No movies or potato salad for me, I'd rather get lost and fall in a ditch

 

I was attending the funeral of a disabled boy named Timmy. The family was one familiar to me from my cult days, the Gervais family. 

**True story: Carey Gervais was a roommate of mine and was, in fact, the person responsible for recruiting me into the cult in the first place, with his relentless witnessing while we worked together at the fingernail factory in Westminster. He was also the only person I've ever known to be ejected from a church, cult or otherwise, for masturbating during a worship service.**

"We're going to have potato salad after the service," said Mama Gervais."Then we're going to watch Mamma Mia."

Earlier in the day, I'd been in a conflict with one of my roommates over someone leaving a bike at the house and then going AWOL for months. My other roommates were getting pissed at me for keeping the bike, thinking that I should have somehow tracked this person down and forced them to take the bike back. 

"What we have here," I said, "is a simple case of abandonment. After 90 days, possessions left in a rental are legally forfeited. Possession is 9/10ths of the law, after all." I was pretty proud of my legal knowledge, drawing from a similar situation in my cult days, in which a member had exited the cult, leaving all his stuff behind. 

"Well, I want it out of here," said Beth. "Maybe you can just take the bike for a ride and not bring it back."

"No can do," I said, my tone surly. "If I come across a free bike, I'm going to ride it, and I'll be bringing it back home with me. Bikes can live in the house as far as I'm concerned."

Beth shook her head, clearly displeased. 

Meanwhile, back at the funeral, we'd come to a break in the service. It seemed to be dragging on, so the family suggested we take a little outing up to the hills for everyone to clear their heads. We were still going to come back and finish the service and then watch Mamma Mia, but a trip to the hills seemed warranted. 

We all piled into the station wagon, and the father drove us up some winding roads to the top of a mountain. Everyone stood around admiring the view for a moment, and then Mama Gervais said it was time to get back. 

"I'm going to stay a little longer," I said. "I'll walk back and catch up to you later." 

I wasn't in a hurry to get back to the boring service, but I figured I could make it back in time to catch the movie. Mama Gervais protested a bit, but she wanted to get back to that potato salad, so they didn't press the matter. They all got back into the station wagon and left me alone with my thoughts.

The first thing I thought was that I'd forgotten the directions to get back to the house. I started following a small drainage ditch with water in it back down the hill. I knew I'd have to cross the ditch at some point, so I looked for a narrow spot and attempted to hop over to the other side.

I got a bad start, however, and landed ankle deep in water in a soft spot on the other side. The ground was mushy, and I started to sink. I somehow managed to make a backwards hop and wound up back where I started. I kept walking along the side of the ditch, and per dream protocols, the bank became unstable and slanted me towards the now deepening water. 

There were some pallets on the bank of the ditch, and I was forced to use them as stepping stones. Due to the angle of the bank and the muddy soil, it was just a matter of time before I slid off into the ditch and found myself up to my neck in water. Somehow I had the presence of mind to unholster my phone and hold it aloft while I scrambled back to the bank.

Soaked and muddy, I was now at least on the correct side of the ditch. I walked down a few streets, and failing to see any recognizable landmarks, I looked at my phone to see if GPS could bail me out. I realized that I didn't know the address of the house I was looking for, so I scrolled through a bunch of emails to try to find the one Mama Gervais had sent inviting me to the funeral.

I never did find the email, so I missed out on the movie and the potato salad. I could just hear them tsking and muttering about how disrespectful I was to flake out on the rest of the funeral. I woke up soon afterward, with the cats clawing at my bedroom door and a hole in my gut from some chronic GI issues that I've been having. 

Happy Saturday.

Just another day at the Greek

Working as an apprentice at a Greek restaurant was challenging, but not without its rewards. It was an outdoor venue, so floor cleaning wasn't required. Picnic tables were scattered along a grassy hillside with trees and natural lighting during the daytime and candles and moonlight at night. I had a lot to learn, so most of my time was spent shadowing the boss's son as he performed almost every job involved in the running of a small restaurant.

"Get those hotdogs for me, will you?" he barked. "They've been in the water too long."

I hastened to retrieve the drowning dogs from the steaming tub but soon realized that I had no tongs with which to grab them. 

I remembered a fellow at YMCA summer camp who bore the scars of what he called "hot dog gloop" from an incident working at his father's restaurant in which he dropped his wristwatch into a vat of boiling hot dog water. Without thinking he reached in to rescue the watch, a gift from his father, and was instantly scarred for life by the scalding water. 

