Amazon Emergency

*

*The following events actually transpired:

 

Brrring-bring bring. 

Bring. 

 

A:       <robotic computer voice> Hello this is Amazon calling to inform you about a charge of 913 dollars on your Amazon account for iPhone11. To stop this transaction press 1. To authorize this transaction press 2.

Me:     <presses 2 just to fuck with them> <waits for live representative>

A:       <scammer, located somewhere in India> Hello this is Amazon, how can I help you?

Me:     I don't know. How can I help you? You called me, you know. You must need some help with something. How can I assist you?

A:       Are you on drugs, sir?

Me:     <laughs> <caught off-guard> Umm....

A:       You are on drugs, aren't you?

Me:     <continued maniacal laughter> Umm...Maybe...a little. <embarrassed to be outed by a telescammer>

A:       Haha. OK, sir. That's OK. That's fine. 

Me:     How did you know?

A:       Sir, I need to know what kind of drugs are you on? 

Me:     <silent> <I had smoked a little weed earlier> < man, this guy's good> 

A:       Sir, are you going to do cocaine? You want to do some cocaine right now?

Me:     <more laughter> Thanks, man! You're a really cool guy, you know.

A:       That's OK, sir. Have a nice day. You can do your cocaine, and don't worry about it. We will reverse the charges, and they will no longer apply.

Me:     Whatever you gotta do, man. I understand. 

A:       Goodbye, sir!

Me:     Goodbye, friend!

Meanwhile, back in Paradise...another dream about Sharon, work and my inability to arrive on time, or at all.

 

I am having trouble piecing together the two threads, but there was some element about Sharon being left at home in our little Paradise house while I was attempting to go to work. She was disabled, but she had rare moments when she was completely fine. I never knew when those would be, so I couldn't ever count on going to work and leaving her safely.

"Fix me up this way, and I'll be fine," she said pointing to some pillows to put behind her head as she lay there in bed.

I was dubious, but I did as she said. Within minutes she was ambulatory. This always comes as a shock to me when it happens in dreams, but I've learned to go with it.

"So, I should go to work, then?" I asked, kind of disappointed on the one hand, but glad on the other. I was excited that she could walk, but I don't like going to work any more in my dreams than I do in real life.

"Yes," she said, "and you'd better get to it, or you'll be late."

Of course, I would. I am always battling clocks and impossible ETAs in my dreams. I calculated that if I left right then, I'd be an hour and a half late. I said goodbye and rushed out the door. I jumped in the car and tried to back it out of the driveway, but I banged into a parked car on the way out. It was my neighbor's car, so I had to stop and tell them how I was sorry, and that I'd deal with it later, but I was late for work.

My car wouldn't start after that, though, so I grabbed my skateboard out of desperation, thinking -- I don't know -- that I'd somehow make it the 50 miles to Yuba City on this decrepit old contraption whose wheels would barely spin? I'd made it halfway down Neal Road, when the trucks came apart, separating the skateboard wheels and axles from the board. I ground to a stop in the middle of the road as cars sped past.

I pulled out my old first generation candy bar cell phone and managed to dial the number for work. I didn't get it on the first try, but after a few attempts, I had Luis from the service department on the line.

"Look," I told him, "I'm still about forty-something miles out, and my car is disabled. Are you sure I need to come in today?" 

"Don't go anywhere," he said, "I'll come up and get you."

I hadn't planned for this response. I figured he'd tell me that it was a slow day and that I could just stay home. Nope. Within seconds, it seemed, he was right there in his truck.

"I have some tools," he said. "Let's get that skateboard fixed, and you can be back on your way."

This was the most unlikely scenario I could imagine, and I suggested that maybe I could just catch a ride with him, since he'd already driven all that way. Apparently, this hadn't occurred to him. I still didn't want to go to work, but as we worked on my skateboard, putting the trucks back together while we discussed logistics, it became apparent that, one way or another, I was going to have to go.

That's where the dream left off. I kept waking up and trying to reconfigure my dream in such a way as to avoid the inevitable outcome, but I kept running into the brick wall of logic. I couldn't play the Sharon card because she was fine at the moment. There was work to be done, and I was needed, and Luis was there to pick me up. Damn.

