Stuck in a quantum time loop at Art's place

I was stuck in a dimension-shifting time loop, but as usual, I didn't know it at the time. Things would appear to change, and the characters would change roles, but template was the same: I was stuck at the house of Art Mele, my former employer. He had a work-from-home business going on, but he still had lots of his employees from YC Honda, myself and Glenda from parts being two of them.

On one occasion, a group of us were sitting around the lunch table, and we overheard one of the secretaries talking about an impending termination. Someone was getting the axe. From the other room we heard the sound of Glenda as she burst into tears.

"I can't believe you're letting me go!" she sobbed. "After all these years! How will I survive?" Glenda had been fired in real life for embezzling more than $60,000 in parts through various fraudulent accounting techniques.

Smug faces around the lunch table were tight lipped, but you could see the malevolent mirth in their eyes. They were just glad it wasn't their number that had come up. Everyone knew that cuts were coming, and with Glenda as the sacrificial goat, they could breathe easier, at least for another day.

Lounging around seemed to be the main occupation at Art's place, and yet everyone scrambled to look busy when the boss came around. I hastened to make myself useful as the town crier of mail delivery.

"The gun books are here! The gun books are here!" I announced gleefully. A new paperback edition of Guns and Ammo was always something Art looked forward to, so being the one to bring him the news of his favorite publication's arrival was sure to garner favor. 

I brought Art a copy after briefly thumbing through it. The cover was wrinkled, and a few pages were dog-eared. This wouldn't go over well, I thought to myself, projecting into the future my own imminent termination. One was always on unsteady ground around here. Art didn't look up, so I left the book on the counter and made myself scarce.

Next, I found myself with a date. It was after hours, so the protocol was to party and have fun. People paired up and got busy drinking and making out in various rooms of the house. I don't know who the date was, but I realized that it was someone other than my significant other, and although I might have wanted to mess around, I was fearful of getting caught. I tactfully detached her from my arm and looked around for my real date.

This is where the time loop started becoming evident. It wasn't my wife, but Lesa, who I was concerned about catching me. She was just leaving the party when I was being flirted with by this other girl. I chased after her just as it began to rain. I saw her crossing the street as I stood there fiddling with an impossibly bent and mangled umbrella. She vanished, and the loop reset.

I was back in the house, wandering through the many rooms of drunken revelers. I got a few invitations to join groups of people, but I was looking for my wife, so I declined. Finally, I found her, and we went into one of the rooms and got onto the bed. Partially disrobed, we began to make out, her straddling me and me tugging at her undergarments. I wanted her in the worst way, but I had forgotten to lock the door, so we had to keep it PG-13.

Finally, I'd couldn't stand it anymore, and I got up to lock the door, but the damned lock was busted. That's just great, I thought. Now we're going to be joined by any Tom, Dick and Harry that wants to horn in on the action. 

A minute passed, and my prediction came true. In walked a grey haired potato of a man in his fifties. I looked him over and decided that he was me, or a possible version of me. I didn't like the looks of this. My wife was sure to fall for his self-effacing charm and his helpful manner. 

"She's not going to have sex with you!" I blurted out preemptively. I realized that my statement hadn't ruled out the possibility of him trying to have sex with me, but I didn't bother to qualify or clarify my statement. This version of me wasn't my type.

The next thing I knew, my wife was up off the bed and engaged in a conversation with this lumpy fellow. He attempted to swing dance with her right there in front of me, giving her a few twirls, which she apparently enjoyed. 

"Don't you need to find a tow truck or something?" she said to me. 

Damn. She was right. I did need to find a tow truck, since my car had been stuck here for days. It was the reason for this entire time loop, the reason I couldn't just up and leave the party and drive away. And this guy, as it happened, was a tow truck driver. 

I went out to look at my car, a black NSX in a state of partial disassembly, and hung my head. It was in too bad of a condition to even be towed. I was never going to get out of here. I woke up, frustrated and jealous, but not just a little relieved.

Leisure Suit Edmund

Last night, I dreamed I saw Edmund, an old friend from the cult who died recently. He was wearing a white polyester leisure suit, but otherwise, he looked about the same as when I knew him back in the '80s. Unfortunately, my neighbor texted me and woke me up before I could pack my dream up to carry it back to this side, so all I have are a few impressions.

I was walking in a mall with Richard and RJ when I bumped into Edmund. I thought it was strange, physically bumping into a ghost, and I told him so.

"Hey, Edmund!" I said, "It's great to see you, but how is it that I can bump into you, what with you being dead and all?"

"It's not that difficult," he said, and he went on to explain some of the technical details of how the dead can physically interact with the living. "It's like this," he said, and he reached out his finger and put it on Richard's shoulder. I could see the fabric of Richard's shirt move slightly.

Richard didn't react, so I placed my finger right where Edmund's finger was. I could feel his finger, and I also felt the impression it made on Richard's shoulder, like I was feeling it with two sets of fingers. Richard was unaware of Edmund, but he felt me touch his shoulder, and he turned around.

"What are you doing?" he asked, looking at me strangely. 

"I am giving you a message from Edmund. He's right here. Can't you see him?"

He shook his head sorrowfully. "No," he said. "I just felt you touch my shoulder."

"That was me and Edmund." I said. "He touched your shoulder right in the spot where I just did. He wanted to let you know that he's alright."