"Never mind," the son said in disgust, pouring off some of the water and skewering the dogs with a fork. He could see that I was paralyzed, lost in my daydream of summer camp and the horrid purple and white scarred hands of my campmate.

Next, he proceeded to show me how to prepare the sauce for one of their main dishes, the Miso Burrito.

"Do you know what Miso is?" he questioned me. 

"Tomatos and corn meal," I said promptly. I had recently learned this, after many years of passing this item over in the supermarket, when Emery brought some home from the food bank. 

(Now that I think about it, it wasn't Miso after all, but polenta. But for the purposes of this dream, I'm still going to call it Miso, error or no.)

"Correct. So you can look at this as a Greek Tamale, or as we like to call it, the Miso Burrito." He went on to explain how the sauce was also tomato based but had a strong chili component. 

About that time, one of the new waitresses, a ringer for Patricia Arquette with notes of Reese Witherspoon, began causing a bit of a stir at one of the tables. 

"Dammit, Patty!" the owner said under his breath, looking up toward the fracas. 

The pretty blonde had taken her top off and was serving the patrons in true early Greek fashion. She was certainly not getting any complaints, but the loud comments from some of the more inebriated male customers became a bit much for the normally sedate atmosphere. The owner suggested that I attempt to rein her in, and a foot chase ensued.

Giggling, still topless and flopping about, Patty ran off behind some apartment buildings, maintaining a pretty good speed despite her natural encumberments. 

"You keep after her, and I'll try to head her off," said the owner's son. 

His strategy didn't work, and soon she'd disappeared completely from view. We came upon a chair that was placed strategically at the top of a decrepit old staircase so that if anyone sat in it, they would most certainly fall backward to their death. I touched the arm of the chair with one finger, and it plummeted into an empty chasm where the staircase had fallen away in ruins.

"That was a close call," the son said.

At the same time, at the bottom of the hill on the other side of the ravine, I saw a man with a hat and briefcase standing in a drainage culvert. Behind him, in the side of the mountain, a set of elevator doors suddenly appeared, and he took one step backward and disappeared into them. The doors then vanished as quickly as they had appeared, leaving no trace of the man or the passageway.

Back in the restaurant, a heated discussion was going on between the owner, his son and I on the subject of toplessness, and breasts in general. 

"It's not appropriate in a dining establishment, and that is that!" exclaimed the owner.

The son and I took a different view, but our stance was puerile at best. 

"I think it depends on the breasts, really," I stated. "Some of them are quite nice and could be appreciated in any venue, purely on artistic merit." 

"Poppycock!" said the owner. "You boys just like seeing a nice set of tits. You don't give a damn about art or any of that."

I did not disagree with him. The dream ended on that note. Springtime rages on, apparently, at least in my dream world.

Aaron Rodgers is fat and has a tapeworm

I dreamed I was being vetted as part of a welcoming committee for Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers. He was always a fave of Sharon's, and being from Chico, he attended Butte College around the same time that she was working there. She accumulated an extensive (and expensive) collection of signed memorabilia which, due to market fluctuations, I am unable to part with without losing a ton of money.

In my dream, this sports icon had fallen on hard times. He was still a celebrity, but he had to take his act on the road during the off season, making appearances at drugstores and grocery outlets to try to earn some extra scratch. It was at one such appearance at the local CVS pharmacy that I was summoned by local law enforcement to be part of a special backstage welcoming team. 

Our job was to conduct an informal interview and get some publicity shots with him before he addressed the crowd of fans that had gathered in the parking lot. But first the cop had to make certain that I was going to be a stable enough member of the general public to draft into this position, so he strapped a camera on me and proceeded to observe me while I was locked in a storage area in the back of the drugstore.

It was easy enough to convince him that I was no threat. I didn't try to climb the walls or burn the place down. I just waited around until they decided to let me out, and soon enough, I was a part of the team. Just like that.

"I'm sorry we had to put you through that, Mr. Golding," the cop said ruefully. "9/11 and all that. You can't be too careful. You never know who might just be a pressure cooker ready to pop."

I kept a stone face, deciding not to acknowledge his dark terrorism pun referencing the Boston Bombing. It's always too soon for that. 

Soon Rodgers showed up and made his way into the back room where I and the rest of the committee were waiting to greet him. He gave hugs all around and thanked us for being fans. I didn't tell him that I was not really a football fan, since he really seemed to need whatever boost he was getting from this event.

The first thing I noticed was that he'd put on quite a bit of weight since his last appearance anywhere. His belly protruded so that his hug was more of a belly bump than a hug. 

