Worried man

"It takes a worried man...to sing a worried song. It takes a worried man, to sing a worried, worried song...I'm worried now. But I won't be worried long." This was playing in the background of my dream while I lay in bed with Sharon. 

 

We were playfully teasing one another and having a make-up make out session. It was in our little house in Paradise. The bed was familiar and the door to the bedroom was closed.

 

There was a sense of an imminent breakfast or lunch soon to interrupt our session, or things would have progressed to other familiar places. Her parents or mine were there fiddling about in the kitchen. But we were both naked and enjoying ourselves quite a bit, and the sense of it was that we were going to go for it.

I went to sleep with a sore throat and had to wake up in the middle of the night and suck on a zinc tablet. It seemed to work. I had a sudden onset of sore throat and fever after eating a huge serving of avocado hummus. 

 

I went from pigging out, talking on the phone to my friend Vivianne, to calling my mom and taking photos of the back of my throat. It looked like my tonsils, or what's left of them after a tonsillectomy, were inflamed and red. Worrisome in a time of COVID, to be sure. But I feel somewhat better today, or at least not worse. So, hi dee ho.

Nightmare

I died in my dreams last night. It was pretty quick. I don't even know what the exact thing was that killed me. Fire, I think. But everything faded to gray before I could get a chance to feel anything. 

 

I was out on my front lawn looking up at the sky and I saw a huge plume of smoke. I had a horrible feeling, like when the last fire came through our property. But this one was worse. I knew that this was it. The sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach that tells you that there is absolutely no escape at all. 

 

I thought to myself, "This is it, then. This is how I die." And the sinking feeling enveloped me and that was it. Gray. Then boom I was awake. 

 

It left me shaken. I think about death a lot. But the visceral feeling doesn't take hold like this often. 

 

My LED, my Sharon, has been with me for days. Since earlier this week, right as my GI appointment was approaching. Throughout this week, it has stayed on, blinking and turning off, but coming back on, brighter than the other lights. I don't know what she wants me to know. That she's here? 

 

I wish I felt it more. I'm an intellectual and skeptical type, but if reason fails to persuade me I am forced to rely on feeling and intuition. So, being deficient in those, I'm left in a limbo state. I want something to tell me, "This is it." 

 

The dream was like that, but not in a comforting way. It was a certainty. I was going to die because of that grey plume of smoke. 

 

 

 

I got stung by a wasp this week and my ear is looking infected. There is drainage from the back side of it, not near the site of the sting. It may be unrelated, another bug bite, perhaps. 

 

I saw a spider sneaking behind a mirror in my room tonight. I tried to catch it but it disappeared into god knows where, right before my eyes. I removed every picture frame and peeked behind them. It was gone. Now I'm unable to sleep, but am tired from waking up in the middle of the night and looking at my ear.

In other news, I get to possibly entertain one of my longtime friends, Diane, from bible study in a couple of weeks. She and a friend were coming up on a road trip and talked about staying with me for a bit. I was happy for the idea of company, but expect it to fall through. 

 

Sure enough, Nancy, the one who instigated the whole thing appears to have backed out. I told Diane she was still welcome, if that wouldn't be too awkward. She surprised me by saying that she might still come up, perhaps sooner, since her son lives in Northern California. So, I have been cleaning my house and daydreaming about having my first female friend visit in, well, forever.

I feel a mix of agitation and excitement, while also trying to fend off the feeling of hopefulness. But daydreams persist, since I've had a bit of a crush on her for a long time. Best to put those thoughts aside and just treat it like a kindhearted visit from an old friend, since that's what it is. 

 

But my death dream and my ear has me concerned. Not to mention that I'm waiting for results from several biopsies taken during my upper and lower GIs. Why do I insist on having things to live for when death seems so certain and imminent?

Sharon comes through again

As a comforting gesture my LED came on this morning right after I finished my last dose of colonoscopy prep. I lay down to sleep for a couple of hours and I noticed it was on. I was both reassured and also slightly alarmed. She is showing up because of what? This IS a big deal and I may be seeing her sooner than expected? 

 

I've been trying to play it down in my mind. Time will pass, and this appointment will be over. But what then? Will they discover something horrendous? I appreciate her showing up, regardless.

As I drifted to sleep, I was dreaming of her and I in the kitchen of our house in Paradise. There was a wasp in the kitchen and I was on edge. Two days ago, I was stung on the ear as I was picking up tin cans by my trashcan in the morning, so I'm kinda paranoid now of anything buzzing about. 

 

I tried swatting it with a flyswatter, but the flyswatter broke. I used the handle and pinned it up against the blender by one leg. It was going to get away, but Sharon was there to help me. She was going to get cup and try to trap it, but then we noticed it had erupted from the back end with this milky, cottony web-like substance. 

 

We were marveling at that when I awoke to wet sheets and underwear from my own eruption. No shit. True story, really happened.

So, it's almost time for my neighbor to come pick me up and take me to the appointment. I hope time really does pass instantaneously as people have told me while under anesthesia. I don't want to be conscious of any of what goes on today, especially the endo part.