A Day At The Races

I dreamed I was <yawn> working at YC Honda again. It was a slow day, so we were taking a field trip out on the town. A group of us were hanging out on the bridge just as a pride parade was scheduled to come marching through. I found myself outside of the railing in a most conspicuous spot as news cameras were poised to get footage of the event.

"Yikes!" I said out loud to no one in particular as I struggled to get myself back inside the safety of the iron bars. 

It wasn't so much my fear of heights that made me retreat from my perch, but the fear of being caught on camera and becoming part of the news story of the day. I wasn't sure how they would spin it, but it would probably not be favorable either way:

"Protester or supporter? Man falls from bridge on Gay Day" or "We've done a little digging, and here's what we've uncovered on dead Pride Day Bridge Guy." 

I don't know what I was doing on the bridge, but I wasn't aware there was a march scheduled, so I really wasn't there to protest or support anything. I was just being dumb and clowning around. On a bridge. On Gay Day.

After returning to the safety of the group, I went with them back to work, got into my old black '79  Datsun pickup and headed up Hwy 99. I was between Yuba City and Live Oak, doing about 60, when I got the urge to put the seat back a little. I pulled the lever and suddenly found myself lying flat on my back, staring straight up at the sky. Remarkably, I was still going straight while maintaining my speed and staying in my lane.

I pulled myself back into an upright position and kept driving. Still not satisfied with the seat position, I tried this maneuver several more times with similar results before I finally gave up the notion. I stopped in Live Oak, pulling into a random driveway, where I guess I intended to relieve myself in the corner of someone's garage. Unfortunately, I'd only gotten about halfway done when I was spied by one of the members of the household. 

I zipped up and tried to conceal a wet spot on the front of my pants, hoping to get out of there before I was noticed, but it was too late.

"Is that you, Sparky?" A familiar voice came from inside the garage. It was David Chanh.

"Oh, hey, David," I replied casually. "I was just having a little car trouble, so I thought I'd stop by for a quick pit stop."

He made no mention of my urinary indiscretion, and after telling him about my harrowing experience with the seat, we proceeded to look over my truck to see if we could determine the cause of the malfunction. 

That's about all I've got. Sorry to abandon the story just when it wasn't going anywhere, but I do have to get up and pee, so that's that.

Morning Pages Day 10 – Jan 18, 2022

Is it weird that I’m feeling a little sentimental right now? I’m feeling it for Sharon, but though she seems so far from my mind so much of the time, she’s all around me, in all the possessions that I ninety-eight percent have her to thank for. The rest is my man stuff, though she played a part in all of that too. She was there for every major purchase. All my music stuff. The quad. The bicycle. Whatever I needed, she was in favor of me buying, and she’d often make the purchases, since she had online accounts back then, and I didn’t.

Anyway, shifting gears, I had a song I was working on. I’m shifting out of melancholy, but not really. I’m just moving into a more ambiguous, jaded, emotionally unavailable phase. I am post-grieving, but also post just about everything. I better write the words down before the idea completely escapes me.

It’s called “I’m Too Fucked Up For Love.”

We can do all the things you want to do

Hold hands, call each other sweetheart too

Go for walks, text and talk

Make reservations for hotels

Run up our gas bills

And try to get each other’s pets to be cool

It can be just about everything you’ve dreamed of

But honey, I’m just too fucked up for love

 

Putting on our raincoats, we can

Walk along the beach

Take a day or two of freedom

So we can find ourselves some peace

When will these inner voices cease?

I’m being vilified for my deeds, but my needs I must appease

Captain Courageous, step up to the plate, please

----

OK, let me just say that I started out

This thing—with the best of intentions

Something decided to invade my mind

Rendering me completely under its spell

And I can’t question it; that will just be that

I have an arrangement with myself inside my head

----

No, really. The semi-rhymie poetry crap, I don’t do so well. If I rhyme too strictly, it seems trite. It’s a limericky sort of affair, or nursery rhyme sounding crap that’s just so banal. I can’t get myself to write good songs.

I will be back to criticize myself later. It is late, but I thought I’d get an early start, since technically it is morning. It has been a long day. I’ll tell ya about it tomorrow, when it is today. I mean, it is already, but after I sleep for a bit and then wake up. Later. ‘Sout

----

Later, it is. And I will forestall re-reading this last bit of early morning poetry, since I already can tell by my closing that I was probably higher than I’d like to admit when I wrote it.

