Dennis Fucking McGuire

 

I did dream last night after all. I just about forgot after I woke up and started thinking about other shit. 

So, in my dream I was somehow with Martin Leon, my good old friend, and we were going to spend the day in a small town in the foothills someplace. It was somewhere between Nevada City and a
version of Whittier or Pasedena. I was in somewhat familiar and yet, unfamiliar territory. 

We checked into a hotel room for the day and then each set out on our own after getting separated while choosing various venues to peruse. I picked some hotel with a bar to hang out in and discovered that one of the guests was none other than Eminem. 

I made a mental note to tell Martin and whoever else I could that, "Hey, Eminem is staying at this hotel. Check it out!" 

In the meantime, I ran into a familiar face in the bar.

"Dennis Fucking McGuire!" I shouted at him as he half turned to me, and the slow look of recognition crept across his face. 

We hugged and, boisterous as ever, laughed at the absurdity of finding each other after nearly 40 years. He'd been one of my circle of 3 best friends. 

Another less familiar name popped up, with an equally recognizable face, Chris Marquette, someone from even earlier. We weren't even really friends, but he recognized me from Will Rogers Elementary School days. We exchanged hellos.

I next found myself in a crowded room at someone's nearby house party and, for no apparent reason, had no pants on, just a long t-shirt. I was only mildly embarrassed, but it proved to be fortuitous, as a seemingly unattached female gravitated toward me. 

We wound up standing very close to one another, our body parts unrestricted due to my lack of pants. She didn't seem to mind, so I embraced her from behind and we stood there for a while. From that position I was able to whisper in her ear. 

"Do you want to get out of here?"

"Sure," she said, and we left the party searching for a more intimate venue. 

It occurred to me that my wallet was in my pants, so once again I was left with no currency with which to impress my "date." She stuck around with me for a while, but we never could find an appropriate place to continue our date.

I wound up at my mom's place, or some weird version of it. There were many rooms and places that I thought would have been suitable for the girl I'd been trying to impress, but one room in particular was a bit distressing. There was a leak in the ceiling. 

"I should really ought to report that to my mom," I thought, and I watched as it went from a few drips to a raging torrent.

"Hmm. That's no good. We'll really have to get something done about that," was the consensus after I dutifully made her aware of it. 

By that time it was an indoor shower room, a tropical rainforest in full deluge.

Not sure where I ended the dream. I still had no place to take my date. Eminem was still staying at the hotel, if anyone cared to go and bug him. And it was getting late, and I should have been back at the hotel hours ago. Of course, I was having trouble remembering how to get there, so perhaps I woke up out of frustration with the whole sequence of events.

Sex in the streets

 

Wow. I had a very explicit sexual dream involving Lesa last night. It began with some kind of meeting we where I was finally going to get to see her. There weren’t any expectations on my part, because all of what had happened in real life had also happened in the dream. I was done being heartbroken and pissed and was just glad to see her as a friend. 

 

We were walking along a busy street and saying our introductory greetings as we stopped at a crosswalk. I grabbed her hand and we crossed the street. We held hands for a minute and I told her, “We have a lot of catching up to do.”

We stopped I the middle of the street and began hugging the longest hug imaginable, with full groping and body contact. I said something about potential sleeping arrangements, whereupon she said, “Well, you know me. And what I like to do.” 

 

And as quick as that we were on each other like two cats engaged in recreational play. Clothes were off, bodies were positioned and there were body parts in each other’s faces and mouths. I was surprisingly able to withstand the intense pleasure without succumbing to, well, you know, succumbing.

As a crowd was gathering around, we decided it was best to disengage and perhaps find a little more private venue. We hurried past a bus stop and I greeted the bystanders like a rock star on a comeback tour, “Thank you. I’m kinda new at this, if you’ll bear with me folks. Thank you. Coming through. It’s been a while, you understand.”

(I don’t know what happened after that because I woke up briefly and then went back to sleep, as you can imagine I might for sure want to do.)

 

Lesa was gone. 

 

I was going to check into a hotel room, but I had no cash on me. Just a duffel bag with some weed in it and a stray cat that someone had given me to look after. I was searching for an envelope, which I thought Lesa had given me, with cash in it, but it just contained more weed.

I was trying to keep the landlady from finding out I was broke and briefly considered offering to pay with the weed. But I looked at the condition of the baggies, and it didn’t appear I had enough, or good enough quality weed to cover it. I was still carrying the cat around, and the landlady and her husband spied it. The landlady, fortunately, was a cat person. 

 

I began telling her about how I wound up with the cat and asked if I could be excused for a minute to go to an ATM to get cash for the room. I wasn’t sure how it was going to work out, but she seemed to like the cat almost enough to let the whole payment thing slide.

