AM at Starbucks on 29th Street and Park Avenue in Manhattan.)

Dream #1

I was in "my office," which was something like an office space at the World Financial Center buildings in lower Manhattan. I sat at a long desk. My "desk"  -- a part of the long, grey table, was to the left of a square column. There were no computers at the long desk I sat at, although there may have been computers at the long desk behind me. My desk, and possibly even the whole floor, was almost completely empty.

Off to my right, a woman, maybe in her mid forties, white, with auburn hair, wandered along the aisles of desks. To my left, at the end of the long desk (maybe fifteen feet away from me) and on the opposite side of the table, sat my co-worker, and a person who had stood up a lot for me to help move me along in my career, CL.

CL asked me how something was going. It was like we were doing business together. She may have been scribbling on a piece of paper (although the long desk was otherwise empty of papers). I told CL, very politely, that everything was going well, even though it probably wasn't.

My boss BS walked into his office, which was in view of the long desk at which CL and I sat, separated from us by another two aisles of long desks. All the offices (along the wall) were dark. I may have been afraid that BS, having seen me talking to CL, would pile a ton of work on me, to keep me from talking to others.

The scene seemed to have changed. I was now "somewhere else," -- maybe "at home," maybe in BS' office. I got a phone call from BS. He said, "Hey, Preemie, I was wondering if you could help me with XXXXX." (I may have seen the word "Antigone" before my eyes.)

I thought, Yeah, I have plenty of time for that. I said, "Absolutely."

I now saw BS' computer screen in his dark office. I saw through his blinded window walls and his open door to the floor of desks outside. I thought to myself, Wait a minute. I don't have time to help him. I'm busy doing something else right now. Right?

Dream #2

I sat in a bedroom, on a bed. The bedroom was smallish. There were two beds across the room from each other. To my left was a light of some kind. The room was harshly, but palely and gently, lit. There may also have been a feeling of iridescence. I may have figured that I had to go somewhere. I stood up and took a small book with me. I held the book open and was reading it like one may study a catechism.

To my left, at my feet, was a tiny, strange animal. It seemed to want me to pay attention to it. I kept turned slightly away from it, like I was still heading toward wherever I had to go, but I knelt, so my knees were heading up toward my chest -- almost like a girl might kneel when wearing a business skirt.

I held my left hand out, ramping up from the ground so the animal could walk up onto it. My hand was twisted at an unnatural angle -- something I thought was supposed to help the little animal. The animal climbed up onto my hand.

I stood back up, still half-looking at the small book I carried. But now, on a closer look, the small animal looked like a little duckling. But its eyes were big, round, blue, like a cat's eyes, except with a teary or gummy look to them. The "duckling's" covering (not feathers?) was yellow with tinges or a halo of blood-red, as if the duckling had blood vessels even in its "feathers."

The duckling seemed to have human feelings. It didn't want me to go wherever I was going. It was nudging my hand somehow to prove this point. I sat down now on the other bed. I may have set down either the duckling or the book on the floor (if the book, then just before my feet; if the duckling, then just to the right of my feet -- or maybe I set both down).

The book, which had before been something like a catechism, now became something like a manga comic about schoolgirls. The duckling (although still to my mind a duckling) was now a girl in the costume of a manga schoolgirl. Her uniform was solid navy blue with a small red sash/bow across her chest.

The duckling/schoolgirl sat on the bed, to my right. I put my arm around her waist. She leaned her head against my shoulder. I continued reading the book.

Dream #3

I was in a store like a Kmart. I stood among racks of women's clothing. The racks were the round-display style, and widely spaced from each other. The store seemed relatively empty. I held a few items of women's clothing that I wanted to try on: some khaki shorts, a cream-colored top of some sort, and some pale aqua bikini briefs with pink stitching or trim.

I must have gone to try everything on. I saw myself in the mirror with the panties on. My body looked good. I was thin again, and my stomach was nicely muscled. I didn't care about the other clothes now. Now that my body looked good again, I wanted to try on other lingerie.

I was back where I started. I left the shorts and top on some shelf-island of jeans. I held on to the panties. I took a glance from side to side to see if I could locate the lingerie section. But it wasn't in sight. I now walked, clockwise, through the store, looking for the lingerie section. I walked through a few sections, but none of them seemed to register to my perception.