Sharon always used to poke at me, “So, how high are you?” I always responded with my thumb and forefinger, making the sign for “this much.” She would laugh and spread her hands way apart, like she was estimating the size of a rather large fish. “More like THIS much,” she would laugh. I couldn’t get anything past her.

I woke up at about 8:30 AM this morning. I don’t feel like I could conquer the world today, but I’m not as godawful tired as I was on Sunday. Those Saturday music dates really take it out of me. Yesterday, I chopped wood and hoisted my amp, possibly straining my groin, but still I am not as tired as I was on Sunday.

So, my amp arrived yesterday. It was a day early. It came on the UPS truck while I was sitting out on my front porch. Good thing I was out there, since the gate was shut, and they would have wound up having to re-deliver. Seeing the condition the box was in, I’m glad it didn’t have to spend any more time in his truck. The driver dropped it on the lawn when his dolly upended on the uneven grass in my front yard.

I managed to get it into the house and unbox it. Poorly packaged, it only had a single layer of bubble wrap inside of a cardboard box. The only item they really went all out on was the tape. They must have used a whole roll of extra heavy duty packaging tape. It gave the cardboard a transparent skin that could probably make the whole thing waterproof to 10 meters.

When I first fired it up, it sounded horrible. A loud hum and weak, jangly audio. Just like my other amp. I went outside to feed the guinea hens and shut the gate. It was humming so loud that I could hear it from the back deck. I came back in and resumed playing with it, bringing out my strat for the occasion.

I fiddled with the knobs, and one came off in my hands. So much for the pull-out boost. Someone had replaced the pot with a non-pull out variety and glued the knob on with rubber cement. The Tolex has a few rough spots, and the front faceplate has a ding that I couldn’t see in the pictures. Other than that, and the fact that it probably fell off the back of the UPS truck, it looked in decent enough shape.

Concerned about the hum, I called my amp guy, Skip Simmons. Skip is the whole reason that I bought an older Fender like this one. I had no idea of the differences between the tube amps of today vs. the ones made 40 years ago. Apparently, the hand wired circuitry was better than the printed circuit stuff they have today. Anyway, he only works on the older ones, and seeing as how all tube amps need work from time to time, I thought I’d buy one that my local guy could work on.

Skip’s fame in the amp repair business is legendary. Pros from all over the country ship their antique amps to him to restore. I knew that whatever was wrong with it, he’d be able to fix. Just dialing his number must have gotten the amp calmed down, since it stopped making the hum by the time he answered the phone.

“Do you work on Fender Twin amps?” I asked him.

“For you, of course,” he said. He was always saying nice things like that because we are neighbors and we went through the Cascade Fire together.

 “I wasn’t sure,” I said, “since these things are so heavy. I thought they might be on the list of stuff you don’t work on anymore.”

“Nah, man. Since it’s you, I’ll look at it. I’d even look at some piece of crap newer printed circuit amp for you, just cause it’s you,” he said.

I hit the jackpot with Skip. He’s a good egg. I met him during the Camp Fire when I was housing an evacuee and his mom. Greg Miller, my temporary refugee, was a kindhearted soul, and an old friend of Sharon’s. When the Camp Fire threatened their home in Berry Creek, he and his mom (and three dogs and two cats) all stayed at my house for a week or so. During that time he managed to burn some broccoli in a pan by letting all the water boil out. He also left for a half a day with the crock pot on high. If I hadn’t turned it down, all the water would have boiled out of that as well.

Greg was as kind and thoughtful toward people as he was clumsy. When he accidentally broke the on/off switch on my subwoofer by packing the closet too full of stuff, he searched and searched until he could find a guy locally to look at it. He helped me load the monstrous speaker cabinet in my car, and we drove it over to Skip Simmons’ house. Skip doesn’t work on printed micro circuits, but he took the speaker in to look at it anyway.

Skip took the board out and examined it. Too delicate of a repair job for him, he knew of a guy in Sac that would do the work for a reasonable price. He offered to ship the board to him, so I didn’t have to drive down there, and he never even asked for the money for freight. I did wind up giving him a big bag of weed, since he wouldn’t take any cash. He was appreciative, although, I’m pretty sure it wasn’t up to the standards of anyone in the market for weed these days. Damn those kids and their hydroponics.