Sharon starts hanging with tweekers

I was living in an apartment with Sharon, and she was able bodied, if not employed. I think I was, which added to my indignance when I discovered that she was having a couple of shiftless loser druggies over while I was at work. 

 

It started when I saw the glass pipe sitting on the little table in our bedroom. I sniffed the pipe but like good tweekers they had cleaned or smoked the residue right down to nothing. But as a pot smoker, I was savvy about the difference in the equipment. 

 

I went into the living room and found Sharon cleaning the walls with Windex. Yep. Tweeking. 

 

I began the unpleasant chore of confronting her about the drug usage. As a jealous husband type, I wondered about the possibility of a sexual component to the already duplicitous arrangement of having guys over for drugs behind my back. I mentioned it, and she somehow allayed my suspicions. 

 

I was somehow aware that I wouldn't have been that easily convinced in real life. Sharon really liked sex. She wouldn't be just doing drugs if there was an opportunity of doing drugs AND having sex. She was just that kind of animal. But somehow we got past that for the moment, and I just focused on my dissatisfaction with her choice of friends.

In a few minutes they arrived back. There were a few moments of unpleasant introductions where I was a few seconds from tossing them out just on general principals. I didn't abide tweekers, as I don't in real life. But I didn't want to be an unreasonable dick, so I waited to see what their plans were. 

 

They tried to assuage me with promises of beer and empanadas. They told me to chill, and they'd buy some dinner, and I could just kick back. But if I did so, I'd be approving of their other activities, and I wasn't having it. So, I sat there, kind of pouting and not really taking part but not quite willing or able to eject them from the apartment.

Presently, they had to make their "food run," which I knew was code for drug acquisition. It turns out I was right. 

 

"Fine," I said, "Just go." 

 

But Sharon wanted to go with them, and I wasn't too happy about that. 

 

"Why do you need to go?" I asked her with displeasure in my voice. She offered some kind of less than reasonable excuse, but I was forced to buy it out of respect for our relationship of trust.

I became like a disembodied observer, not present but able to see their little escapade of drug acquisition from some etheric vantage point. They were breaking into a prison by climbing over the electric fence. 

 

I watched, amazed at their determination as they climbed up and over, enduring the shocks but saying, "Ouch. Ohh. Owww," the whole way. Even the inmates in the prison yard were impressed. No one climbs the fence to escape, and here these knuckleheads were breaking IN.

Meanwhile, the guards noticed that something was afoot, and out came the automatic weapons. Someone, I believe it was Sharon, had begun firing into the yard as a distraction. 

 

Soon there was a full on gun battle and melee ensued. This was the diversion for which she was conscripted. It was like watching some terrorists trying to achieve some objective through the most desperate of means. 

 

I tried to protest but my ghostly observer status prevented it. I got mad and started planning my escape from this reality back to my real life, the one where I knew I'd be writing this down before the memories faded. This one. Here, now. Ughh.

Fleabag Hotel Psychic

I don't know what I was doing at this fleabag hotel, but it seems I was there in somewhat of a research reporter capacity. I was tooling around in a wheelchair, and I openly admitted that I was faking being disabled just so I could use the convenience of its mode of travel.

 

The subject of my research was a troubled young girl who was being oppressed by demons. The oppression manifested as her appearing to be a psychic. She was a kind of meek blonde girl, reminiscent of the actress in Repulsion. 

 

I somehow convinced the girl that she might need some spiritual attention, which I would attempt to procure for her at the local adult book and video store. I went in to talk to the proprietor, and he knew of the girl and agreed to let me conduct an "interview" in his store. We skirted around the word "exorcism," but this was where it was headed, and we both knew it. 

 

I had an accomplice, a portly business-suited salesman type with a somewhat sleazy demeanor. Like he'd sell you religion or porn depending on your needs. We arranged to have the girl meet up with us in a hotel room adjacent to the porn store.

While we were in the store waiting, Javier Martinez showed up and was a little perturbed at our arrangement. It didn't appear above board, and he told us so. Well, he told me. The salesman dude hid under the bed when he showed up. 

 

I was a little embarrassed at the appearance of things, but we really weren't doing anything untoward. We intended to help this girl to manage with her demonic gift of psychic ability. And maybe do a little exorcism should the need arise. 

 

Javier left, and the salesman popped back out from under the bed, full of excuses for abandoning me to face the consternation alone. At this point, I was trying to make sense of my dream and kind of planning on how I would proceed, so I could both record it and also continue in it a while longer. I couldn't do both, it seems. 

 

It was then that I got a text message from Jeannette Reina through my Words With Friends app on my phone.

 

"Any dream action?" it read. 

 

That sealed it. I woke up, and here I am.

Robert Leon had a gun

 

I think we (not sure who else comprised the "we") were in a convenience store. Browsing the bins was none other than Robert Leon. He was a wanted man, a fugitive who was considered armed and dangerous. I saw a gun in his hand and mentioned it quietly to those in my group. He pointed it at us menacingly and backed out of the store.

That's about all I remember. Dry eyes are back. Thanks a lot, Words With Friends, or Words With Random People, as it were.