I now exited the store -- almost without noticing that I'd done so. (I may have been walking through the store, when I'd realized that I wouldn't have enough money to buy lingerie, so that I'd have to go to an ATM to pick up some money first. So I may have walked out of the store without noticing, while looking for both the lingerie section and an ATM.)

I stood in the hallway or walkway of a shopping mall. The light was dim. The floors were brown tile, and the walls were brown brick. There were island gardens with little palm-like plants. All the shops had their lights on, but some had their gates down.

I suddenly realized I had walked out of the store. I still had the panties, and I hadn't paid for them. Someone would come after me for shoplifting. I thought, I have to get back into the store.

I saw the storefront, which may have had a sign in the style of a Walgreen's sign over it: the cursive writing in red, plastic lights. I knew this was the other entrance to the store -- the one I must have used to get into the store in the first place. (In fact, I might not even have noticed that I'd left the store until I saw this storefront.)

I held a book and the panties in my left hand. I tried to cover the panties completely with the book. It looked like a couple guys were pulling down the gates for the store. I was worried for a second, but somehow I got in anyway. I crossed the security gate and breathed a sigh of relief.

I now took a look, from this point, for the lingerie section. There were a few people, kind of poor-looking, stout-looking, white men, milling around near me. I looked behind me and saw a whole panel of ATM machines. They were all fixed into a display counter, looking like something you might see at an airport. The panel was light brown. The whole place also had the feel of a McDonald's. I walked over to the panel and started playing with the touchscreen to get some money.

Dream #4

I was in bed with a good-looking, tan boy with longish, blonde hair. The boy was wearing dark blue, satin panties, a garter belt, and possibly black, thigh-high hose. We were both under a thick blanket. The room was dim, as if a small light came from some other room like a bathroom.

The boy positioned himself over me, preparing to lay on me. But as he lay on me (I think we were going to play that I was a girl and that he, as a girl wearing a dildo, was penetrating me), he knocked his feet against my feet. He suddenly got turned off. He rolled away and asked me (in the voice of my girlfriend H?), "Could you please take off your shoes?"

I thought, I'm not wearing any shoes! But I said, "Sure."

I thought this wouldn't work out for us after all. I'd taken so little care of my feet that now they'd become as hard as shoes. There was nothing I could do now, and if it turned the boy off, then I was just out of luck for the night.

(9/18/09) lingerie triangle

(Entered in dream journal at 8:07 AM at Red Horse cafe in Brooklyn.)

Dream #1

I was in a department store. I saw that there was some extreme clearance sale on lingerie. I looked through some racks of stuff to see if there was anything I'd like to get. Nothing really caught my attention, and most of the racks around me seemed empty.

I saw, beyond some empty stretches of floor and a couple wall-like partitions, a couple bargain tables topped with plastic bins full of panties. I thought I might find something more interesting there. I walked over and began looking through the bins.

A female employee walked up to see if I needed any help. She was about six inches shorter than I, very skinny, with light brown skin and darkish blonde hair. She wore a blue or black polo shirt and khaki pants.

I told the woman that I was looking for nice lingerie for myself. The woman helped me look for things. She led me to some bins full of the same lingerie: panties and teddies of some material that was thin, like cotton, but also velvety, with various patterns printed on them in a pea-green color. At first we were finding "M" sizes, which I thought would be too big for me.

I got an erection as the girl continued helping me. I thought she was so enthusiastic that maybe she was turned on by the fact that I was a transvestite. I thought I might even get to have sex with her. I thought how nice it would feel to be inside her. But I wanted to try on all this lingerie in front of the woman first, to see if she'd like the way I looked. So I tried to lose my erection, so I could try on things without my erection showing.

I also wondered now if the girl weren't actually seventeen years old. I thought, If the girl's only seventeen, I'd better just forget things altogether. She wouldn't be old enough for me to have a relationship with.

The girl went away, possibly to find the items in an "S" size. Now a youngish, Hispanic man, also an employee, came to help me. We actually sat down at chairs at a round table that was topped with small, messy piles of panties. The man was tallish, thin, with clean-cut hair and mustache and small, round spectacles.

The man joked with me about it being a shock, expecting to see the girl coming back, but seeing him instead. I laughed and said that it was a shock. At some point I may have seen the girl approaching. But I didn't pay attention to the girl. I didn't want the guy to see me paying attention to the girl. I thought he would get angry that the girl liked me, and that he would then start causing problems between me and the girl.