"Sorry about that," he said. "That thing is always getting in the way. I have a tapeworm, you know. It's been with me for a while, so I've been eating for two."

I tried not to look too disgusted, as this kind of thing could happen to anyone. "Don't worry about it," I said. "You still have a huge fan base out there. Now you go and give those folks what they want."

He did just that, and the parking lot crowd received him with a warm round of applause. It was but a faint smattering of the stadium sized roar that he was accustomed to, but it was sincere. He was still their guy--fat, tapeworms and all.

Meanwhile, the committee had another job to do. We were tasked with writing a review of a used mattress that had been listed on Ebay. It was very similar to the one I own, an Electropedic adjustable Cal King with two twin latex mattresses. I volunteered to review the mattress portion of the bed and quickly began making notes on some of the defects that I saw.

"This thing has been clawed by multiple cats," I surmised, noting the shredded foam protruding from giant gashes in the mattress's sidewall. "I think you are going to have a hard time unloading this. It's basically a piece of crap." My own mattress is in similar condition, and I'm pretty much stuck with it, since it would be too expensive to replace.

That's about all I've got for this dream. I am recording it late in the day because my time in the morning is spoken for by a couple of zombie cats with razor claws who demand feeding under threat of further terroristic vandalism to my mattress.

Drive-in Crush and the Poopy Barbeque

 

I dreamed Sharon and I were out on a date at a drive-in movie theater, only there was no movie and no other cars, and it was just her and I making out in the back seat of a 1960s American luxury sedan. 

As things began to heat up, I put the passenger seat back to demonstrate how the whole interior could be made into a giant bed. I forgot to tell Sharon to move, however, and she was temporarily crushed between the two black leather upholstered seats.

"Are you OK?" I gasped frantically. "I'll get you unstuck, I promise."

I pulled the lever, and the seat retracted. She was fine, but this put an end to the backseat lovemaking. We went home to our apartment in town and decided to have a barbecue out in the courtyard. I threw some steaks on the grill and headed to the apartment to get some spices.

On my way to the apartment, I stepped in some dog shit. Great, I thought, and I was barefoot, naturally. I wriggled my toes to try to rid them of the smushy poop, but I only made it worse. 

Inside the apartment, I used the sink sprayer to rinse my feet off. The hose must have been extremely long because I wasn't anywhere near the sink. I was in the hallway, and the poop was getting rinsed off onto the hardwood floor. I made a mental note to clean it up later and went back outside to the grill, where an amorous Sharon awaited me.

I somehow managed to regain the mood despite the dog shit, and soon we abandoned the steaks and headed into the apartment for a quickie. I grabbed her by the back of both thighs, hoisted her up and carried her reverse piggie-back into the bedroom.

I'm through with love

"I'm through with love, 

It's only a madness.

I'm finished with this,

This torment was never my joy.

Who needs a heartbreak?

Don't want anybody to call my own..."   

 

                                                                ~Basia 

 

"What do you get when you fall in love?

A girl with a pin to burst your bubble.

That's what you get for all your trouble.

I'll...never fall in love again.

I'll...never fall in love again." 

                                                                 ~Burt Bacharach and Elvis Costello

A day at the beach

I dreamed I had two black friends, and we decided to go to the beach in Santa Monica. From our starting point at 1124 Bay St., we headed down the hill, joking and throwing a basketball back and forth, until we got to 11th at the bottom. At that point, our paths diverged when one of them threw the ball, and I chased it down Grant, while the two of them continued on Bay St. 

Arriving at the beach, we dug a little sand bunker and started setting up for a day of partying and girl watching. We had an ATV parked at the top of a little sand dune that must have served as an "Open for business" sign, because within minutes, a pretty blonde came up to our sand fort and asked for a demonstration of our ATV.

"Go ahead, General," one of my friends told me. "Show her what it can do."

I jumped on the quad and proceeded to make tracks across the beach, doing tight little turns and throwing up a spray of sand and mud. I went back to the group, and saw the girl looking very impressed, despite the fact that I'd tracked a bunch of mud across the walkway where a bunch of street merchants had set up shop.

"Can you teach me to do that?" she asked coyly.

"Certainly," I said. "Let's set up an appointment."

"Also, my friends and I would like to see you dance," she said, naming some very hip sounding dance with which I was completely unfamiliar. "Do you think you can do that, as well?"

I conferred with my two friends, and they did some quick internet research. After watching a few Tik Tok and YouTube videos, they whispered to me, "Tell her yes, dude. It's easy. You can do it."