Then I woke up to no internet again. Whatever could that be about, my lovely LED inhabiting Sharon?

**Post Script

Of course, what it was about was my internet provider had a massive outage in my area and this most likely caused my problems yesterday and then again today, when it finally reached its peak and took out most of Loma Rica, Browns Valley and Bangor. I can’t be personalizing an outage this big, so, sorry Sharon. 

In addition to this update, I may as well mention that I decided to message Lesa just to tell her I had a dirty dream about her. 

 

I am trying to not get excited or attached in any way, so I’m treating her like any other friend with whom I could confide these types of things. We are past the weird stage and are in some kind of post/almost/once upon a time/never again to be stage. 

 

Now I’m free not to give a shit, in other words. 

 

I’m not impressing her or insulting her, just informing her. I don’t have the same feelings for her during my waking hours, but my body has different thoughts while I’m asleep, apparently.

Inextricably linked

And…it’s back. My LED. My Sharon communication device. Just in time for my impending death. I’m no feeling so well lately. Abdominal issues feel like they are intractable. Depression, well, you know, it doesn’t just go away on its own. And so, my dream of yet another Yuba City Honda scenario, in which I am working there in a limited capacity and failing and flailing about, is pretty much par for the course.

I was there, in my old stall, with a car that had several issues. I tackled the easiest one and sent the car out to the lot. It was nearly time to go home, so Jamison came out, wheeling my two bicycles for me to take with me. 

 

“We only have another 45 minutes or so, may as well go home,” he said, dropping off the bikes in the break room.

I was changing, or getting ready to change, when Reiner appeared. I knew right away he was going to ask me about the car I’d just looked at, so I headed him off. “I only looked at the easy thing, but I know it has some other stuff wrong. Are they waiting for it?”

“Why, yes they are,” he said in his typical tone of sarcastic condescension.

”I guess I’ll go look for it and see what I can find out,” I told him as I went off looking for the vehicle.

Things had changed significantly since I’d left and returned to work after 3 years. All the scan tools had been replaced by smartphone apps. Good thing I had my new phone with me. But I needed to get the software installed, so off I went to try to find the service dock to get my phone updated. 

 

I wandered down weird hallways, around corners and finally out into an open area where I had to climb up a treacherous hillside up to an ill-constructed gothic adobe swimming pool. Bits and pieces were crumbling and threatening to give way as I made it just about to the top. I was unable to lift myself over the edge for fear of the cornices breaking off like so much cheap Mexican pottery.

So, in my own typical fashion, I decided about that time that I just couldn’t do it, and as I was making my descent and figuring out what excuse I was going to give Reiner, I opted out of the dream and back into this world of aches and pains. 

 

----

 

My internet is down, so this had to be composed in Word to be uploaded at a later time. What’s weird is my new phone will still access the internet from my router wirelessly, although none of my desktops will connect or even download one page.

I wonder what Sharon is here to try to tell me. 

I just got off the phone with tech support at my internet provider. They had me unplugging and plugging, swapping and rebooting...low and behold. There was no problem with any of my equipment. All my desktops connect to the internet again. 

 

Meanwhile, my thinking is that Sharon is telling me, "Look what I can do! Not only can I can make this dead LED come back on, but I can take out your internet with a single swipe." 

 

So, maybe she has some objections to my installing Tinder and attempting to find companionship using crappy dating apps. I don't blame her. She was right about Lesa, though I never got a straight answer. I assumed she was supporting my little folly, but apparently she was warning me with all that blinking she was doing back in October and November, when things were first getting started with me and Lesa.  

I guess I'd rather have my connection with Sharon stay intact. I feel like I was selling her out too quickly when I jumped on board the Lesa train. I hope she understands these are just human level needs. Nobody knows me like she does on a soul level. 

 

And I really wonder what it is that she does know, now that she has passed. Are all my secrets laid bare? I guess it is inevitable, so if she's still around checking up on me, I hope she can forgive me.

Recyclable garbage

I dreamed, (or perhaps I was musing while asleep, I don't know) that I was contemplating writing Lesa one last time. I wanted to send her a survey, a kind of "what went wrong, and what can I do to improve for future relationships" type of questionnaire. 

I was also considering inviting her to a post-relationship intervention, in which I was to assemble a group of all my previous girlfriends together in one place. The purpose of this intervention would be to prevent any future missteps and determine my overall suitability for any type of relationship. Paul Simon's "Kodachrome" would be playing in the background while the girls from my past took turns bashing on me mercilessly. 

And that certainly wouldn't match my sweet imagination, by any stretch. Rienna's name came up and also some non-starters like Genny, Mona and even Sabin, perhaps, though I may be just filling in names at this point. I would hate to actually hear the feedback on some of those, as it is the stuff of cringeworthy comedy.