Richard looked like he was going to weep. I couldn't believe that I was actually able to talk to the dead, so I started asking Edmund a bunch of questions about the afterlife while Richard just stared at me in disbelief.

"What can you do over there? Are you able to eat and drink? What about sex? Is there any of that?" Might as well get the inside scoop, I thought to myself, who knows when I'd wind up in the same spot.

"You can do all the same things you do over here, but it's not the same, " he said.  "I mean, I haven't figured it out yet. You can eat, but you don't get full. I can have sex with a girl, and it is enjoyable, but I don't ever finish. It's kind of maddening. And while some living people will perceive you, most will not."

I felt extremely lucky to have had this interaction with him, and I took out my phone to photograph him while we walked along. I could see him on my phone's screen while I snapped the shots. His face was translucent, and I could see right through to his bones, kind of like an X-ray. He got mad and told me to stop messing around.

"You can't photograph me. It won't come out," he said. 

I looked at my phone, and it was true. All the pictures I'd taken were just regular shots of whatever was in the background. There was no trace of Edmund, no ghost image or any evidence of anything anomalous. 

"Damn," I thought out loud, "I really thought I was onto something."

 

Sometime later, I was at an outdoor venue. It was some large event that reminded me of a Grateful Dead parking lot scene, minus the tie-dyes and drugs. There was a multitude of people waiting for some event to take place, and they had all staked out spots in the town square. People had set up little areas for themselves, and some had kiosks where they were selling concessions. Everyone was pretty much settled in, and nobody wanted to move for fear of losing their spot.

A tour bus rolled in, and one of the representatives came out and asked for volunteers to help set up the group's tent. Nobody got up to help, so I grudgingly got to my feet and started trudging toward the tour bus. Lazy bastards, I thought. Out of this whole entire crowd, not one lousy volunteer? One other guy, probably reading my thoughts, got up too, and we followed the representative.

I lost track of the time while we were helping out, and my memory is pretty scant on detail. I did lose my seat, so when I was done, I had to go wandering around looking for another spot to camp out for the event. As I was looking for a place to sit down, I came across what I thought were some rattlesnake eggs. I got a little startled at first, but upon closer inspection, they turned out to be colored pebbles.

<ding>

I had to answer my neighbor's text, so I woke up and was unable to get back to sleep and rejoin the dream. Oh, well, another early start to the day won't hurt me, I guess.

In my father's house...and auto dealership

I had a dream in which I was working at my dad's Honda dealership and living in his mansion. It was one of those tentative, tenuous situations, and I was not at ease with the arrangement. I was constantly under his scrutiny, and my stay was conditional and performance based. Excel at work, or you'll be fired. Keep your room spotless, or you'll be out.

Driving home one afternoon in an Odyssey mini-van, he confided in me that one of his friends had a vehicle with a door lock that was acting up.

"It's just that when you press the button, the door won't unlock," he said, taking a drag from his cigarette.

I had a series of questions lined up to try to determine the nature of the problem, but he skirted my troubleshooting process and cut to the chase:

"One of my techs already replaced the actuator," he said, expecting that I would be as stumped as he was. Door lock actuators are the obvious culprit.

"OK," I said, then I took another tack. "But does the door unlock from the inside button?" 

"I don't know," he said, and he kept on driving, flicking his cigarette ash out the window. "We never tried that."

"I'd have to look at it," I told him. "But there is a chance that your tech didn't hook up one of the rods, and maybe the door actually is unlocking, but the little plunger just won't pop up."

He tried my suggestion right then while we were driving, since apparently, we were driving his friend's car as we spoke. The door was unlocking, but the little plunger stayed down. He quickly slammed the door, and we continued driving toward home.

"You will get to keep your job a little longer if you can get the plunger working again," he said.

I took that as a win, since I was pretty confident that I'd be able to figure it out. Effects have a tendency to have causes, so I was just going to take things logically, one step at a time.

Back at the mansion, he was setting up for a pickle ball game with his friend. I didn't know who this guy was, but he seemed to shadow my Dad like a stalkery boyfriend. He kind of creeped me out, and he had this habit of standing way too close and leaning in even further when he spoke. I busied myself finding a suitable racquet.

"I left my racquet at the country club," I said to an indifferent audience of two. Tough room, I thought to myself, and I kept sorting through some of the loaners my dad had in the closet. 

None of the racquets seemed to be the right size, and some were completely wrong for the application. Racquet ball, pickle ball, squash -- who knew there were so many different types of racquets? I finally settled on one that looked exactly like the one I used to use in the '90s, when Sharon and I had briefly joined a health club. It was a smallish, blue composite with the typical faux leather wrapped handle.

"This one will do," I said. But they had already left, so I put the racquet back and went looking around the house to see what I could see.

It was an interesting place. He lived in the top floor of an older apartment building. The outside wasn't in the best shape, so I was surprised to find that the inside looked like a millionaire's lair. It was filled with antique furniture from the Victorian era, and the rooms all had high vaulted ceilings with fancy moldings and expensive looking chandeliers. 

It must have been designed for a giant, though, because some of the dressers were 12 feet tall at least. I opened a door and found myself on top of one of these ridiculously tall dressers. It swayed a little bit, so I assumed I'd better not continue walking on it.

"That's OK," my dad said, startling me as he addressed me from somewhere behind me. "It's secure enough in its corner there." I wasn't convinced, so I stepped back into the hallway.