I nodded yes to the girl, and after agreeing to the appointment, she went away to tell her friends. I now had my work cut out for me, since I am decidedly unhip, and I don't fancy myself much of a dancer. All in a day's work, I supposed, so I got down to learning the steps. 

I woke up with Steely Dan playing "Hey Nineteen" in my head.

Uninvited

 

 

I dreamed last night, but I didn't remember it until later in the day, so details are sparse. 

I was at a large event put on by Yuba City Honda, some kind of annual party for all the employees, where food and drinks were served and there was dancing, and a general good time was being had by all. Although I was no longer employed there, I had been getting invited every year, so I kept up the tradition of making an appearance.

This time, however, was different. People looked at me as if I were a stranger or a vagabond just looking for a handout. I felt an unwelcoming vibe as I walked around from table to table picking up hors d' oeuvres.

"I didn't think they wanted him back," I overheard one woman say as I skewered a pickle and put it on my plate.

"It's just a one time thing," another lady replied. "Joellen will see to it that he doesn't come back next year."

I felt crushed, since all of my interactions with the boss lady had been positive, and this chilly reception, coming out of the blue, caught me completely off guard. I found Joellen out on the dance floor, and I sidled up to her.

"Is it true that I am being uninvited?" I asked her bluntly.

"Yes, Andrew, it is true," she said.  "Your time here has passed. I hope you understand. We wish you well, but this will have to be the last time."

I felt about two inches tall, and I slunk off the dance floor with my head held low. 

----

I know there was more to the dream that I'm not remembering, but this was the basic theme. Rejection. Things ending. 

I experienced some rejection in the last week in my personal life from the girl I was having a brief moment of infatuation with. We had been friends for a while in group, and then we started meeting for lunch occasionally when I would go to Yuba City to go shopping. We seemed to be hitting it off quite nicely, and she'd even come up to my house for a visit on my birthday.

We discussed dating, and at first she said no, but she finally relented, and we had a couple of days texting back and forth, things of a somewhat emotional nature. Words were said that caused my hopes to soar, but abruptly after our first official date, she texted me and said that she didn't want to see me anymore. The friendship seems to have been rescinded as well.

As quickly as I'd gotten my hopes up, I became deflated, and sank into an abysmal depression. All the songs on my new "romantic" playlist have been ruined for me, at least for the time being. I feel mocked by the happy, hopefulness of people singing about love. 

Sure, I know that this is exactly what I deserve for just leaving Denise after a year and a half. I don't deserve a happy ending, or at least not an easy one. I'm going to have to pay back my karmic debt and suffer the same fate as I inflicted on another, so I can experience what it is like to be dumped. And Denise is still pissed and won't talk to me at all.

I never meant to hurt Denise, and I never meant to lead her on. Apparently, though, I did both. I don't know if there were ever any really good, safe moves to be made, where no one would get hurt. If I had stayed with her, I'd have been unhappy, and that would have translated into a less than adequate version of me for her. 

Getting my mind right would have been the only solution. Learning to accept things as they are and being content with what I had. Being grateful for what is instead of chasing after mirages. Those are the words of a depressed brain, telling me not to go after what I want and disguising it in the cloak of sagely wisdom. The truth is--I just don't know. 

What I do know is that I feel like a shithead. 

I replaced my kitchen faucet today. It had been leaking for about 6 months. I wanted to just replace the washer, but I wound up taking the whole unit out because I couldn't figure out how to access the nut to unscrew the tap. I wound up buying an inferior replacement without a sprayer, and now I'm having to relearn how to use a sink. 

Life just seems like a series of downgrades, of settling for "what is" and being told you have to love it. The guy who sold me the faucet, a fat New Yorker whose sales strategy is to use his vast knowledge of plumbing to humiliate every Ace Hardware customer with whom he comes into contact, actually told me, "You're gonna love that faucet." Like the George Zimmer, the Men's Warehouse spokesman, he guaranteed it. 

"Life is full of empty promises and broken dreams....

That's rock bottom, when this life makes you mad enough to kill
That's rock bottom, when you want somethin' bad enough to steal
That's rock bottom, when you feel like you've had it up to here
'Cause you mad enough to scream, but you sad enough to tear"

I don't mind quoting Eminem when I'm feeling as immature and pouty as I have been these last few days. Anger is a step up on the scale of depression, whereas enlightenment may be some bullshit level of detachment that is less than human, less than being alive. 

Love this, bitches! <middle finger extended>

**Do I really have to add the disclaimer that I'm not using the term "bitches" in its misogynistic sense, but in the universal? I feel like I have to, although I also feel that it shouldn't be necessary. Do you even know me at all?