"It was all going so well until I grabbed his dick and told him I'd love to make love to him. Then he got all weird and started talking about friendships vs. relationships. Really killed the moment." -- Genny

or

"It was all going so well until my parents showed him the blue swirly drinking glass and told him he couldn't drink from it. Why he chose to climb up on my roof at that point and take a poop, I'll never know." -- Sabin, age 7

"When we were making out on his futon, out of the blue, he just blurts out, 'I'm not any good in bed.' It almost stopped me cold, but I was determined to get some that night, so I told him, 'Let me be the judge of that.' " -- Sharon

That last one was Sharon, on the night I first invited her over to my house. I'm not going to say that what happened after that proved me wrong or right, only that it was a testament to her determination. She was determined not to let a good piece of meat go to waste, even if it has been in the freezer too long and had ice crystals on it. It just needs a little seasoning and tenderizing. Then down it goes. Like the shark in Jaws, "Swalla ya whole."

I'm just making shit up at this point, adding filler, but these were the sense of what was going on in my dream. Saturday morning has arrived. I can look forward to my one day of recreational coffee and cannabis and musical mayhem as I stretch my breakfast into a two hour affair.

In other news, I ordered an Iphone, with the help of my friend Martin. Apple genius and fellow cult survivor, he is functionally my best friend in life right now. He is also moving to Austin, so his yearly visits may turn into once or twice a decade if I don't do my part in keeping the friendship going. 

Not that getting a smartphone has anything to do with that. I just finally let the peer envy make me cave and abandon all my righteous anti-phone zombie principles. I just wanna be like all the happy, cool people with friends and lives that are always at their fingertips, inside that little soul sucking abyss of a screen into which they stare unceasingly. 

Oh, God, what have I done?

Can't sleep, no one to talk to

 

It's such a delicate place I'm in. I feel like there is no one I can really express everything to anymore without fear of damaging the relationship I have with them. I am all alone with my godawful fucking thoughts, and giving voice to them only seems like it will be counterproductive. But they are literally eating me from the inside. 

My therapist has given her 2 weeks notice. It's ok, I was about to tell her that things weren't really working for me anyway. But I am loathe to start over with another. I can't go through retelling my story to yet another disinterested mental health professional. All the crap I went and told my shrink is now for nothing. It was never much more than having a friend to talk to every week. But now it's like my friend has moved away, leaving no forwarding address.

With Lesa, I feel like I'm treading a difficult path. I've finagled my way into a place with her where she's said lots of nice things to me. Things I am supposed to trust in and keep in my heart, though she is far away, and the promises they contain seem improbable. So if I don't hear from her, I can't express doubt or insecurity or negativity because it will ruin her perception of me, and I will lose the ground I think I've gained with her. It is the hardest thing because

if we are in a relationship, however complicated and long distance, I can't express myself to her without fear of losing her altogether. So I've written no less than 8 letters to her in the past couple of weeks, which I have judiciously decided not to send.

She's been sick and has things to deal with. But I've stopped getting my daily updates and nighttime sweet talk. And it's not for lack of her being on the internet. God damn Facebook messenger and the stupid active status reporter. I am obsessing about that, and I hate it that I can't just leave it be. Let her tell me her story and accept it. 

But I get the feeling she has other people and things that she's finding more interesting than me. We had a cozy little relationship where we would tuck each other in every night and exchange pleasant thoughts. This kind of became one sided, with me being the sad, pathetic last man standing.

So I'm still standing here, waiting for her to message me and not getting responses. Meanwhile her ex-boyfriend Danny is expressing all kinds of loving things on Facebook, to which she responds immediately. Sick or not. Fuck me. Now, look who I am. Jealous, insecure, wishing I could be the guy she cares about the most. But I'm just one of many, and not even in the rotation at the moment.

Sharon again

 

I wish I could remember what it is I dreamed last night. I know that it was vaguely about Sharon and I being in our same old situation. It was so unpleasant that I woke up briefly, though incompletely, and was relieved that it was just a dream. Usually this would free me up to reconfigure the dream more to my liking, but I don't remember much happening after that. 

I've decided to sleep in silence after my TV programs finish, so I think I'm starting to get more dreams these days. Also, I'm needing to get guidance, since my life has gone off the rails again.

Toilet leak

So far just a dream, but who knows what prescience I possess. 

I dreamed there was someone looking at my house, perhaps to buy it. Then they noticed a leak in my downstairs bathroom toilet and suddenly were not so interested in buying. 