I'm reaching the end of the page, and this story is going nowhere, kinda like me. The end.

 

"A kiss between friends"

I dreamed of Sharon again last night. It was 1997, and we were in that stage of a relationship where things are firming up, and one has to decide whether or not to be exclusive with their affections. At least, that was the stage she believed we were in, whereas, I apparently believed we were much further along. 

We were playing house, living in my decrepit, tiny particle board home, and we'd decided to throw a party. People were arriving while we were still cleaning the place up from the initial move-in. I was getting a little upset because there were so many things to be done, and guests were already there, entertaining themselves and making a bigger mess.

"What is all this crap?" I exploded at a case of recyclable water bottles that I found wedged inside a space between an outbuilding and the fence. 

I looked over at Sharon in some kind of accusatory fashion and saw that she was talking with a guy to whom I'd been trying to sell a guitar amp earlier. He was a portly fellow with a Brillo pad of dark frizz for hair and thick black framed glassed that made his eyes bug out just a bit. 

When I was showing him the amp, it appeared that the amp wasn't working, so I fiddled with the dials until I finally got enough sustain to satisfy me. It was my mom's cheap Crate amp, so one couldn't really expect anything marvelous. I handed him my guitar, a well worn instrument upon which much finger skin had been shed by me over the years.

"Uh, gross, dude!" he exclaimed upon seeing the flaky residue on the strings.

"It's not for sale, just the amp," I said defensively. "Those are the original strings, and that skin reflects years of shredding, so there!"

He left and rejoined the party. He was interested in the amp, but he was more interested in Sharon, it appeared. I'd gone back to cleaning up the property, while the party was in full swing, and it was at this point that I looked over and saw the two of them talking quite intimately. My "what is all this crap" comment must have registered with Sharon as an outburst of jealousy, because she grabbed the frizzy haired, bug-eyed boy and kissed him firmly on the mouth.

"A kiss between friends," she said unapologetically.

I fumed and continued the cleanup, trying to think of a good retort. Soon, I found a bunch more things wrong with the place that had apparently gone unnoticed during the home inspection. There was a trailer on the property that was damp and full of mold. I opened the door to air it out and went around looking for more things to stew about. 

The place was as full of people now as it was full of uncompleted cleanup projects. I was going around with a garbage bag full of recyclables which finally burst at the seams, leaving a giant mess in the middle of the yard and eliciting more curses from me. A young girl and her mother accosted me as I was walking up the stairs to retrieve another garbage bag.

"I'm mad at you!" the little blond teenager said, in a serious tone.

I looked at her, and then at her mother, and tried to figure out if I even knew them. I couldn't place either of them, so I asked the girl:

"What did I ever do to you? If I've done something to offend you, I apologize, but really, I don't believe we've ever met." 

She looked at me with steely blue eyes that had a hint of mischief in them. "I was waiting at the bus stop, late for school, and you passed me by on your motorcycle," she said with an air of indignant outrage. "You didn't even offer to pick me up!" 

"I'm not going to offer a ride on my motorcycle to a stranger, and especially not a girl as young as you," I replied. "How old are you anyway?" 

"I'm fifteen," she said. 

Her face said, "I'm plenty old enough, you ageist, sexist fuck."

"That settles it," I said, and I proceeded up the stairs with my armful of recyclables, my attention focused elsewhere. 

I was still mad about Sharon's newfound friend and the kiss they had shared. I noticed that they were still hanging around together in the garage, and I went in to make myself obtrusive. As if to make my point for me, a giant tractor trailer pulled into the garage, pinning Mr. Frizz Bug to the wall just as he was about to make his move, effectively separating Sharon and him for the moment.

Good, I thought to myself. I'd wished that the truck would have run him over, but this would do. Oh, well, at least I was some teenage girl's unrequited pickup fantasy, so there was that small consolation. The dream ended, leaving me with the bitter taste of jealousy in my parched, dehydrated mouth.

Mad Max

 

I dreamed Sharon and I were living in Paradise again, and she wasn't disabled. Far from it, actually, and she was up to her old tricks. She had a wandering eye (and two wandering legs, apparently). She was scheming about a threesome, a fantasy she kept trying to persuade me to help her fulfill. This time, instead of fighting it, I went along with the idea, at least in principle. 