"I have to find a place to put my bike," I said. "Perhaps I can put it out on the balcony if it is private?"

He told me that it was indeed private, and that they owned the entire floor of the building, but the neighborhood wasn't the best, and so it might not be safe from a highly motivated thief. I decided not to risk it, and thought about bringing it into my room with me, but there was beach sand on the tires.

"Just leave it in here," said my dad's ever-present mystery friend, stepping uncomfortably close again and talking directly into my nose, his pelvis brushing against mine in the process.

I took a step back, thanked him for his advice and left the bike in the hallway, sandy tires and all. I wondered just how long it would take to get myself kicked out of this living arrangement. I was sure points were being taken off for not warming up to his friend's not so subtle advances. I don't know what kind of a deal he had going with my dad, but I got the impression that if push came to shove, I'd be the one who had to go.

Phillip Giuistino gets caught shoplifting, and I become anathema at the survivalist party

 

I dreamed there was a survivalist party going on at the local park. People were setting up camp and "roughing it" for a couple of days, living off the land and forming a makeshift society to ensure that things didn't descend into anarchy. I was responsible for finding dead bees and giving them a proper burial. 

"There you are, soldier," I said to a crumpled bee carcass. "I don't know how we're going to notify your next of kin, since we can't identify your remains."

Samantha rolled her eyes at me. "You're in my spot," she said.

I looked up and down the long row of folding tables, noting that there were many empty spots. I didn't know why she was being so particular, couldn't she see that I was busy? I made a faint protest, but that only escalated things, and soon she was making her case to the superintendent, Bob Hansell, whose face wearied at prospect of sorting out yet another conflict involving me.

"Just give her the spot, Andrew, and let's move on," he said evenly. I grudgingly complied.

Soon, however, there was a more pressing matter to be attended to. The tables had to all be covered before the sprinklers came on. A rapid unrolling of Visqueen ensued, and the gaps where the covers overlapped had to be held down manually to insure that there was no leakage. I pressed down on a section of the plastic, holding two tables together the best I could, but the water was still getting through to the table, damaging the particle board. 

I was aghast. This kind of dereliction of duty could get me kicked out of the collective, and I'd be off foraging on my own. I wandered around the encampment, trying to make myself useful. I caught sight of Bob Hansell and Samantha in a cave, talking in hushed tones. I got close enough to overhear the last bit of their conversation. 

"I heard someone saying that he got mad and blew up at someone earlier," said Bob. "And you know what that means," he added ominously.

I just knew that the were talking about me, so I got on my ten-speed and pedaled away from the park, into the sprawling interchange of freeways, bike paths and city streets of Pico Rivera. I didn't know where I was headed exactly. I had a vague idea about visiting some friends in LA, but I hadn't ever traveled there by bicycle before. I was confused by all the different lanes and signs pointing toward various onramps, all promising to deliver you to some far-off destination.

I kept to the surface streets, and soon I encountered Richard Leon, my friend from the cult. He was walking with his ex-wife, Gloria and with his brother RJ. I almost crashed my bike trying to stop and circle around to greet them.

"Hey, guys!" I said excitedly. "Long time, no see. Gloria, geez! How long has it been?"

They acted as if they couldn't see or hear me. Dejected, I turned back in the direction I'd been headed, towards an industrial part of LA. I rode for what seemed like hours, through parking lots, over bridges, through dangerous neighborhoods, and eventually I found myself in front of a dingy warehouse office. 

I could hear voices inside. It was Richard, Gloria and RJ again. I'd had no idea that this was their office, but given their chilly reception earlier, I hastened to get out of there before I was seen. Unfortunately, I bumped the door with my handlebars as I tried to make my getaway, and the whole troupe came tumbling out of the doorway.

"Hey, Andrew!" Richard said enthusiastically. "Look, guys. Look who it is! Come on in, my brother." We all called one another brother, a token remnant of our Bible study-speak. 

"I can't stay," I said, "Besides, I didn't think you wanted me around, you know, because of earlier."

He didn't offer any explanation, but he looked a little sad that I was leaving. Oh, well, I thought. It was for the best. I was persona non grata at the camp, why should I tarnish their reputation by association?

Off I pedaled, into a more sedate, suburban section of the city, where I met up with another old associate, Phillip Giuistino, a schoolmate from the fourth grade. He hadn't aged much, and he still looked about 11 years old. He carried himself in much the same manner as before as well, bounding around like a stuntman and exuding excess energy.

"We're going to need some stuff," he told me as we walked into a convenience store on the corner of an aging strip mall.

I watched as Phillip engaged the shopkeeper while at the same time placing items in his backpack. He thought he was being clever, but the shopkeeper was onto him.

"Put all of that stuff back," he said, "or I'll have you arrested." Phillip complied, and we stepped outside the store momentarily, but he wasn't done yet.

"Hold my backpack," he said, and he went back inside, leaving me at the door.

He had another, smaller backpack, and this time, he just went for a quick fill up, trying to avoid being seen by the shopkeeper. It was unsuccessful, and the proprietor spotted him right as he was walking out. I tried to warn him:

"Phillip!" I yelled. "RUN!" I considered my words, and I realized that the shopkeeper might think me an accessory, so I added, "Or don't run. Definitely, don't run. Put back the candy first, then run, maybe." I honestly hadn't known that he had planned any of this, I kept telling myself.