I turned off the supply valve, and the leak stopped. I knew I would most likely have to remove the toilet and begin the process of replacing the wax sealing ring. I had done this once before at the Paradise house, so I wasn't too traumatized at the prospect. I wasn't too thrilled about it either, but I knew that this was going to be necessary or I'd be looking at rotting floorboards and a more difficult repair as a result. 

I hate house dreams. They usually mean that shit in my life has reached a certain level of disrepair, and I'm ignoring it.

Exodus

 

I live in a rat infested house. The crawlspace and garage in particular have attracted a sizeable rodent population. Or a population of sizeable rodents, both descriptors are accurate. 

The other day one nearly plopped on my head while I was opening the garage door. Apparently, he was asleep on the top of the door, and when I opened it he was jostled out of his slumber and sent down the slide to land at my feet. He was uninjured and ran off to the nearest hideout where he would wait in the queue of other rats to take his next turn on this new amusement park ride.

I decided enough was enough. While I am not a killer, I am in favor of the deportation of undesirables. I set out a trap that was big enough for a raccoon and calibrated the little trigger pad for a rat sized catch. I had discovered that if you don't do this they will walk right over the trigger and eat the bait without springing the trap. A nice piece of wood placed on the pad was just enough to bias the scale and make it easier to trip.

After finishing dinner, I heard it spring shut. I've heard the sound enough times to know exactly what it sounds like. I went out to the garage, and sure enough, I had a customer. He was banging around the cage and defying gravity, like those Mexican motorcycle riders who fly around gyroscopically inside a giant metal sphere. 

This guy wanted out but was too plump to fit through the grates. I decided not to prolong his detention and threw the cage in the car and drove him down to the creek at the end of my block. I set him free and he disappeared into the night.

I don't know if he'll return or not. It's perhaps a quarter mile from my house, and he'll have plenty of predators to deal with between the creek and my place. I do know that my job is far from over because when I went to put the trap back in the garage, I heard a thumping and thunking of the next customer scampering about in the dark. I don't have a problem escorting them to the edge of the wilderness and saying, "Begone, thou scourge of Egypt!" Let the Exodus begin.

Party on the roof

 

Not much retention of my last night's dreaming. Just that I was on a roof of some frat type situation attempting to staple some kind of tent-like banting to a creaky roof structure. Why? I dunno. 

I was getting the place fixed up for some kind of party. It seemed like the place was a decrepit, run down party house and I was in danger of either falling through the roof or falling off as I leaned out precariously over the eaves attempting to staple the tiny threads of my tent material to the rotten wood. Beer bottles were strewn about the place and people milled about in the yard in a kind of bored fashion. 

My roof decorations seemed to be critical to getting the party underway and they appeared to be ineffective. I pressed on determinedly. I soon woke up and the party never really got started.

Help me, Shannon!

 

I left my last dream only moments ago. I was standing in a pit that I had stepped into. I had sunken into the soft sandy side of it and was unable to extricate myself. I was holding onto a guitar with no strings, which I needed to hand off to someone. 

So I called to Shannon, my ex-therapist. I knew she'd be disappointed in me for having messed up the sandcastle-like finish of her freshly dug pit. It was to be a swimming pool or some other such decorative fountain but needed the finishing touches of a hardened surface. I did manage to get her attention, and she took my guitar from me, just before I woke up, still having not escaped from the pit.

Previously, I had been out walking down a road which looked like Loma Rica Road. There was a place where a burn pile was being assembled, near the corner of Las Verjeles, on the farm of a man I was familiar with. 

For some reason, I was to utilize that area for a drop point for a bag of weed that I was toting around. I didn't see my intended target, but I did see some other people coming, and I felt I needed to ditch the weed. I stashed it in the burn pile under some cedar shavings and left the area.

In a nearby, more residential area, which was unrecognizable, yet somehow my hometown, I was approached by a couple of young boys, teenage or preteen. One had a mild disposition, and I greeted him, and he passed me without incident. 

The other I greeted, but I sensed that he was going to be trouble. Something in his look told me that I needed to take him out, or he might just kill me. So rather than wait for his response, I struck him squarely in the side of the head, knocking him to the ground. 

This startled everyone: him, his friend and even me. How could I be so cold? He got up and was crying a bit and I tried to console him.

"I didn't mean to knock you out. I really thought you were going to be more of a threat." 

I tried to apologize, and, at some point, found a guitar that I intended to play, as some sort of peace offering. The guitar had no strings, however, and I wandered about for a bit trying to find some. 

It was at this point that I stumbled into Shannon's pit. She had taken my guitar and set it down carefully and was in the process of trying to find me a rope when I woke up.

Damn, too bad she quit her job at Sutter-Yuba Mental Health. Now who will I tell my crazy dreams to?