We decided on a candidate, someone of her choosing. He was a CBer named Mad Max, a big strapping diesel mechanic with a gruff demeanor over the radio but a puppy dog in person. With his bib overalls and gingham shirt, he reminded me of a cross between Forrest Gump and the Andre the Giant. I liked him, but not in "that" way. Sharon liked him and figured he'd fit the bill. 

We met with him in the parking lot of Ray's Liquor, and Sharon propositioned him. His eyes lit up, and a big Cookie Monster grin spread across his kind but oafish face.

"I'm in!" he said excitedly. "When do we begin?' He was even rhyming like the ogre-like character in The Princess Bride.

"Hold on, Tiger," I told him. "Let's go back to the house first. We have to establish some ground rules."

We all took separate cars back to our place, but when we arrived, Max had brought along a friend. It was an older gentleman from his church named Glen, who reminded me of Ed Begley, Jr.

I didn't like how the math was adding up, so I lingered outside for a moment as Sharon and Max went inside. Glen got cold feet and left before any of the action, and I was left outside with my lower lip quivering in an expression Sharon and I referred to as "The Bear." 

"Not The Bear!" she said, feigning incredulity. "Don't worry, Sweetie, there's enough of me to go around."

Sharon had picked up on my petulance and come out to ask if I was still OK with everything. I told her that I was, and that she and Max should get started, and I'd join them in a minute. She didn't need too much persuading, and she was back in the house and unclothed in under a minute. 

Whatever she and Mad Max did, it didn't take more than a minute, and soon he emerged, fully clothed, and drove off. I did likewise, and as I drove around Paradise in my white Honda Accord listening to the CB radio, a faint voice came through the static:

"Do you know what the problem was?" the voice inquired.

I couldn't place the voice right away, but as I kept driving, it became clear to me.

"Do you know what the problem was, Andrew?" the voice repeated, calling me by name.

It was Sharon, of course. I drove back in the direction of home, and picked up the handset to reply:

"No, what?" I asked.

"He was a church boy. A Seventh Day Adventist. And it's Saturday, so he couldn't do anything." 

Sharon always did have a distaste for SDAs, simply because their religious services always interfered with her fun.

By now, I was already parked outside the house, and I went in to find a still naked Sharon sitting on the couch. I dispensed with the CB mic, which I was still talking into even though we were face to face.

"You'd think that Saturday would be his happy day, though, right?" I said, applying my own logic to the situation.

"That's not how it works with those guys," she said. "His buddy Glen was a perfect example."

"I didn't know how that was going to work in the first place," I told her. "The gears didn't seem like they were going to mesh." 

She and I had never discussed any of my leanings or proclivities, and now didn't seem to be the time to bring them up. Still a bit jealous and insecure about her and Mad Max's brief encounter, I reached around and felt her backside. It was a bit clammy, but it gave me reassurance that no hanky-panky had taken place.

"Just checkin'," I grinned. 

"I guess it's just you and me," she smiled back as the curtain closed on the dream.

----

It's been nearly month since I've had dreams of any sort. I suppose it's not odd that I should have a dream like this now, since I've recently been sleeping on our old bed. After many months of sleeping on the downstairs couch, my back finally began to protest, and I reluctantly brought myself back to the scene of so many memories, some happy, some not so happy.

It's Saturday, so I'm going to get my own religious ritual going. If you aren't already familiar with what that is, don't ask, because I won't tell. It's for Super Secret Squirrel's Club members only.

David - Procrit commercial #4

                                                                 

Grandpa: David was really wearing me out -- so as I couldn't stand to see the little bastard. What did I do? Picked up some Procrit, and I locked him in the closet. Schmuck.

<interlude>

Grandpa (cont.): Anyway, this David is turning out to be quite the troublemaker. The other day, he lit a firecracker when I was on the toilet. What did I do? I dug it out of the toilet and threw it back at him. But instead, I guess I must have grabbed a turd. Little prick.

Context: I wrote this song in 2005 as a response to an ad called Procrit commercial #4. The ad was repeated often enough that it weaseled its way into my subconscious, and I had no other choice but to memorialize it forever by hacking the original to bits and putting in my original song as a soundtrack.