But it was too late. The shop owner grabbed him by the scruff like the little hoodlum he was. He tried to wriggle free, but the man held him firmly aloft, his little feet dangling in midair like a wayward kitten being collected by his mom.

"So, what have we here?" The shopkeeper was eyeing the bright orange backpack that Phillip had left with me. 

He demanded that I open it, and I was frightened as to what I might find. If it was anything stolen, I'd surely be going away with Phillip in the back of a squad car. But when I opened the bag, all it contained was a plastic sack full of wild bird seed. 

"Someone's been feeding the ducks in the park," the shopkeeper said, sounding almost accusatory. "Well, on your way, then," he said to me.

While Phillip remained in his custody, awaiting his fate with the police, I thought about returning to the camp. Possibly, with this wild bird seed, I could barter my way back into their good graces. The bird seed was used to lure the ducks close enough to capture, so that the scavenging, park-dwelling survivalist groups could feed their hungry members. Perhaps today, the ducks would be feeding someone, and not the other way around.

----

I awoke soon, and the dream had left me feeling like this.

The Psychic Always Rings Twice

Last night I dreamed I was living in a house in the city with a group of young people. There was a girl in her mid-twenties who was a survey taker living with us. She was always breaking out her survey packets and asking us a lot of questions about our personal beliefs. It was a daily routine, and the only time she'd break this routine would be if I was expecting a call from my psychic. She explained her reasoning thusly:

"I don't want to find out that your psychic friend knows all the answers before I even ask the questions. I'd be terrified, and then I'd have to believe whatever she said."

"Yeah," I said, laughing. "I'd be like, 'Hey, Jeannette. You're such a good friend, Jeannette. Tell me, please, what's in store for me today?'" (I actually have a psychic friend named Jeannette. Now, I feel obligated to text her and tell her about this dream. Or maybe I should expect a call from her. Ha.)

The survey girl was just opening up another survey packet from its sealed cellophane wrapper when the phone rang. She stopped unwrapping and looked up in horror, as if her worst fears were about to be realized. It wasn't the psychic, however. It was my mom.

"Hi, Mom," I said, to the girl's great relief.

"I can barely hear you," my mom said. "Can you speak up?"

I put her on speaker, and we then went into a long conversation about the pros and cons of marijuana. I found myself articulating many points, reasoning the position that I held. My mom mostly listened, but chimed in occasionally, not necessarily disagreeing with me, but offering a complementary counterpoint here and there.

"When the plants are young," she said, "they can barely be distinguished from tomato plants. They aren't offensive or obvious at all."

"True," I said, "but when they are in full bloom, they are actually quite pretty. Who can be mad at a flower?"

Indeed. Well, this was the extent of my memory of the dream. It seems that there is a direct correlation between smoking weed and dreaming. It is more of an inverse correlation, really. The more weed I smoke, the less I dream or, if I do dream, I don't remember much. But not smoking it tends to lead to me having pot-themed dreams, so apparently, whether I smoke it or not, I seem to have pot on the brain. 

----

Epilogue. My psychic friend did indeed text me this evening out of the blue. It had been weeks since our last conversation, so this falls into the semi-spooky category. I told her about the dream, and she thought it was pretty funny. I'm not terrified, but maybe I should start believing everything she says, just to be safe.

 

Barracks Life

I dreamed I was in some kind of training camp, living in a barracks with a bunch of other guys, most of them quite a bit younger than I. It's a situation I'm used to, being the older rookie, so although I was in unfamiliar territory with regard to the specifics, the dynamic was nothing new.

I picked a top bunk and looked around at the crew of cadets filling up their spaces with personal items. Guys were hanging up posters, personalizing their tiny areas with photographs and mementos from home. My neighbor below and to the right was screening off his bed with blankets, making a tent out of the bedframe. 

"There will be shows down here," he said, winking up at me. "Strictly pay per view."

"Unless you've got some girls in there with you, I'm not interested," I said, lowering my tone several octaves, and in my best Beetlejuice voice added, "It's not my thing."

"No worries, mate," he grinned. "We've got football betting, too. Let me know if you want in on any of the action."

I nodded silently. I looked around at the barracks, which were now filled to capacity with inductees, all young men, struggling to maintain some individuality while going through the training mill, whose job it was to grind them into conformity. The guy in the bunk to the left of me addressed me abruptly:

"Don't you think it's time you finished what you started?" he asked.

I looked down at my 57-year-old body, gaunt and grey, frosted with white hairs like a winter lawn, and I sighed a long sigh. It had been a long time that I'd been on this journey --life -- and I hadn't gotten very far, it seemed. There had been so much that I'd pushed off to the side while busying myself with day to day distractions. Day to day had turned to week to week, month to month and so on, and my life, nearly 3/4 through, had little to show for it. 

"There is still time, brother," I said, quoting the ironic words from the banner hanging in the desolate town square at the end of "On The Beach." 

----

Soon thereafter, I woke up to the last few minutes of the film. Peter and Mary were reminiscing about how they met and giving one another whatever solace they could muster, given their dire circumstances.

"And it's all over now," Mary said, listlessly.

"It's all over," Peter repeats, in a soothing tone, as if he was telling a child that they'd just finished all their vegetables. 

They exchange their final words of comfort, gratitude and regret, and then Mary utters the movie's final line:

"God forgive us. Peter, I think I'd like that cup of tea now..." 

He kisses her, and the scene ends. The next shot is of the submarine. Captain Towers has already said his goodbyes to Moira, who looks on from the bluffs, her face filled with emotion as the men power away into the radiation cloud to die at home in America. The ship submerges, and they plunge ahead, into the depths, consciousness into blackness, life into death. 

Back in the town square, the banner flails forlornly in the breeze as papers blow through the abandoned streets.

Greg and the marijuana garden

I dreamed I was living with the folks again. They'd bought the old Orrick place in Paradise and had it rebuilt to suit their needs. They wanted a big place with many rooms to accommodate all the relatives that would be staying there on visits. I took to the place right away and started up a little marijuana patch in their freshly planted vegetable garden.

Several months had gone by, and my plants were getting taller. I've always taken pride in my greenish thumb. I can't really grow much of anything else, but I excel at cultivating the devil's weed. They had been OK with it this time around, unlike the few times I tried to get away with it as a teenager.

Or so I thought. One day, Greg called a family meeting. He wanted to talk about adding more rooms to the house, so he invited a team of architects and engineers to discuss the finer points of the plan. Some of it even involved widening the city bridges, since they posed a congestion problem that he felt would impact future guests. Right before the meeting, which I was reluctantly forced to attend, I saw that all of my plants were gone.

"What happened to my plants?" I kept asking, interrogating everyone I saw. 

People just looked at me strangely and continued to file into the meeting, taking seats in the padded folding chairs. My mom took me aside and said:

"It was Greg. He's concerned about a new technology that is able to account for every single marijuana plant on the planet. He's sorry, but your plants had to go."

I couldn't accept that answer, so I waited for Greg at the meeting. I wanted to give him what for about tearing out the plants, but since it was their house, I really didn't have any grounds. Still, I wanted to try to reason with him or allay his concerns about the threat of this super surveillance software that he was so worried about.

"They aren't going to pursue every sprout and seedling," I told him. "You should see some of the stuff growing up here that goes unreported. I just want to do a small fraction of that." In my mind, I held the more reasonable view.

"Imagine how I feel," Greg said to my mom. "It's like telling a woman that you have to take away the medicine that she relies on, and that she has to give it up. It doesn't make you very popular. Someone, please tell me when that one lady shows up. I forget her name."

Yvette Nicole Brown

My mom said nothing. I watched as a few more people crowded in. One was a black lady, a roundish comedienne who has been in my dreams before. I'll think of her name in a minute. She entered the room with a flourish, wearing a flapper outfit, some form fitting black sequined dress with tassels and, of course, the obligatory pillbox hat to match. 

"Who's forgettin' my name?" she bellowed. "Miss Dee has arrived!"

 

I intercepted her before she got to my stepdad. I wanted to commiserate with her about my feelings toward Greg at the moment. I felt she'd make a powerful ally. She wasn't interested, though, and she took a seat after being handed a complimentary gift bag by mom. 

I decided to look in the gift bag under my seat, and found it contained a bottle of tequila. I was contemplating opening it right there when my half-brother David entered the room, scowling into his gift bag. 

"I'm not sticking around for this," he said, and he opened his bottle of liquor as he exited the room.

Finally, a kindred soul, I thought. I left with him, and we went back to my room to talk shit about parents in general, and Greg in particular. I reasoned out my latest beef with Greg to him, and he seemed sympathetic enough, but his sourness went way back to the days of our dear old dad, and it had nothing to do with Greg. This was my fight.

"I mean, I can't really complain," I said, "since they are putting a roof over my head...but FUCK!" I just couldn't get past the idea that they'd pulled up my plants so heartlessly. 

I woke up grumpy, pissed at myself, mainly, for sleeping in extra late just to wind up having this crappy dream.

Bullets, Strippers and the Pillbox Hat

 

I dreamed that Sharon and I were holed up in a cheap motel in a no-name desert town. She was an invalid, although not completely bedridden. Our world consisted of TV shows and TV dinners, and the only time we ever opened the door was for food deliveries. Despite the stagnancy of our mundane routine, our life was generally pretty peaceful. Occasionally, Sharon would order something from Amazon or from a TV advertisement just to break the monotony. 

One day, Sharon saw a black guy on TV advertising for a local fundraiser. They were sending strippers out to people's homes to collect, in hopes of garnering higher donations. Sharon was all over it, and within minutes of her making the call on the big rotary dial hotel telephone, a knock came on the door.

"Special delivery," a voice came from outside.

I hadn't been aware of any recent orders, so I was a bit skeptical, but I opened the door anyway. The black guy from the TV ad was standing on the doorstep, dressed as a cheesy drag queen. The sequined mini dress didn't pair well with his overdeveloped musculature, and his face, though round and somewhat babyish, was quite incongruous with the shade of lavender lipstick he was wearing. His speech had an effeminate vocal quality, and he spoke with slight lisp.  

"I'm here to entertain you, sweetie," he said. 

I wasn't sure if he was speaking to me or to Sharon. I began to tell him that there must have been a mistake, that I hadn't ordered any adult entertainment, but Sharon popped up out of bed and grabbed her purse. I thought she was just going to give him a five spot to cover his gas, and to apologize for the mixup, but instead she pulled out a twenty and handed it to him. 

"Oh, thank you dear," he said demurely, "and the children thank you. Are you sure you don't want me to entertain you, just for a bit?"