The vending machine

 

I dreamed I was at work again, making myself useless. I didn't have a job or a purpose for being there. I was just wandering around talking to my ex-coworkers. I saw Luis Ramirez at the vending machine, and I stopped to talk with him for a minute. He didn't have much to say to me and left without taking his change. I stuck my finger in the change receptacle, and a quarter fell out on the ground with a very audible tinkle. Luis swung around and looked at me.

"Go ahead," he said. "I guess you need it more than I do."

I did go ahead, picking up the one coin and digging further into the receptacle. I kept pulling quarters out until I had about a dollar fifty total. Score. I usually don't have this kind of luck with vending machines, or cash in general. 

After collecting my fortune, I walked past the front desk. Art, the owner, was sitting in front of a computer terminal, intently poring over some data. I greeted him cordially, and he looked up at me.

"Hey, Andrew," he said. "I'm looking at some new hires. Do you want to see their pictures?"

"Sure," I said.

"I don't know if I can pull them up on this machine, but I'll try," he said.

----

That's all I remember. Pretty basic, I know. My brain has been occupied of late with the defense of my home. I am at war with the ants on my property. 

Since a tree went down in my backyard, millions of ants who had been nesting inside the dying trunk have now been displaced and are seeking new accommodations inside my house. There are long lines of refugees crawling around the foundation, and some have made incursions as far as the kitchen. 

Spraying them with bug killer only seems to stem the immediate invasion, a single battle won in a war that is gearing up to be an infinitely long conflict. We have opposing agendas, the ants and I. They want in, and I want them out.  

Today, after spotting another two lines of attack, I brought out the next phase of my chemical warfare, the bait granules. The product alleges to be able to kill the entire colony, since the ants will carry their food back to the nest, eventually reaching the queen. No queen, no colony. We'll see, as the Zen master said.

I did watch some of them pick up these rather large poison laden particles and head in the direction of my house. This new strategy is testing my patience, though. My instinct is to kill them on sight to prevent them from entering the house. I have to have faith that wherever they are going, I should let them go, since the poison won't get to the queen if I kill the workers. 

That's my life right now. Big struggle, I know. I'm literally making a mountain out of an anthill. Oh, and I may need a small bowel resection, but I don't want to go on about it.

Mutated Mutant

I stole this picture from someone else on Blogspot -- sue me!

 

Muted mutant

I feel muted 

Mutilated and mutated

Ablated and outdated Miscreated With a fatal flaw Checkmated With an iron will and glass jaw Living life above and below the law

Who thought of such a thing as a me? That I’d be any more useful than a tree? A blank piece of paper to be written upon And this is my song Far away, in a distant land I make peace with my demons I make them understand We’re not so different you know The singer sings and the sower sows

“Ahh-ahh ahh-ahhhh-----you got me!” I said Quoting every gunfighter who’s ever been gut shot dead

Nuclear War

 

A co-worker and I were out on a landscaping job in the company van outside a customer's house when the news report came over the radio:

"It is with great sadness that I must report that two nuclear explosions have taken place on American soil. We are still trying to determine their origin. Scientists have yet to explain who will be affected by the fallout, but for now, citizens are advised to remain in their current location."

We both knew instantly that nothing would ever be the same. An all out response was sure to ensue, followed by a counter response and a counter counter response. Society would break down in a matter of days, if not hours, as the news filtered down. We saw a pallet of toilet paper in the customer's garage, and we both had the same thought:

"Let's grab that and get out of here!" my co-worker barked.

"May as well," I said. "It will probably be the last time we'll ever see this much of the stuff. I just wonder if we'll live long enough for it to even matter. We're probably dead already. It's just a matter of time."

We loaded up the van and started driving, where we didn't know. Anywhere, I guess. It didn't matter; the radiation was invisible, and we'd never know until it was too late whether or not we'd received a lethal dose.

We continued driving, and I saw bright flash of light as an electrical transformer exploded. I instinctively shielded my eyes, thinking it was another nuclear blast. My co-worker assured me that it wasn't that. It was the electrical grid going down. 

"Say bye-bye to electricity," he said with a sardonic grin. "That flash was the last you'll see of it in this lifetime."

I don't remember much more of the dream than that. It was just a feeling of dread at the irrevocable nature of nuclear conflict. I remember thinking, "Damn. They've went and done it. They've killed us all."

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.