Sharon declined, and I just shook my head. He left, and then Sharon gave me the scoop. She'd ordered the stripper, but apparently had failed to specify gender, so they must have just sent over whoever was available, assuming that since a female made the call, that a male would be the preferred choice. 

She put on a beaded and bedazzled pillbox hat, and looking as innocent and sweet as a church grannie from the '40s, said to me, "It's just as well. You couldn't handle a female stripper. You'd be creaming your jeans."

"You're right," I said. "I couldn't handle it. But I would most likely injaculate, so instead of creaming my jeans, my brain would just explode." (The Chinese practice of semen retention had long been a subject of debate between the two of us, and neither one of us was really a fan.)

We went back to watching TV, and I grabbed the remote from the dresser. Next to the remote was an assortment of bullets, mostly large caliber rifle rounds. I picked one up and showed it to Sharon. 

"Do you suppose that the stripper left these here?" I asked. "And what caliber do you think they are?" I knew nothing of calibers and grains, only that they looked intimidatingly large and very lethal. 

"I don't know, baby," Sharon said, and she flashed me a smile. "Do you like my new hat?"

I did like her hat very much. I smiled and put her back to bed, her and her pillbox hat, cute as a button and snug as a bug in a rug.

You're a dipshit, Charlie Brown!

 

 

I dreamed I was in a convalescent home, convalescing. Perhaps it was a nursing home, I don't know. There were nurses attending to me while I was laid up in bed bed. I had a pretty blonde nurse, but I don't think she liked me very well, and I can't say as I blame her. I was kind of a grump. 

"I'm just going to give you your art supplies, Mr. Golding," she said, and she left me with a coffee cup full of pens and a notepad.

I picked out a fountain pen and made a crude drawing of a Peanuts character on the pad. The pen began to leak, so I held it upside down, and it started dripping black ink on my fingers. I scrawled a caption to my sketch in an off-kilter, ragged font: "You're a dipshit, Charlie Brown!" 

The nurse came back in a few minutes to check on me, and I handed her my drawing. She must have thought it was meant as a critique of her nursing skills because she gave me a scowl and crumpled up the paper.

"We'll have no more of that kind of thing, Mr. Golding," she chided as she took the pad and pens away from me.

She brought me a half a pot of cold, stale coffee and set it on the bedside coffee maker, flipping the little orange switch to reheat it to a safe, lukewarm temperature. This is what I got for crossing her, I supposed, reading the thoughts she was telegraphing with her brusque manner. 

"It wasn't about you," I said weakly. "It was just a drawing. The pen was leaking, and I had to write something or the ink was going to leak all over me." My words had no effect, and she turned her attention to the person in the next bed, ignoring me entirely.

Sometime earlier in the dream, I'd been in an automotive training school with Chris Knoll as my teacher. I was learning how to fabricate a tire from raw rubber, spinning it on a lathe and cutting the material to make nice beveled edges and a smooth, slick surface. I wasn't getting the hang of it, though, and Chris had to stop me before I ruined the piece entirely. 

"Whoa, whoa, whoa, Tex," he said as he eased back the feed mechanism. "You'll burn through that thing in no time. Slow and steady." 

"Now we know whose to blame for this mess," another student chimed in. He was an older fellow with an Aussie accent. "We're all doomed," he went on. "Doomed by the very breath we are about to breathe. Thanks a lot, mate."

(I get a lot of bleedthrough in my dreams, so I suspect it was my TV putting dialogue in my characters' mouths from "On The Beach," a movie that I have queued to play in my all-night sleep soundtrack.) 

I laughed at his spot on Aussie vocal intonation as he taunted me. Chris left me on my own for a minute to practice my technique on the lathe, but he was back before I could make any significant improvement.

"You're clearly not cut out for this," he said, looking at the pitifully uneven surface. "Look how much material you've wasted, and it's still not right." Chris was a perfectionist and was just being nit-picky, I thought to myself. My skills had improved slightly, at least with the beveled edges.

----

Well, I'm awake now, I guess. It is still early, so maybe I will open the gate for the tree cutter, and I'll try to hit the resume button on my dream. I hope I get the pretty nurse again.

 

The chef's discount

I dreamed Uncle Steve, my Mom, my stepmom Gere and I were staying at a beachside condo. It was another all white motif: white, furniture, carpet and appliances, but with a tinge of gray from too many years of whisking cobwebs away without ever washing or painting anything. Other things were wrong with the place too, a few loose moldings here and there, door locks that didn't work and carpet that came pre-loaded with beach sand. 

"It's a steal," said Uncle Steve, slyly, "We are getting the 'Chef's discount.'" My mom eyed him suspiciously, but remained silent.

I took the opportunity to make even more of a mess of the place by opening all the drawers and cabinets to see what was in them and leaving all the items on the floor, much to my stepmom's chagrin. I caught a glimpse of the ire on her face, and it told me that I'd better start cleaning the place up, Cat-In-The-Hat quick-like, or I'd be sleeping outside.

"I'll get this place cleaned in a jiffy," I promised, but her countenance didn't relent. She had resting bitch face from years of putting up with my shit.

Feeling the burn from her laser eyes, which kept following me as I fumbled about with the silverware, I was unable to complete any of the cleanup. I kept starting one thing or another, then she'd look at me, and I'd get so spooked that I'd forget what I was doing and move on to the next project. It was no wonder she was so frustrated with me. I was like a distracted puppy that simply wouldn't get down to business.

I went into one of the bathrooms, but finding it had no toilet paper, I went into the next to procure some. Steve was lounging in a bubble bath.

"Is it OK to steal some TP?" I asked, still cowering a bit from Gere's withering glare earlier.

"Sure, dude," said my uncle, nonchalantly grabbing a roll with his wet hands and tossing it to me.

I caught the roll and took off like a running back, getting to the other bathroom in the nick of time. Damn these bathrooms and their non-functional door locks, I thought to myself as I dropped trow and hurriedly got down to business. 

I decided that perhaps a trip to the store to restock our barren pantry would assuage Gere's anger with me, so I took the family dog with me to pick up some supplies. Things didn't go as planned, however, and the overzealous Irish Setter took off after some people whose shopping cart contained the motherload of all meat purchases. I found him at the checkout counter, where he had somehow gotten rung up and put on the conveyor with all the meat. I grabbed him and apologized to the customer, but the checkout lady told me that I would now be responsible for the purchase of all that meat.

"Very well, then," I said, and I paid for the meat. Perhaps a giant barbecue would get me back in my stepmom's good graces.

I came back to the apartment to find that we'd been moved from our substandard room to an even crappier one. This new suite had a broken stove. So much for my barbecue idea. Steve was out "putting something in a pipe somewhere," so I went down to the front desk to complain about the room, but there was a long line to see the attendant. I took a number and put it in a plastic shopping basket, one of those little hand-held jobs that you use when you don't really want to buy that much at the store, and waited for my turn.

"I guess I need to register a complaint," I said, depositing the ticket in my empty basket and leaving it on the counter. "Our rooms were switched, and we have one without a stove."

The owner came out and addressed me directly:

"We are comping the room," he said with a wink. "We are giving you the chef's discount, because you are a chef. And don't worry, we'll have the new stove in in time for dinner." 

Leave it to my uncle to somehow get a free room by telling the hotel staff that I was a famous chef. I wondered what miracles I was going to have to perform to convince anyone that I wasn't a complete fraud.

Later in the dream, I was walking on a road near a cliff. It reminded me of Pearson Road in Paradise, only there was a cliff on one side of it where sea erosion had eaten away the shoulder. I had to walk in traffic to avoid falling off. The town must have been aware of the problem, since the lines on the road were painted around the portions of the road that had fallen away, like a body is chalk outlined on the pavement at a crime scene.

To make matters worse, the road got very steep, very quickly, and I found myself struggling to remain upright. At the peak of the hill, the angle was actually over-vertical, and I had to grip the pavement with both hands like a mountain climber, my feet dangling under me. I imagined that cars had to get a good running start at this hill, or they would just tumble backwards. It was too much for me, however, and I gingerly eased my way back down the hill, narrowly avoiding a nasty slide down the asphalt.

In another part of the dream, I was riding Steve's motorcycle down a similarly dysfunctional rural road adjacent to a creek. The road kept getting narrower because the water was high, and it disappeared at some point and got replaced by a walking trail too narrow and rocky for the motorcycle to ride on. I got off and started pushing, slogging my way down a trail that looked like it had been paved with one long poop. I wondered what manner of cement truck could have delivered such a large, clearly defined turd. It was seemingly endless, and I soon was considering crossing the creek, high water be damned.

I managed to get out of that situation, how I don't know. But the next thing I knew, I was back in the city, walking the family dog again. The dog was a handful, and I kept having to correct him with jerks on the leash. I looked into his eyes, and I noticed that it wasn't the Irish Setter from earlier. It was Whiskey, my deceased shepherd cross, somehow youthful again. I eased up on the corrections and decided to just let him sniff whatever he pleased. He'd been a good dog, and I regretted the turn his life had taken during his final years. 

That's about it. Pretty patchy and uncoordinated, I know. Perhaps a shrink can unpack the subtle themes someday. For now, I have to get up and pee, and then on with my day: red light therapy, exercise, breakfast and gardening.

"It is what it is" vs "Life is what you make it"

Can both, in fact, be true? Can there be an objective and a subjective reality, separate but overlapping, both simultaneously visible, like transparencies on an overhead projector?  (Ha, I'm dating myself again.)

"It is what it it" suggests that whatever you and I might think of some thing, object or event, there is an certain inherent is-ness to it. It is an object, and it doesn't give a fuck what you think. Try imagining some soft, pillowy properties in a brick and see how far that gets you. A brick is a brick, not a nice pillow. Unless you are a robot. With a metal head. See, because then it wouldn't matter. You can basically lay your head anywhere because it's made out of titanium robot-head material, so you're good to go. 

OK, my language centers have taken a dip in the last minute, so I'd better take a break and go eat something. I just had that one empty musing that I had to try to express, however unsoundly. If you start looking at a clock running backward long enough, other clocks will start to look wrong. I know. I have one. It's fun to make your brain work extra hard to do the things you take for granted as automatic.

"No, it isn't," I hear you argue.

"Yes, it IS!" I state emphatically.

Well, we're at an impasse, here. That's it for now. I'm too messed up, both from my gut pain, which has returned, unbidden, to fuck with me, and from the extra weed I just smoked to try to alleviate said offensive detraction from my Saturday recreation. I'm currently experimenting with just how stoned I have to be to either play guitar really well, or not be able to play it at all. Right now, I'm somewhere in the middle.

And I never did get around to the "Life is what you make it" side of the conversation. I'll revisit this debate when my titanium robot head has gotten some rest.

916 Ink!

 

I attended a writer's group on Zoom a while back, and the experience was humbling, to say the least. Everyone seemed to be light years ahead of me. I attempted to follow the prompts and produce cohesive, thoughtful prose, but all I wound up producing was a lot of anxiety and self-doubt. I listened while other people shared what they had written, and made a few comments in the chat box, but otherwise I kept my head down. I was out of my depth.

I never went back. Here's what my mind was able to rummage from the junk drawer that night:

Prompt -- Forgiveness

 

“I’ve been trying to get down to the heart of the matter, but my will gets weak, and my thoughts seem to scatter, but I think it’s about forgiveness…” ~ Don Henley

I spent so much time opening up this Word document, and then googling “Don Henley” to make sure I spelled his name correctly, that I pretty much ate up whatever time I had allotted for writing about the actual subject.

This is a hard one for me. I’m not going to try to pontificate, like I know much about this subject. I am a grudgemaster, probably holding a record in some pettiness event for people who can’t let things go. So, for me, forgiveness is something next level, an esoteric concept that I am only vaguely aware of. I should forgive, but I mostly simmer and stew in a vat of my own anger.

I’m getting better, though. I try not to personalize trespasses in the first place, and that way there is less to forgive.

 

<timer>

 

Prompt – Something you feel guilty about but do anyway

 

I am a cannibal. 

Easy, now, don’t get ahead of me. Let me explain: I am a person who eats other living creatures, plants, animals, even the occasional inert mineral. This would technically make me an omnivore, I know. But in my particular belief system, if I can even call it that, all creatures, all matter -- all that exists -- is connected, and everything is divine, including yours truly, believe it or not.

The conflict stems from the fact that I feel a measure of guilt for my place at the top of the food chain. I love animals: those cute eyes that look so innocently at me when I walk by a cow pasture on one of my walks, the self-assured strutting of the parking lot roosters at Winco, with their demure consorts and tiny flocks of refugee chicks.  

I feel like each and every creature is just trying to have their best life, get their groove on, make hay while the sun is shining and get a good night’s sleep. And here I am, the grim reaper, the harvester, death in a pair of Wranglers, come to snuff out their life’s energy and consume their bodies without so much as a “thank you.”

I don’t actually kill anything, which makes it even worse. I am a coward, an executioner by proxy. I let the factory farming Nazis perpetrate the carrot holocaust, and I am complicit in Jennie-O’s poultry apocalypse. They do my dirty work, and I sit back, conscienceless, munching my salad and microwaved turkey.

I don’t know where to draw the line, though, since I know that in order to survive, all life must consume other life. The law of the jungle. I didn’t set up this hierarchy, but I am a willing participant, and I’m just not sure how much pain a vegetable feels when you ruthlessly pluck it from the garden.

 

<timer>

Working with Randy

I dreamed I was working with Randy Mitchell, aka the Brother Man, in a small independent auto shop. He was a service writer, as he had been when we were working at Yuba City Honda, where he'd been fired for a number of unethical business practices ranging from fraud to showing up to work drunk.  It was my first day, so I was still getting accustomed to how things were run in a non-dealership type shop. 

It was a smallish shop, and some of the bays were serving double duty as storage areas for various non-curricular purposes. I cleared a space for myself in one of the unused stalls adjacent to the office and, per Randy's instruction, began tearing apart a 2001 Honda CRV. I had the cylinder head torn off and stripped to send out to a machine shop, and I was awaiting further instructions from Randy. 

"When the head comes back," he said, "throw these parts on there," and he handed me a box of gaskets, rubber seals and spark plugs.

"Aye, aye," I said, looking through the box.

I couldn't find the repair order, so I went into the office to look for it. It was at that point that it occurred to me that I'd never actually seen a work order for this job. I wondered if Randy was up to his old tricks, running side jobs without the owner's knowledge. I was about to speak to someone about it when Randy accosted me.

"What are you doing in here?" he asked accusingly.

"If you're doing what I think you are, I can't be a part of it," I told him. "It's my first day, and I don't want to start out doing something that could get me fired."

"Then you don't want to work here," he said coldly. "This is how the game is played, so keep your mouth shut and your head down, and do as I say, or get out."

"I will not," I said, defiant. 

Since my stall was taken up with the disassembled CRV, I looked for another bay to use, but they were all being used for one thing or another. I began cleaning up, hoping a legitimate job would come in, but who was I kidding? Randy was the dispatcher, so if I didn't take part in his little side job racket, I could kiss my chances of landing any decent work goodbye. I'd be lucky to get the random oil change.

Later in the dream, I was in a large warehouse. The place was being used for some kind of business, but the owners were nowhere around, so I began staking out the place as a possible site to set up my own shop. I didn't have a clue what my business was going to be, so I looked around at the mostly empty space and tried to envision a thriving business of some kind. 

I heard a voice coming from the office area, so I went in to investigate. There was a customer standing at the front desk, apparently waiting for service. I figured I could just take over the existing business -- if I could determine the exact nature of the enterprise, that is. I rifled through some stacks of papers on the desk as the customer stood there, patiently waiting.

"I'll just be a minute," I said, stalling for time as I tried to make sense of the files and folders. Then I had a different thought: I'd let the customer tell me what he wanted and just go from there. "How can I help you today?"